The Mission of the FoCo Free Agent is to serve as an unbiased resource for sellers, buyers and nosey neighbors exploring the unique and quirky housing market in Fort Collins. I explore homes as a hobby and with endless curiosity built on over 25 moves in my fifty-something years of life. FoCo is hopefully my forever home!
Who I Am
I started FoCo Free Agent as a passion project while I was working full time, on the eve of an anticipated early retirement. Retirement from what?
I’m a microbiologist with a Ph.D. who spent a few years in academia and contract research, which eventually led me to 20 years in the water industry. There I worked in environmental water monitoring and sustainability, engaging with experts and leading teams who do product development, management and marketing. I established my own expertise in harmful algal bloom monitoring. All of this was before I finally got to participate in an “exit,” an acquisition of the company I worked for and an opportunity to retire in my mid-50s.
So what does that have to do with real estate? More than you might think!
My career led me through 13 homes I’ve owned across Ohio, Missouri and now Colorado. I understand the stress of making home-buying decisions. I’ve learned that there can be significant differences in contracts from state to state, and that you might not realize some of those differences until after you buy. My home-buying experience combines with what I’ve learned about water–from the environment to your tap–to bring a very unique perspective on the topics I cover as the FoCo Free Agent.
So I’m not a realtor—I’m your data-minded neighbor who reads the research, interviews the experts, explores hard questions, all while loving the design, architecture and quirks of homes.
My House-Loving History
The first home I owned was a trailer in Missouri, proudly purchased with a $1,000 down payment saved up from my overnight shifts in group homes. The purchase was financed as a car loan and my Dad had to cosign for me! That was in the mid-1990s, and to be honest Dad was bailing me out of a misstep marriage and helping me get a fresh start.
A second marriage, graduate school, and a cross-state move took me from my cozy little mobile home into my first “real” house: a 600-square-foot postage stamp that was the only thing we could afford in the big city (Columbus, OH). In 30 years of marriage since, my partner and I have owned 13 houses in 3 states.
I’ve looked at hundreds of homes online and have visited over a hundred in person. But it hasn’t always been because I’m buying. I’m that neighbor who will visit an open house because I’ve always wondered what it looked like inside. I just love looking at houses!
I want to emphasize that I do this for the love of the process, and to explore homes and neighborhoods. In other words:
- I am not a real estate agent
- I’m not looking for investment properties
- I don’t give financial advice
- I don’t get paid for my reviews
Someday, this blog might turn into an income stream. But today this is a hobbyist’s blog. If that changes, I’ll let you know! Better yet, if you want to change that for me, let me know!
Coming to FoCo
I came to FoCo for a career opportunity in 2024. While shopping, it was clear that we weren’t just buying a house—we were buying a lifestyle. It’s a good thing we came in with that mindset, because we were in for some serious sticker shock.
In moving from southwest Missouri to FoCo, we paid twice as much per square foot as the people who bought our Missouri house paid. If you’re curious, we landed in Warren Shores, which is why that became my very first Neighborhoods post. So our first lesson about FoCo was that it is freaking expensive to get into the market here.
Lesson #2 was that FoCo neighborhoods can have a real mix in style and sizes of homes right on the same block. I could have spent twice as much as I did in the exact same neighborhood where we landed (if you’re doing the math, that would have been a 4X increase over my Missouri price/sq.ft.). This is not a cookie-cutter town when it comes to housing (except maybe where all that new development is going on north of town).
Thus, coming to FoCo, we bought half the house we vacated but spent more money than we got out of our house in Missouri. The downsizing was welcome (less cleaning!), as was the super-low-maintenance condo life and a neighborhood I adore. A big expensive house and mortgage would have been a burden for us because we’re too lazy for yard work and we like to travel.
And this brings me to another important lesson learned about a home’s price: it is not the same as the cost of a home. (Notice I say “home” rather than “house,” and that’s intentional!)
