The Mountain Ringers Handbell Ensable will have a Celebration Concert on Saturday, December 6, 2008 at 4pm.  Join the community and get in the spirit of the holidays!

Evergreen Lutheran Church
5980 Highway 73
Evergreen
303-674-2460
December 6, 2008
Starts at 4pm

1. Change in marital status:A marriage or divorce can alter the amount of tax refund or balance due. Tax rate schedules, exemptions, and standard deductions all change depending on filing status.

2. Birth of a child: You cannot clam a child as a dependent until a social security number is obtained. A child born on the last day of the year, with a social security number, qualifies for the 100% exemption allowance.

3. Planning for a child’s college education: There are several tax-favored options available for college savings, e.g. Coverdell ESA and a Qualified State Tuition Plan.

4. Death of a family member: If you inherit income, such as an IRA or pension plan, you have options for taking distributions. Each option has a different taxable income recognition.

5. Sale or purchase of a home/second home:When you sell a primary home, the law allows or a generous exclusion for the profit made. Most married home sellers can take up to $500,000 of profit tax-free. For the second home (non primary residence) the profit exclusions are not available.However, real estate tax and mortgage interest may be deductible.

6. Changing jobs: In some cases, direct moving expenses are deductible if a new job takes you to a new location. Mileage changes from the old job and old home must be satisfied to qualify.

7. Decision to retire or continue working: Depending on you age and amount of earned income (i.e., wage and self-employment income), Social Security benefits may be reduced. Depending on the amount of earned and other income, your Social Security benefits may be included in taxable income.

8. Sale of capital assets:You should time the sale of assets to reap the most tax benefits before taking action. For example, for taxpayers in the 10% or 15% tax brackets, capital gain tax rates are 5% in 2007 and 0% in 2008. These may change in 2009.

9. Charitable contributions:In a year that you elect the standard deduction over the itemized deductions, contributions made are not allowed as additional tax deductions. Try grouping contributions in a tax year in which you will itemize deductions.

The above tips are intended to be generalized statements and not legal, accounting, or other professional advice. Prior to implementation, consult your tax and financial advisor a for additional discussion and clarification.

A rescue plan is set to be executed by Congress this month, meant to shore up confidence in the US Financial System. See a timeline of events leading up to this plan, in an article from Wells Fargo. This has been provided by our in-house lender, Robin McGlone from Colorado Mortgage Alliance. Two great articles: Bolstering the US Financial Markets & Hope for Homeowners.

Historic El Rancho Restaurant has been a tradition in excellent Colorado Mountain dining since 1948. Today the menu still features some of the best prime rib, buffalo and creative Colorado cuisine in the area. The menu changes with the seasons, ensuring only the freshest ingredients. Enjoy roaring fires in the stone fireplaces and rustic log cabin atmosphere combined with panoramic Continental Divide views. The El Rancho Trading Post has been described as “your southwestern gift headquarters.”

Historic El Rancho
29260 U.S. Highway 40
Golden, Colorado 80401
303-526-0661
Hours
Dining room open for lunch and dinner M-Sat
and for brunch and dinner on Sunday
Tavern menu is available for all-day dining M-Sun
www.historicelrancho.com

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Calling kids in grades 1 through 8! Come to the Hiwan Homestead Museum after school.
October 28 – Pumpkin Carving

Pre-registration is required for each session.
Call the museum at 720-497-7650 for more information

The classes will be held from 4pm-5:30 pm on:

October 28
November 18
December 2, 9
January 13, 27
February 3, 10
March 10, 17

Dine on creative appetizers, salads and soups, the freshest seafood, succulent steaks and to-die-for desserts while viewing city lights shimmering below this intimate hillside restaurant. Just half an hour from Denver, the Genesee Chart House is a favorite stop for locals as well as skiers and hikers on their way to and from the mountains.

Chart House Restaurant
25908 Genesee Trail Road
Golden, CO 80401
(303) 526-9813‎
Hours
Monday – Saturday
5pm – 10pm
Sunday
5pm – 9:30pm
www.chart-house.com

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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December 2 – Stenciling

December 9 – Gingerbread Cookies

Kids! Grades 1-8 – join the fun at the Hiwan Homestead Museum. Tuesday Dec 2 & Dec 9, 4pm-5:15pm.

Call 720-497-7650 for more information.

Dine with Santa and Mrs. Claus at Aspen Grill on Saturday, November 29.  A breakfast buffet style will be served.  Reservations are required. The 8-9:30 seating is sold out, but there is a second seating from 10-11:30am. Call 303-674-9463.

Aspen Grill
November 29, 2008
29029 Upper Bear Creek Rd
Evergreen, Colorado
303-674-9463
www.HeartofEvergreen.com

When you enter this comfortable restaurant, the only thing warmer than the ten delicious soups made daily from scratch with kindness, is the welcome you’ll receive from the owners. In addition to the best soup you’ll ever have, dine on fresh salads, and grilled sandwiches. Service is quick but you’ll have just enough time to browse the small and unique gift shelves, all featuring soup-related items. On your way out, grab some boil-in bags of your favorite soup for later on or for a camping feast!

