Jon & Kim Penny
Broker Associates

It has been a while since we have submitted an entry!  I don’t know where the time has gone!  We wanted to mention a couple of camps and organizations that gear up in the summer around this area.  Kanakuk is one of them.  It is a Christian sports camp that originated in Branson, MO.  Jon and I were both campers and counselors at the camp growing up.  They started a Colorado camp a few years ago around Vallecito Lake just outside of Durango.  You can check out their site which is:  www.Kanakuk.com.  It is a great camp to send your kids to, and you can vacation in Durango after you drop them off at camp!  Another summer camp in the area is Cross Bar X youth camp.  It is a Christian youth camp for low-income and inner city youth.  Their website is:  www.crossbarxcamp.org, the directors are good friends of ours and have done an awesome job with the organization. 

Well…the big news in Durango right now are the City Council elections that are set to take place April 3rd.  There are 8 candidates running to fill 3 positions.  2 of the 8 are running for re-election and they are Sidny Zink and Tom Howley, who we believe served very well during their previous terms.  This election could potentially have a big impact on Real Estate in the area.  We have just approved a New Comprehensive Plan for the City’s land use and the 3 elected officials will be in office to implement the plan.  You can view a couple of different articles by clicking on the following links:  Durango Herald Article; Candidates’ Forum: Sidny Zink; Candidates’ Forum: Peter Tregillus; Candidates’ Forum: Michael Rendon; Candidates’ Forum: Scott Graham; Candidates’ Forum: Leigh Meigs; Candidates’ Forum: Linda Geer; Candidates Forum: Tom Howley; Candidates Forum: Jerry Swingle.   

The Annual Durango Independent Film Festival started yesterday and it runs through March 4th.  This year’s festival includes 3 Academy Award nominees and several other award winning films.  I went least year to one of the short programs and really enjoyed it!  We plan on going to the Adventure/Sports Program this Saturday.  There are a lot of events associated with the festival this weekend and you can go to www.DurangoFilm.org to find out more information, order tickets and view the schedule. 

Well, we can tell that we are getting into the busy part of the year.  We have 4 new listings that will be going on the market in the next week.  (You can look under “Our Listings” to view those properties as they go active.)  We spent yesterday morning at a listing appointment walking property boundaries on a beautiful Durango day.  We feel very blessed to live and work where we do.  We also feel blessed by all the wonderful people that we meet and come across in this industry.  We were still able to make time for a road ride yesterday afternoon.  It was chilly, but the sun was out and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  We will leave you with a picture that Jon took from his phone during our ride yesterday.

The Durango Area Association of Realtors came out with the year end sales stats for La Plata County.  You can view the stats by clicking on this link:  2006 year end stats.  You can also go to www.DurangoRealtor.com to check out the 2006 sales stats by quarter.  Our company sales were down 2.7% compared to 2005, but 2005 was also a record year.  All in all, our market was strong in 2006 and this year is off to a healthy start!

Hello everyone and welcome to the “Blog” portion of our website. We are new at this, so you will have to bear with us as we familiarize ourselves with this program. We are going to use this feature to keep you up-to-date with what we are doing, the Durango Real Estate market, and Durango in general. Hopefully this will allow you to get to know us a little more personally, and what we enjoy doing when we aren’t selling Real Estate! If you ever have any comments or suggestions about what we can do to make our site more user friendly, please don’t hesitate to contact us! This site is for your use and to aid you in your home buying/selling process, we want it to be as helpful as possible. We will end this first entry with a picture of Jon and I snowshoeing up at Molas Pass last weekend. I (Kim) had knee surgery about a month and a half ago, so it was the first time we had been up in the mountains this winter. It was BEAUTIFUL!