Over the years we have spent oodles on windows, water heaters, air conditioners and furnaces, insulation, roofs, fences, and yards. So when I visit open houses, I’m constantly calculating the costs of owning that home. I’m keen to spot things that might lead to future expenses, and I have a great eye for where someone has made a great investment in an upgrade. But there are other costs—cost to your peace of mind if you can’t afford the upkeep, cost to your mental health if you don’t get along with neighbors, cost to your physical health if you want to be active but can’t. This can be a long list!
Returning to price, though, I’ve also learned a lot about the straight-up financing of a home.
Loanly Me
We’re finally mortgage-free, which provides a sense of liberation I could have never imagined. And yet, I peruse open houses to keep an eye on the market and how our own home is holding up price-wise. I enjoy the negotiation process (and I’m good at it!). But geesh, can I tell tales about financing.
My first “real” loan as one half of a married couple was a 1990s predatory balloon loan with an exorbitant interest rate and payoff schedule. That loan probably wouldn’t be legal today, since the 2008 financial crash changed all the rules (mostly for the better). I remember where I was during the 2008 crash because I had just listed a house in preparation for a new job. OUCH!
The terrible timing led us to a discovery—if you own your house, you actually can finance it for the next buyer (in Ohio, at least). It was hard to get a loan at that time, and we had found a good buyer that we knew had resources but not the cash on hand for a conventional loan. We poured all our savings into paying off our house and found a service that helped us set up a mortgage for our buyer. He put down the cash he could muster, which helped us put the down payment on our next house.
That all sounds pretty weird (especially so many years later) and highly risky, but the math made sense at the time. We could collect more interest from him than we were paying on our new loan. In fact, that transaction is what positioned us to be mortgage-free today. That buyer paid the house off in 5 years, giving us a cash windfall to pay off our own house. It was a gamble that totally paid off.
We learned that there are some creative avenues out there for getting into a house. In that case, we became both a lender and a borrower. The bonus: I delighted in depriving an unknown banker of that buyer’s interest payments because, as a battle-hardened home buyer who lived through predatory lending and survived the 2008 crash, I’ve come to deplore banks.
What Does “Home Explorer” Mean?
I am intrigued by the hardy, fit inhabitants of the Front Range. The FoCo lifestyle is rich with cycling, hiking, camping, and mysteriously, unbridled consumption of craft beer while staying lean, tan, and active.
However, I don’t like beer and I like camping even less. I love houses, not tents! But I love the outdoors, especially birding in the mountains. Since moving here I find myself walking or cycling almost as often as I drive my Subaru Outback around the neighborhood. A Subaru, by the way, is a surefire way to feel like you belong in FoCo!
I’ll never catch up to the full-tilt, leathery-skinned, mountain-biking explorers that roam FoCo’s streets. I’m just a middle-aged, reasonably healthy woman who has an above-average understanding, and a way-above-average enthusiasm, for houses. Perhaps wishing I could be a little more like those fearless FoCo explorers, I’ve dubbed myself a Home Explorer.
Why Does The FoCo Free Agent Explore Homes?
Even though we are happily settled into our FoCo condo, when I drive by a “For Sale” sign I get that familiar rush of curiosity. I look up houses online, go to open houses I have no intention of buying, and will stop to look at an open house if I’m just passing by. Cruising the open house market on the weekend has always been a favorite pastime and a great distraction from thinking about work on Monday.
But I also love to give unsolicited advice on home buying and realized that my hobby might be helpful to others. Buyers, sellers, and realtors know it’s almost impossible to get candid, unbiased advice on a house. Everyone you talk to—indeed everyone you know—has a stake in the outcome. And there are loads of uncertainty.
As the FoCo Free Agent, I don’t have a vested interest in the property, how close you live to your in-laws, or how you do your financing. I just like to talk about the neat or quirky things I see and share my perspective. I consider it a privilege to look at a house without the stress of thinking about putting in an offer.
My scientific training gives me an edge in analyzing data, understanding environmental factors, and asking the right questions. My 13-home buying experience gives me street smarts about negotiation, inspections, and what really matters when you’re making the biggest purchase of your life.
Hopefully, the FoCo community of buyers, sellers, brokers, and agents will find the FoCo Free Agent to be fun and helpful!
Want to connect? You can view my professional background on LinkedIn or reach out via my Contact page.