News Roundup | Home & Hood - Yellow Scene Magazine

HERE’S YOUR HOME & HOOD NEWS ROUNDUP AS WE ENTER 2021:

THE SELLER’S MARKET

The holiday season usually sees a decline in the number of homes listed for sale, but this November hit another record low — just 3,415 single family home listings — as buyers continue to purchase homes at high rates, according to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors. A record high was also set in November for the average closing price for single-family detached and attached properties — $549,756. The previous record was $486,012 in 2019, according to the analysis. (Patch). As Ella Taylor of The Wall Street West Group, Keller Williams Realty, DTC, has been pointing out for months, it’s a seller’s market because buyers are gobbling up everything.

GET YOUR PLANT LIGHTS RIGHT

Research at Purdue University has shown LED lights can provide a more beneficial light spectrum to greenhouse plants than conventional lights, while using 75% less electricity. Fluorescent lights have been the standard, being cool enough to be placed very close to plants. Standard cool-white fluorescents are shown to produce mostly blue light (low in red). Special horticultural-type fluorescent lights or “grow bars” are needed for blooming plants requiring higher levels of red-light wavelengths (Lincoln Journal Star).

OPEN ENROLLMENT DROPS

Local schools are flying drones through the hallways, cueing up video footage from previous school years and enlisting students as they create virtual tour videos and host virtual open houses to spotlight their schools during open enrollment season. Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley schools switched to remote-only learning in November as coronavirus cases surged. Parents are making decisions without in-person visits and while still trying to navigate the current year as schools rotate through in-person, hybrid and remote learning options in response to changing coronavirus case numbers, guidelines and recommendations. So far, Boulder Valley is seeing fewer families request to open enroll. As of Dec. 15, the district had received 1,728 applications, down from about 2,205 at the same time the previous school year. The district’s open enrollment window closed Jan. 6 (Daily Camera).

NEW BOCO HOUSING HEAD NAMED

Boulder County commissioners on Tuesday, December 15, appointed Robert Williams, the chief program and policy officer in the Bureau of Behavioral Health for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, as the next director of the Boulder County Department of Housing and Human Services.

Williams’ appointment, it is reported, will fill a vacancy created in June when Frank Alexander resigned after having led the department for about 12 years to join Casey Family Programs as the national foundation’s managing director of Judicial and National Engagements within Systems Improvement (Daily Camera).