REAL ESTATE RUT

The good times are over -- at least for the time being. Six years ago, the real estate market in northern Colorado was running at top speed, prompting an increase in the number of real estate agents ready to ride shotgun.

"For a while there, we didn't have to worry. You'd stick a sign in the ground and by noon, you had two to three offers on a house," said Bill English, president of the Greeley Area Realtors Association.

Now, though, Greeley homes spend an average of 12 months on the market. Some builders have to buy their own homes. Sellers are making concessions just to unload their properties, while buyers are finding it harder than ever to buy with higher interest rates.

Heck, even one Greeley real estate agent is offering a free Cadillac Escalade to any qualified buyer with an offer on a west Greeley home.

For the past two months, area real estate agents have been feeling the aches and pains of a slow road-rash as the market skids to a halt.

"The fact is bills don't stop if I don't get paid, and you have to have something to pay the bills," said Realtor Betsy Dean, an agent for Metro Brokers in Greeley who took on a second job last month. "No Realtor wants to get a real job, they just have to."

Northern Colorado builders and real estate agents know this: the market is correcting itself, which means business is going to be slow for a while to come. The Greeley area has been overbuilt for months, a phenomenon showing up in residential building permits, which have been sinking for at least a year. In March, for example, builders took out only 38 residential building permits in Greeley compared to 60 in the previous year.

"We kind of figure it can't get any worse," said Brad Clarkson of Lifestyle Homes, which cut back 30 percent already this year and will buy its own homes to rent out if they don't sell.

Other home builders are offering rebates as much as $1,900 per home, while some are pulling out of the northern Colorado market altogether. Lennar Homes, a national home builder, announced in recent weeks it was closing its Loveland office.

The fallout is not only on homeowners having a tough time selling, but on Realtors, a professional group that reached an all-time high of 523 in Greeley in 2004. That number is down to 509 today, with expectations of it going down to 475 in the fall, said English, the association president.

"If we've got people out there looking for a part-time job, they may keep their memberships. But, sometimes when you get out of the everyday grind of real estate, it's hard to get back in," English said. Realtors pay $420 a year to be a member of the association, he said.

Buyers are pickier, too, with so much inventory to choose from. One recent buyer, for example, saw 47 houses before making an offer, English said.

As a result, real estate agents must spend more to make a home stand out, and they have to use the entire bag of tricks to sell a home: staging, online virtual tours, full-color brochures and lots of advertising, to name a few.

"It's more expensive than ever to market homes," said Nate Buie, a Realtor with The Group, Inc., whose best year in real estate was six years ago. "Profits are getting harder to come by. You have to prepare sellers and homes more than ever to get it ready, and it's extremely hard. I fully stage homes and fully furnish homes. We inspect them, give Internet tours and do miscellaneous repairs to get homes ready."

Realtor Bret Lamperes of ReMax Alliance in Fort Collins lists homes throughout northern Colorado but has recently added a bit of flair to his marketing. To sell one house in west Greeley, he's offering up his own Cadillac Escalade for free. He'll have hot-dog vendors at open houses, and with his moving company, Dandelion Moving and Storage, he promises a free move for sellers and buyers if they use his services.

"We're in a market now that requires you to set yourself apart from others, and the more views that your house gets versus the one down the block, the more likely someone will say, 'I like this house,' " Lamperes said.

Competition just doesn't come cheap, so more and more Realtors are talking about taking the extra work to supplement their dwindling incomes.

"I had about three closings a month when I started in 2003," said Dean, who now puts in about 32 hours a week in her part-time job and about 18 a week as a Realtor. "I've been on the down slope of things ever since. I would say that now, closings are down to the point where I'm lucky if I close one every other month."

Robyn Hendershot, who sells real estate with her sister at Classic Real Estate, now has three jobs to supplement the budget. She's working not only as a Realtor since January 2005, but this spring, she added a part-time job as a medical assistant at night and weekend job at Wal-Mart. In all, she's now putting in about 60 hours a week.

"I knew it would be hard work getting into the business, but I think when I got in, the market was hitting a big turn, and it just wasn't quite what I thought it would be," Hendershot said. "The first year, I was able to work hard and spend the money, but you continue to do that for so long and don't have any closings, you have to do something."

Buie bought some houses back when interest rates were low. Now, he rents them, and he even mows the lawns himself to save a little cash.

"That's my hedge fund," he jokes. "I'm not saving enough, but it sure is fun. I'm not taking on any additional clients as far as mowing, though."