Residential buyer brokerage
Buyer representation
We tour slowly, read the drawings, and write offers that survive an inspection. Our average buyer tours for four months and writes two offers.
Most buyers of designed houses have never bought one before. The mistakes are specific and expensive: paying for a renovation that was done without permit, waiving an inspection on a 1955 post-and-beam, or writing on a property whose ADU is not actually a legal ADU. Our job is to find those things before you are contractually committed to them, not after.
Process
How it runs
- 01
A written brief, before we tour anything
Budget, financing, timeline, the non-negotiables and — more usefully — the things you think are non-negotiable but are not. We write it down and send it to you, because half of what people say they want in week one changes by week four.
- 02
Financing before offers
A pre-qualification is a lender’s opinion based on what you told them. A pre-approval is based on documents they verified. In this market sellers read the difference immediately, and we will not send you out with the first one.
- 03
Touring, deliberately
We look at six to ten houses a month, not thirty a weekend. We read the assessor record, the permit history and the seller’s property disclosure before you walk in, so the tour is about the building rather than about discovery.
- 04
The offer
Price, earnest money, closing date, and the three contingencies that matter: inspection, appraisal and financing. We will tell you when a contingency is worth trading away and when doing so is how people end up with a $60,000 sewer line.
- 05
Inspection and objection
A general inspection plus, where the house warrants it, a sewer scope, a structural engineer or a roof specialist. Then the objection: what to ask for, what to let go, and what is grounds for walking away entirely.
- 06
To the table
Appraisal, title commitment, survey, HOA documents, and the final walkthrough. We read the title commitment. Very few buyers do, and the easements in it are permanent.
Included
What you get
- A written buyer brief you keep
- Permit and assessor research on every property you tour
- Comparative market analysis before every offer
- Contingency strategy in writing
- Introductions to inspectors, engineers and lenders we have used repeatedly
- Title commitment and HOA document review
- Closing-cost estimate at offer stage, not at the table
Questions
Asked and answered
Buyer broker compensation is negotiable and is agreed in writing in a buyer agency agreement before we tour. Since the 2024 changes to how compensation is handled, it may be paid by the seller, offered by the listing brokerage, paid by you directly, or split. We put the number in front of you at the start rather than at closing.
One to three per cent of the purchase price is typical in the Denver metro, held by the title company. A larger deposit signals seriousness, and it is at risk only if you default outside your contract deadlines — which is the practical reason contingencies and their dates matter so much.
Almost never, and much less often now than in 2021. Inventory has returned enough that a clean, well-dated inspection contingency is competitive. If a house genuinely requires it, we will tell you what you are risking in dollars before you decide — and we have talked clients out of houses over exactly this.
For a Colorado buyer, roughly 1 to 2 per cent of the purchase price: lender origination and underwriting, appraisal, credit report, title insurance premiums, closing and settlement fees, recording, prepaid interest, and the first year of insurance and tax escrow. We provide an itemised estimate at offer stage.
Next step
Tell us what you are looking for.
A first conversation is 30 minutes, costs nothing, and ends with a written view of what your budget actually buys in each neighborhood you are considering.
