Steamboat Springs – The $19.4 million sale of the More Family Ranch on the Yampa River late last year has brought the equivalent of a trout fishing country club to Routt County.

“That’s pretty much the business model, it’s pretty much like a golf club,” Steamboat Springs businessman Jarett Duty said. “There will be nonequity members and annual dues.”

He and his brother, John, own Bucking Rainbow Outfitters, an Orvis-affiliated shop in Steamboat. They have become equity partners in the Alpine River Ranch fishing club with a Pennsylvania man, Donny Beavers. The three men solicited the investment of existing club members to become equity partners and facilitate the multi-million dollar purchase.

Bucking Rainbow remains an independent business owned by Jarett and John Duty.

As of March 15, even members of the public who have several hundred dollars to spend on a guided fishing trip no longer have access to Tailwaters Preserve. It’s open to club members only.

Take me to the river

Members at Tailwaters Preserve, part of Alpine River Ranch, will pay an initial fee of $85,000 and annual dues currently set at $7,700. The majority of the members also can be expected to pay for a fishing guide to accompany them and members of their family on angling outings. The Duty brothers say they can be expected to help keep members of Steamboat’s guiding profession well employed.

Beavers established Alpine River Ranch in the Vail Valley in 2007. He already had established the successful Spring Ridge Club near College Station, Pa., an area that contains his home waters.

Beavers also acquired the well-established, Vail-area guide service, Gorsuch Outfitters and six miles of private access trout streams last year. He began attracting founding members in the Alpine River Club from among Gorsuch clients.

Alpine River Club is a separate business from Spring Ridge Club, John Duty said. But members of both clubs will enjoy reciprocal access. A 2004 article in The New York Times described members of Spring Ridge Club who value it because it is only a four-hour drive from Manhattan.

Steamboat fly shops have been sending guides and clients to the trout-rich waters below Lake Catamount on the More Family Ranch for years under the terms of a lease. Naturally reproducing trout there put on pounds year-round because the water coming out of Stagecoach Dam is cold enough in summer, and warm enough in winter, to spur metabolism of the fish.

Ski vacationers frequently have mixed in a day of guided fishing on the More Ranch and left with pictures of themselves holding a trophy that was promptly returned to the water.

The 1.75 miles of the Yampa on the ranch produced an 11-pound rainbow this past winter, and 26-inch fish are not rare.

“John and I think it’s one of the top five fishing destinations in the states,” Jarett said. “And it’s just seven miles from a major ski area.”

There is natural reproduction of rainbow trout in the river, Duty said. Other fish migrate to the rich feeding grounds below the dam in winter. They do not plant trophy trout in the river, he said.

“We don’t stock trout there, and we will never stock trout there,” Duty said.

When they learned that Beavers was looking at purchasing More Family Ranch, they approached him about joining the club for their own use.

Instead, the men became partners.

“The idea is to preserve these fishing waters. We typically don’t want to develop,” the land, John said.

However, the brothers said they can’t rule out a limited housing development on the preserve in the future to help offset the purchase price.

Floaters welcome

They also are actively pursuing land purchases or long-term leases that would bring more miles of streams and rivers into Alpine River Ranch. But they’re trying to do that with an eye to balance their own need for private water on which to guide private clients of their own, as well as the needs of the other fly shops.

“The ranchers who previously) said ‘never’ are opening their minds to the idea of leasing to a single club on a long-term basis,” Jarett said. “We added two significant pieces, two seven-mile stretches in the last month that are within an hour of town. But we’re trying to be very careful about stepping on toes and other peoples’ leases.”

Beavers was embroiled in a controversy in Pen­nsylvania when he sought to bar public boaters from a stretch of the Little Juniata River that runs through club property. He was unsuccessful in that effort.

John Duty, who has spoken out about protecting the right of commercial floaters to use rivers in Routt County, said they told their new partner they were on opposite sides of the debate and would not be a party to barring floaters from rivers here.

