One: You May Not Need to Sell
Colorado raised its coverage floors after the Marshall Fire. Extended replacement cost of at least 50 percent of the dwelling limit must now be offered, up from 20. Law and ordinance coverage of at least 20 percent, up from 10. Living expense of at least 12 months with 24 offered.
An owner who bought that package can usually fund a rebuild, and a funded rebuild beats any cash offer including ours. The declarations page settles it in five minutes, and we ask about it on the call before we discuss price.
Does That Not Cost You Business?
Two: The Certificate Is Worth Money to You, Not Us
A Certificate of Demolition Eligibility gives five years during which Landmark Preservation would not review a demolition application on the property, and it goes with the property rather than with you.
Which means an owner who obtains one before selling is handing a buyer something they would otherwise pay to obtain, at a risk they would otherwise discount for. We tell sellers this knowing perfectly well it costs us the discount.
Three: On Contents, Ask Before You Inventory
On a total loss of a furnished owner-occupied residence, Colorado requires the insurer to offer at least 30 percent of the contents limit without any written inventory. In a governor-declared wildfire disaster the floor is 65 percent.
People work through room-by-room inventories for weeks without being told the minimum exists. It has nothing to do with buying your house and we mention it because somebody should.
Why Publish Things That Reduce Your Margin?
The Ordinary Details
What we buy. Fire-damaged residential property in Denver and the nearer metro, in any condition from smoke to bare slab. Older stock and newer, inside designated historic districts and outside them. Claims open, settled, denied and uninsured. Owner-occupied, tenanted, vacant and inherited.
Where we decline. Geography. Several surrounding municipalities run their own preservation review with different thresholds, and beyond the nearer metro we are the wrong buyer.
How the number is built. Finished value of a house on that parcel, or the parcel's value where the zoning supports more, less the cost of getting there, less carrying cost, less the documentary fee, less margin. On older housing the rebuild line is the one that varies most between buyers.
What we are not. Not brokers, not public adjusters, not contractors, not contract assigners and not lawyers. The public adjuster point matters here, because on a Colorado claim there is frequently a case for engaging one and we are not it.
Whose Side We Are On
Ours. We are the buyer, we benefit if you accept less, and anyone telling you otherwise about their own position deserves less trust rather than more.
What follows is how to read this site: check it. The Colorado Revised Statutes for the coverage minimums, the Division of Insurance for the advisories, Landmark Preservation for the demolition position, the assessor and the recorder for the property and for what we have actually bought.
When Somebody Else Is Right
Rebuild it yourself, where the policy funds it — the commonest right answer here. A builder, where zoning supports more than what burned. A rehabber, where the framing came through and restoring is the route.
Our written figure says which of those applies when the numbers point that way, and the reasoning is set out alongside so you can disagree with it.
Reaching Us
Send an address through any form on this site. Before you deal with us, read your declarations page and score us against the three checks on our page about how to tell local cash buyers apart, then read what applies on our page covering coverage minimums and demolition review.