Wildfire rages through Boulder area. Jenny Simpson's house may burn down (video)

jecht wrote:

Do you think governments/developers will learn from this and try to boost the infrastructure so this doesn't happen again? I hope you and those you know affected by this pull through.

The fire started on a day with 80+ mph winds in some grasslands that had received virtually no snow this winter after a very dry summer. The only way I can think of to "boost infrastructure" would be to encase everything in concrete, buildings included.

jecht wrote:

Dirty Bismarck trail?

There is a famous road cycling route called the Bismark Loop.

The mountain biking single track that roughly follows it around the interior of Marshall Mesa where the fire started is called the Dirty Bismark. 15 miles and popular for running too.

They are eyeing the blame for the fire starting from a dilapidated shed at some odd religious cult that owns a chain of hippie themed restaurants and shops. May have been burning weeds, trash or making hash oil and it got out of hand. Our greatest vulnerability with these fires is idiots. A while back there was a fire a block from an office building we own under similar circumstances. High winds, some deadbeat living in a vacant field started a fire in his tent. In LA, something like 58% of the fires the fire department gets called out to start in homeless camps. Less than 1% of the population is responsible for half the fires.

fanagan wrote:

It looks like her house survived in tact. The home was priced at $8 million the year they bought it and they were doing construction on the property at the time of the fire. Is Jenny the highest paid distance athlete in America right now?

They bought for $2 million at the end of 2019.

I hate to ask this but I have no idea how this works. I assume mortgage payments get halted/suspended if house has burned down? if the average home that was burned down is worth about 700k to 1.2M I would guess, do these people rent in another city close by while they wait for the insurance pay out? Or will some of them sell as is the land that was burned and take the insurance payout and move somewhere out of state? I did hear that in the area it could take over three years or more to rebuild Also I wonder about the effect on house prices and rents in the surrounding areas (Boulder, Westminster, Erie, Longmont, etc). I would think it would increase it but with it already being at insane levels it’s difficult to tell

joed|rty wrote:

They are eyeing the blame for the fire starting from a dilapidated shed at some odd religious cult that owns a chain of hippie themed restaurants and shops.

Curious to see what comes out of the investigation. Those guys also have one in Manitou Springs and probably in Asheville NC and other locations. At the one in Manitou they let you camp there all day and night (except on the day of rest, Fri into Saturday). In Boulder if you aren’t ordering a sandwich or mate within 5secs you’re probably getting out

I got the impression off this site that the house was priced at 8mil:

https://burgessgrouprealty.com/properties/1595-s-cherryvale-road-boulder-co-80303-7075114/

Beautiful home and property regardless

fanagan wrote:

I got the impression off this site that the house was priced at 8mil:

https://burgessgrouprealty.com/properties/1595-s-cherryvale-road-boulder-co-80303-7075114/

Beautiful home and property regardless

That's insane that house sells for that much. You could get a quaint house like that in Kansas with acres of land for about a quarter mill.

joed|rty wrote:

fanagan wrote:

I got the impression off this site that the house was priced at 8mil:

https://burgessgrouprealty.com/properties/1595-s-cherryvale-road-boulder-co-80303-7075114/

Beautiful home and property regardless

That's insane that house sells for that much. You could get a quaint house like that in Kansas with acres of land for about a quarter mill.

https://www.landandfarm.com/property/Charming_2_Story_Residence_with_Shop_and_Acres_in_Lyon_County-15532895/

That's nice, you don't have access to a city like Boulder a couple of miles away, don't have access to world class skiing one to two hours away. Don't have views of the Flatiron's either, sunsets are beautiful in Boulder and watching the sunrise hit the flatirons is pretty awesome.

SEBO_Naropa wrote:

I hate to ask this but I have no idea how this works. I assume mortgage payments get halted/suspended if house has burned down? if the average home that was burned down is worth about 700k to 1.2M I would guess, do these people rent in another city close by while they wait for the insurance pay out? Or will some of them sell as is the land that was burned and take the insurance payout and move somewhere out of state? I did hear that in the area it could take over three years or more to rebuild Also I wonder about the effect on house prices and rents in the surrounding areas (Boulder, Westminster, Erie, Longmont, etc). I would think it would increase it but with it already being at insane levels it’s difficult to tell