Beavers has engaged his club members in Pennsylvania in stream conservation, and the Duty brothers say that will be a big part of the Alpine River Ranch’s efforts here. They also intend to contract for hay production on the ranch.

As Beavers has done in Pennsylvania at the Spring Ridge Club, the Duty brothers said they look forward to a couple of occasions annually when local anglers will be invited to put their names in a hat for some fishing access at Tailwaters Preserve. Beyond that, membership in the club is the only option.

The brothers intend to join Beavers in expanding the model of Alpine River Ranch across the Rocky Mountain West to destinations such as Telluride and Jackson Hole, Wyo.

http://www.steamboathomefinder.com/

Real-estate moguls know there’s good money in environment-friendly buildings. Here’s how the little guy can play, too.

Latest Market Update

April 07, 2008 — 16:25 ETIf the workplace is any indication, you could almost believe corporate America really cares about the environment.

Goldman Sachs (GS, news, msgs), Hearst, IBM Corp. (IBM, news, msgs), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news, msgs) and Toyota Motor (TM, news, msgs) all have made the move into “green” buildings.

Bank of America (BAC, news, msgs) plans to build a 52-story eco-skyscraper near New York’s Times Square, and Accenture (ACN, news, msgs) has leased green office space throughout the country.

Sustainable construction is one of the fastest-growing segments of the already-red-hot commercial-building industry. An estimated 5% of all new U.S. commercial construction received the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification last year. And by 2010, 10% of all new commercial construction will be sustainable, according to McGraw-Hill’s (MHP, news, msgs) 2006 Smart Market report. (The green trend in home construction is still in its infancy, although that’s bound to change.)

Existing construction is getting an eco-lift too. Developers such as Hines and the Durst Organization, and some real-estate investment trusts (REITs), are snapping up half-empty office buildings and renovating them according to green standards. That can often bring 3% higher rents and a 7.5% increase in a building’s value, according to the McGraw-Hill report.

On average, green buildings save 10% of utility costs each year — and sometimes much more. Genzyme’s (GENZ, news, msgs) corporate headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., spends 42% less on energy and uses 34% less water than a similar traditional building would. Even more important, as sustainable materials and technology improve, green construction will become more cost-effective, says Charles Lockwood, an environmental and real-estate consultant in Southern California and New York.

So how do individual investors get in on this latest real-estate boom? The easiest opportunities may lie in REITs that have made a substantial commitment to new or renovated green buildings. In a sign of just how hot this phenomenon is, however, two of the biggest, greenest REITs, Arden Realty and Equity Office Properties Trust, have been swallowed up by GE Real Estate and Blackstone Group, respectively.But there are still promising names out there. Liberty Property Trust (LRY, news, msgs) has 21 green buildings in its portfolio of about 700 properties and says that number will rise quickly as the trust renovates more of its existing properties and takes on more new green projects. Liberty has enjoyed the nice run-up that all REITs had in the past year thanks to the strong commercial-building market. But Fauzia Rashid, a co-manager of Fred Alger Management’s Spectra Green Fund (SPEGX), expects Liberty’s green investment will help it continue to perform well even if commercial building starts to slow down.

If you’ve got the patience, companies that specialize in energy efficiency are your best bet among environmental stocks, says MSN Money’s Jim Jubak. They aren’t as flashy as uranium or ethanol stocks, so prices are still reasonable.For investors who get a bit woozy at the thought of betting solely on the vagaries of the commercial-real-estate market, a mutual fund with green-building holdings might be the safer way to go. The Spectra Green Fund, unlike many of its socially conscious counterparts, has consistently outperformed the Russell 3000 for the past three years.

The fund, which among other things invests in clean-energy stocks, is putting a small percentage of its assets in green REITs. Rashid also likes to invest in the building segment through the back door, focusing on the supply and equipment manufacturers that green builders rely on, such as Johnson Controls (JCI, news, msgs), the maker of devices that measure and monitor energy output. At about $96 a share, Johnson Controls has jumped in the neighborhood of 40% in the past year. And that’s a nice neighborhood to be in.

