Evergreen, CO

You walk into a property you're looking to buy and rent and you walk down into the basement and voila! you find a full second kitchen. Great! You start calculating how much rent you could get if you could rent the downstairs separate from the upstairs and the cash flow is out of this world! But wait, there are a number of very real problems with this scenario.

First of all, it's illegal unless the property is zoned for more than one tenant and the property has been converted to non-residential use. But there are even more practical reasons why having two separate tenants is often not a great idea. The first is the utilities. Since it's a house there will only be one bill for Excel and water. Who's going to pay it? Can you really get the tenants to pro-rate their share if you pay it? Good luck. Or do you just pay it, figuring the extra rent will more than offset paying the utilities? Maybe, but what you'll find is that when a tenant is not paying the utilities they have the heat at 90 degrees all winter and every time you go to the house the kitchen sink is running.

Your great cash flow gets eaten up by outrageous utility bills and you're back where you started. For these reasons and many more I suggest you don't try to put two tenants into a property made for one. But that doesn't mean the second kitchen has no value. It might be useful for an extended family who needs the extra space kitchen and might actually command a larger rent. Check with your local building department and your insurance agent though, to make sure it's acceptable to have a basement kitchen in the first place.

So this California boy just can't get over how beautiful snow and blue skies blend. We got our first snow last night. Albeit only an inch with no real accumulation, the trees have a wonderful white tint. We're at 8200 ft so the air is crisp as it is clean. The best thing I can appreciate about Evergreen is the fact that our County roads are meticulously maintained. Learning to adapt to the snow filled roads was a piece of cake when they get plowed and graded regularly.

I had to share these photos of my yard as this town of Evergreen I have called home for the past 5 years never ceases to impress me. To see more pictures, visit http://www.TourEvergreen.com

So my wife and I have been in Evergreen Colorado for 5 years now. We moved here from the San Francisco Bay Area. I've never been around colors during the changing of seasons. The only image I have are of Aspens changing in the Fall.

WOW!

These pictures are during a drive we took last weekend. The Aspen groves are endless in the mountains. What's best is that it only took about an hour to get to this destination.

If you have anyone interested in Colorado, I suggest you share this blog with them so they can appreciate the beauty they can have every day.

Chris

In an effort to keep my colleagues around the country in the know about my market here in the Evergreen Colorado area, here is a hyperlink to my website where I display these stats:

http://www.comountainliving.com/bin/web/real_estate?acnt=AR178537&ZKEY=&action=ACTIVATE_FRAMES&button=GUESTBOOK&linkout_sourcepage=HOME&tm=&linkout=http%3A%2F%2Fcontrol.cisdata.net%2Fbin%2Ffilelink.php%2FAR178537%2Fc80298c313f2b1531917ebbcbde528e9%2F

It is a safe link.

If you have any questions about my market, please don't hesitate to write.

Chris

I'm excited to announce that the website I created for downtown Evergreen and the Evergreen Downtown Business Association; www.HeartofEvergreen.com is getting 4,000 hits per month. In cooperation with the EDBA, of which I am the 2008 President, we have developed this website to display business owner profiles, a calendar of events we host downtown, a section for downloadable coupons, a photo gallery, and much more. Visitors and locals have found this site extremely useful.

Check it out!

Chris