DaKind Soups
27883 Meadow Drive in Evergreen
303-674-7687
Hours
Monday – Saturday 11am – 7pm

(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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When you stop to think about it, our whole economy is based on faith: faith as small as knowing that the check you receive from your employer is going to be accepted by your bank and that the check you write to buy your groceries will be accepted by the supermarket.  Faith as large as knowing that if you borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a home, you’ll pay the money back as agreed.

Based on that faith, markets are created where goods and services are traded, homes and real estate investments are bought and sold, and stocks, bonds and other securities are trafficked in orderly fashion.

What began as a housing crunch has spread to the credit markets and now threatens the financial markets as well.   In the process, our faith in the overall economy now seems at risk.  Until institution A trusts that monies lent to institution B will be repaid as agreed, things will probably deteriorate.

Housing Peak-2006
The housing market actually peaked in 2006.  That simply means that the number of homes sold that year was higher than the number in 2005 or in 2007.  What actually happened, of course, was that demand for housing grew every year since 2000, resulting in more booked sales each year until 2006.  In those halcyon days, one could buy a home with the comfortable knowledge that when it came time to sell, a ready, willing, and able buyer would be easy to find—so easy, in fact, that each year’s growing demand drove prices higher as more people participated in the American dream of homeownership.

With ever more demand for housing, resourceful mortgage lenders devised ever more exotic ways for people to buy.  Underwriting standards and down payment requirements were relaxed and sillier loan programs were created to the point where a recent college graduate could buy a $700,000 home with no down payment, no verification of employment and little scrutiny of their actual ability to repay the loan. 

In order to create enough money to supply the ever-expanding pool of home buyers, lenders went to the financial market to “securitize” loans, bundling hundreds of loans into packages of securities that were sold to investors, using the proceeds from the sale of the securities to make more loans.

Credit Crunch-2007
The credit crunch of 2007 followed the housing market down.  Since the number of home sales declined, prices softened and people who were stretched too thin couldn’t cover their loans and walked away from their obligations.  Unjustified faith at work, maybe? 

Confidence Crisis-2008
Now the securities markets are roiled in turmoil because even companies with stellar histories can’t borrow the money that was always available just a phone call away in the past.  Exotic instruments like collateralized mortgage obligations and credit default swaps, which were created to diversify risk have turned into millstones around the necks of whole companies and pulled down Bear Stearns, Countrywide, Merrill Lynch and now Lehman Brothers…with more to come? 

Our collective faith in this complex system of intertwined relationships is being shaken as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets over 500 points in a day and the government steps in to prevent total collapse of the markets.  This seems to be more than the cyclical ebb and flow of a normal market correction; it feels like our economy has a bad case of the flu.

In times like these, it is helpful to reflect carefully about what we can depend on.  We at Tupper’s Team are pleased to remind our readers that a home is still a sound investment.  Not a fix-and-flip, bet-on-the-come, highly-leveraged real estate investment, but an honest-to-goodness home, bought with reasonable due diligence, a reasonable down payment and reasonable loan terms.  A home is not only a place to live, but a sound investment as well. 

When analysts (including me) report that the market is up or down, we’re really doing so on a macro level.  If fewer homes are selling, we call it a down market.  If average and median prices are lower, we refer to slumping values.  But statistics can be misleading.  An unusually large number of fire sales (like deeply discounted foreclosures) can pull the overall median price in a community down.  But the value of any particular home probably hasn’t dropped nearly as much.

4 Signs the Market’s Improving

The nation’s debacle began with the housing market and the housing market will probably lead the economy out of these troubling times.  The adage that all real estate is local is true, and we at Tupper’s Team will be watching the following local statistics for signs that we’re turning the corner on the doldrums.

• Sales.  Home sales in 2008 are down over 20% compared to last year.  Since the demand side of our market equation is home sales, we’ll watch for year-on-year increases in sales activity.  The most desirable homes are selling today at only modest price reductions.   As demand increases, more ‘main-stream’ homes at reasonable prices and in reasonable condition will sell.  Eventually, even less-than-beautiful homes will find owners.

• Inventories.  The supply side of our market equation is homes on the market.  In 2008, the number of homes available exceeds 2007 by 10%.  As the number of homes for buyers to select from declines, prices should begin to firm.

• Days on Market.  With more demand, it follows that homes won’t take as long to sell.  It now takes approximately 5 months on average for a home to sell; we’ll watch for this indicator to fall to 3 months or less.

• Prices.  We’ll know that excess inventory has been wrung from the market and that the supply/demand forces are in balance when we see prices firm.  Increasing median and average prices will mark the end of this down cycle and the beginning of the next up cycle.

In general, it could be said that home values today are (very roughly) about the same as they were in 2005.  So while it may SEEM like values are falling, in most cases they are simply not rising.  And that’s what sets our market apart from so many others like in Florida and California.

If values don’t rise over the next couple of years, it does not really matter as much as you may think.  Paying the mortgage on a home you own is the same as paying rent for a place to live, so buy a home and at least pay down the mortgage a bit each month.  You’ll also enjoy tax benefits while you own and when you sell.  You can change your home to accommodate your changing tastes and lifestyles.  And the long-term prospects for appreciation are historically inevitable.

These times will pass.  Anyone who buys a home in Evergreen/Conifer/Genesee today and stays for at least 3 years will be amply rewarded in the future.  In the meantime, enjoy your home.

Keep the faith.

By Tupper Briggs