By Fast Company

The market has been bouncing around on misplaced hopes that the Federal Reserve will somehow save the day. Beyond the din, it’s important to focus on one overarching fact: The fundamental problem in our country is the aftermath of the housing bubble.

We’ll be dealing with it for some time. That’s because the math doesn’t work — in terms of the average person trying to buy the average house. And it’s not likely the math will improve, via lower mortgage rates, given our inflation rate and given where yields will probably go.

That brings me to a recent Bloomberg story, “Banks fail to lower mortgage rates as Bernanke cuts.” As noted by the writer, Fed rate cuts will be hard pressed to rescue the housing market, given that mortgage spreads have widened. Some people believe spreads will somehow tighten, but I think that will happen only if Treasury yields rise.

Folks may be willing to buy Treasurys at the ridiculous negative (after inflation) yield they’re being offered. But given what has occurred in the mortgage business and given the shakiness of the collateral, I don’t see anyone rushing out to lend in the mortgage arena. (Note: Lending and buying mortgages are essentially the same idea.)

Meanwhile, as the financial system continues to reel, there has been no shortage of ink spilled on the recent proposal by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to “overhaul” the financial system and give the Fed greater regulatory powers.

It’s slightly ironic that we would consider putting the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. The Fed was sound asleep as all these problems developed. Of course, many of them sprung from the Fed’s ill-fated attempts to pick the right interest rates in the first place.

Roger Lowenstein got it exactly right in a recent New York Times story called “Bleakonomics“: “The formula of laissez faire in advance and intervention in the aftermath has it exactly wrong.”

We don’t need more regulation to solve the financial system’s problems. What we need is enforcement of the rules and laws already on the books. Had that occurred and had the Fed not pursued its practice of setting interest rates too low, this debacle could never have reached the mammoth size it did. But we are where we are: staring down a recession that intervention will not silence.

Facts aside, there still remains on Wall Street a bullish contingent that believes the tech sector will enjoy immunity from hard times. Recent earnings reports from Oracle (ORCL, news, msgs) and Jabil Circuit (JBL, news, msgs) give the lie to that notion.

Ditto last week’s earnings from Best Buy (BBY, news, msgs). The company did “beat the number.” But beneath the surface, sales were up only 4% year over year, while inventories grew 17%. Store traffic was lower, even though Best Buy is gaining market share as its competitors go out of business.

Stocks rallied after UBS announced an $18 billion write-off, and The Street hopes problems with the big banks are over. But troubles brew for the smaller banks, which are about to feel the crunch.

When further earnings reports are released, I expect we will see plenty of weakness from tech companies. Their biggest customers tend to be financial concerns and/or consumers, and we know the state they’re in. It’s just the perennially clueless on Wall Street who seem to think that simply because technology isn’t finance, it ought to do well.

This same band will be saying it’s the bottom, or getting positioned for a second-half recovery, as they expect a “short, sweet recession.” However, they also will be wrong.

By Bill Fleckenstein on www.moneycentral.msn.com

1. Don’t buy if you can’t stay put.

If you can’t commit to remaining in one place for at least a few years, then owning is probably not for you, at least not yet. With the transaction costs of buying and selling a home, you may end up losing money if you sell any sooner.

2. Start by shoring up your credit.

Since you most likely will need to get a mortgage to buy a house, you must make sure your credit history is as clean as possible. A few months before you start house hunting, get copies of your credit report. Make sure the facts are correct, and fix any problems you discover.

3. Aim for a home you can really afford.

The rule of thumb is that you can buy housing that runs about two-and-one-half times your annual salary. But you’ll do better to use one of many calculators available online to get a better handle on how your income, debts, and expenses affect what you can afford.