The effect is probably negligible compared with the persistently constant drivers of limited supply and ever higher demand. Housing listings locally had already been decreasing since the notable seller's market of this past summer, so cash offers well over asking price would still win the day for most homes. Even outside of the hallowed Boulder Bubble, there is a knock-on effect of their housing and growth policies on the housing prices in neighboring communities. So even if it's 2K people displaced by burned homes, certainly a liberal estimate, in effect it just boosts the recent in-migration to Boulder County from 6K/year to 8K. 33% jump certainly isn't nothing, though there's no guarantee all or most who have been displaced will stick around. As has been observed, a lot of these people bought-in when homes were valued at least $100K (and many $200K-$300K) less than they were in November 2021. Simply put, many can't afford to buy again in this market unless maybe they're downsizing. Insurance claim payouts aren't likely to make up the difference for many. Even those whose homes were spared are looking at major expense to rehab their homes that are coated inside and out with residue from smoke and toxins. It practically requires a gut job in most cases to make them safe to inhabit. If I were in their shoes, I'd take the insurance settlement, put the property on the market, and maybe move out of the county and area. There are newer homes at more reasonable prices once you cross over into Adams, Weld, and Larimer Counties. No doubt many of these folks had planned to cash-out and sell these homes upon retirement, anyway. Now it might make more sense to do so sooner, even if they aren't getting what the market would have commanded a month ago. This is all the very predictable result of Boulder's policies, it's been ongoing since the '80s and will continue indefinitely. I could be wrong about all this, it just seems like a variation on a story that has repeated many times since I've been around to directly observe and none of the key factors have changed much in that time.

Incidentally, there was a news story featuring none other than Arturo Barrios as one of the Superior homeowner-landlords whose tenants lost everything when the house he owns behind the Target burned down. It's a bit surprising the Brojos didn't find and feature that.

old owl wrote:

joed|rty wrote:

That's insane that house sells for that much. You could get a quaint house like that in Kansas with acres of land for about a quarter mill.

https://www.landandfarm.com/property/Charming_2_Story_Residence_with_Shop_and_Acres_in_Lyon_County-15532895/

That's nice, you don't have access to a city like Boulder a couple of miles away, don't have access to world class skiing one to two hours away. Don't have views of the Flatiron's either, sunsets are beautiful in Boulder and watching the sunrise hit the flatirons is pretty awesome.

To each their own. Sunsets are pretty in Kansas, too. You can actually generate an income off the land in Kansas (rather than just hoping that property values continue to go up in the face of rising interest rates and hope that you will be able to pawn it off on the next poor sap), have plenty of dirt roads to run on, don't have traffic and typically can hunt and fish on your property as well. The funny thing is, the land up there was at one time valued in a manner similar to the land in Kansas. It is only low interest rates that allowed residential property prices to soar to such stratospheric heights in the past twenty years. If the fed really starts to act on inflation by raising interest rates, there's going to be a world of pain in the real estate market.

joed|rty wrote:

To each their own. Sunsets are pretty in Kansas, too.

lmao

Savannah has a single-A baseball team called the Bananas, but no one's comparing them to the braves.

fanagan wrote:

I got the impression off this site that the house was priced at 8mil:

https://burgessgrouprealty.com/properties/1595-s-cherryvale-road-boulder-co-80303-7075114/

Beautiful home and property regardless

Sold for $2M in 2019, as someone already noted. Apparently it has appreciated by around 50% in just two years:

Jenny must have a really good money manager, on top of earning well over the past 12 years. Probably helps that she didn't buy Jason a Range Rover.

You don't have to go out to Kansas for better deals, you can get a nice ranch home on an oversized lot in Canon City for about a quarter mill:

Or a fixer-upper on wooded acreage with nice views in the hills SW of Pueblo for a bit more:

This article answers a lot of those questions and more:

I wouldn’t trust Zillow estimate, especially for the highest end of the market. At price points above about 2 to 3 million demand is not the same. That being said though the area is one of the safest markets in the country

I don't disagree at all. While near Boulder and outside city limits, the chief factor limiting the market for this particular home would be the historic registry.

Sorry if this was already shared, but Jenny Simpson posted on Instagram that her house was fine.

My prayers go out to all of the others whose lives have been devastated by this terrible tragedy.

SEBO_Naropa wrote:

I wouldn’t trust Zillow estimate, especially for the highest end of the market. At price points above about 2 to 3 million demand is not the same. That being said though the area is one of the safest markets in the country

If interest rates rise, no market is safe.