4. Don’t worry if you can’t put down the usual 20 percent.

There are a variety of public and private lenders who, if you qualify, offer low-interest mortgages that require a down payment as small as 3 percent of the purchase price.

5. Buy in a district with good schools.

In most areas, this advice applies even if you don’t have school-age children. Reason: When it comes time to sell, you’ll learn that strong school districts are a top priority for many home buyers, thus helping to boost property values.

6. Get professional help.

Even though the Internet gives buyers unprecedented access to home listings, most new buyers (and many more experienced ones) are better off using a professional agent. Look for an exclusive buyer agent, if possible, who will have your interests at heart and can help you with strategies during the bidding process.

7. Choose carefully between points and rate.

When picking a mortgage, you usually have the option of paying additional points — a portion of the interest that you pay at closing — in exchange for a lower interest rate. If you stay in the house for a long time — say five to seven years or more — it’s usually a better deal to take the points. The lower interest rate will save you more in the long run.

8. Before house hunting, get pre-approved.

Getting pre-approved will you save yourself the grief of looking at houses you can’t afford and put you in a better position to make a serious offer when you do find the right house. Not to be confused with pre-qualification, which is based on a cursory review of your finances, pre-approval from a lender is based on your actual income, debt and credit history.

9. Do your homework before bidding.

Your opening bid should be based on the sales trend of similar homes in the neighborhood. So before making it, consider sales of similar homes in the last three months. If homes have recently sold at 5 percent less than the asking price, you should make a bid that’s about eight to 10 percent lower than what the seller is asking.

10. Hire a home inspector.

Sure, your lender will require a home appraisal anyway. But that’s just the bank’s way of determining whether the house is worth the price you’ve agreed to pay. Separately, you should hire your own home inspector, preferably an engineer with experience in doing home surveys in the area where you are buying. His or her job will be to point out potential problems that could require costly repairs down the road.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson8/

Lawmakers begin consideration of compromise measure aimed at averting foreclosures and helping those hurt in housing crisis.

By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer Last Updated: April 3, 2008: 10:03 PM EDTNEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Senate began debate Thursday on a $15 billion bipartisan housing relief package that could get a final vote by next week.

The legislation was crafted Wednesday by Democratic and Republican lawmakers facing election-year pressure to fast-track a response to the foreclosure crisis.

The package has gotten praise from the mortgage industry, but housing advocates say it only offers homeowners modest help and is too generous to homebuilders.

The proposed measures include funding to help borrowers refinance unaffordable loans and help boost activity in neighborhoods with properties in foreclosure. Also in the bill is a tax break for homebuilders, as well as a new tax credit and deduction for homeowners and home buyers. The package also contains measures to make loans that are insured by the Federal Housing Administration – which helps borrowers with weak credit or little or no cash for a downpayment – more accessible.

The Senate package reflects concessions from both sides of the aisle. But it will be subject to amendments, which the Senate started voting on Thursday night. In addition, the House – led by Financial Services Committee Barney Frank, D-Mass. – will have its say next week.

“It’s not the end of the road, but it’s a very strong beginning,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., in a press briefing Wednesday evening.

The Democrats allowed two provisions they’ve been pushing for to be excluded from the package: a measure that would let bankruptcy judges reduce residential mortgage debts, and a measure that would let the Federal Housing Administration insure up to $400 billion in troubled loans if lenders agree to write them down to affordable levels for borrowers.

The bankruptcy measure was introduced as an amendment Thursday evening but was voted down. That doesn’t mean, however, that the House can’t reintroduce it.

Senate Democrats also yielded ground on a provision to change the down payment requirements for FHA loans. Democrats have been pushing to reduce them, but the bipartisan agreement actually increases them by half a percentage point. That may not fly in the House, when it considers the package.

In exchange, Senate Republicans agreed first to not block a housing stimulus package. They also gave the nod to a $4 billion provision that would let states and local governments buy and refurbish foreclosed properties, a measure the White House had characterized as a bailout for lenders and speculators. And they agreed to include a number of other provisions that had been included in Democrats’ earlier housing relief proposals.

Homebuilders get big boost

Forty percent of the cost of the bill will fund a business tax break expected to help homebuilders. One construction workers’ union characterized the provision as a “taxpayer funded giveaway to big corporate homebuilders, many of which helped cause the mess by pushing subprime loans through their mortgage subsidiaries.”

But supporters of that measure say it will help keep all homebuilders – large and small – out of bankruptcy and will preserve thousands of jobs.

The Mortgage Bankers Association gave the total package high marks. “A more modern and effective FHA, mortgage revenue bonds for state housing finance agencies, additional money for counseling – these are all things that will be of great help to struggling homeowners,” said MBA Chairman Kieran Quinn in a statement.

Housing advocates like some elements of the package but don’t think it goes far enough, particularly because it excludes the bankruptcy provision, which they estimate could keep up to 600,000 homeowners out of foreclosure.

Ellen Schloemer, research director for the Center on Responsible Lending, said the point of the provision isn’t to encourage homeowners to file for bankruptcy. Rather, she said, “it would give loan servicers air cover to modify loans. And it [gives them] incentives to do it.”

Currently loan modifications are done on a voluntary basis. And servicers, who fear being sued by investors who own the loans, are only allowed to modify mortgages when they can justify why doing so would be a better solution than anything else.

Republicans object to the bankruptcy provision, contending it would raise mortgage costs for everyone, since lenders would price in more risk if they knew a third party could alter the loans’ terms. Some studies have shown, however, that cost increases would be minimal.

In proposing the bankruptcy provision as an amendment, Democrats may modify it further to win some Republican support. One approach: judges would only be allowed to change the interest rate on the loan, but not the principal.

What’s in the bipartisan bill?

Modernize the FHA: Measures in the bill would overhaul the Federal Housing Administration’s loan insurance program, which helps homebuyers with weak credit or little cash get an affordable mortgage.

The changes proposed in the bipartisan bill would raise the FHA loan limits from 95% of an area’s median home price to 110%. But in high-cost areas, the FHA loan limit may not exceed $550,000.

Under the bipartisan economic stimulus package passed in February, the cap for FHA loans in high-cost areas was temporarily raised to $729,950. The Senate package also calls for FHA loan down payment requirements be raised to 3.5% from 3%.

Help for troubled borrowers trying to refinance: The bill lets states offer $10 billion in tax-free municipal bonds, the proceeds of which would be used to subsidize mortgage refinancing for subprime borrowers trying to get out of unaffordable loans.

Under current law, state and local housing agencies are allowed to issue tax-free bonds only to help subsidize mortgages for first-time homebuyers, or those purchasing property in distressed areas.

Tax credits for buying troubled properties: The bill creates a tax credit of $7,000 for homebuyers who buy foreclosed homes or homes where the current owner is in default.

New property tax deduction: For the 28.3 million homeowners who take the standard deduction on their federal tax return, the bill would allow them to take a second standard deduction for the property tax they pay. The new standard property tax deduction will be $500 for single filers and $1,000 for couples filing jointly. Currently only homeowners who itemize their deductions can deduct their property taxes.

Bigger tax break for homebuilders and other businesses: The bill would expand the so-called net operating loss carryback. The provision would extend to four years from two the time company may apply its 2008 and 2009 losses to past tax bills.

Money to aid areas hit by foreclosures: The bill would allow $4 billion in grants to state and local governments to buy and rehabilitate foreclosed home.

More money for consumer counseling: The bill calls for an additional $100 million for housing counselors working with homeowners at risk of foreclosure.

Greater transparency for borrowers: The bill might call for greater disclosure in the mortgage application process, so consumers could more easily understand the terms of their loans and won’t be surprised by big payment increases.