Austin Business Journal's Top 10 Photos Of 2022 — From The Man Behind The Camera

Each year, we cheer as the villains of our favorite Christmas movies change their tune, get their comeuppance, or meet an ignominious end. But these holiday baddies also have a lot to teach us about money. One of the benefits of rewatching your favorite holiday films year after year is getting the opportunity to take a deeper look into the stories.

By embracing its identity as a data company, Experian is driving innovation in credit building and consumer financial tools. Figuring out who’s creditworthy is getting more complicated, and millions of Americans are stuck with “thin files” or are considered credit invisible. That means they’re struggling to borrow or access credit, while lenders miss out on potential customers.

Among the nation’s 400 largest housing markets, these 59 metro areas now have active inventory above 2019 pre-pandemic levels. Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

Littleton residents will soon be able to shop where offices once stood. Last week, local retail investor and developer Republic Investment Group closed on a 63-acre site at 700 W. Mineral Ave. for $50 million, records show. Demolition of the existing 680,000-square-foot office building there began Wednesday, RIG owner Grant Nelson said. The building was once home to Louisiana-based telecommunications firm Lumen, which changed its name from CenturyLink in 2020. “This property has been so underutilized for so long, that’s really the exciting part … When people went home during COVID, they never really utilized this facility fully ever again,” he said. As it bought the land, RIG immediately resold 18.5 of the acres to Costco for $5.8 million, and 17.5 acres for $17.1 million to San Antonio-based apartment developer Embrey, records show. Embrey will build 370 apartments on the southern end of the lot, west of Broadway and north of County Line Road. “Based upon the incentive agreement with Littleton, we were able to have a better land price for Costco,” Nelson said. Littleton is kicking back 50 percent of sales tax revenue for the next decade for all retailers onsite, up to a total reimbursement of $29.5 million.

Plans for a small Cherry Creek condominium building have been nixed, and half the development site has a new owner. Frank Penn and Dave Bracht, two longtime friends, planned to build a four-story project across two parcels at 325 and 329 Detroit St., which combined are just over a quarter acre. The pair got the site rezoned in September 2023, and refined their design earlier this year, adding some office and retail space, and saying groundbreaking could be a year away. Last week, however, Bracht sold his 6,250-square-foot parcel at 325 Detroit St., which he’d bought for $2.8 million in September 2022.

A new flock is taking over Ptarmigan Country Club. The club outside Fort Collins was purchased this month by Heritage Golf Group, a Virginia-based operator that expanded into Colorado two years ago. Records show the company paid $6.1 million for the land. Heritage now owns 39 private or semi-private courses across the country, including The Golf Club at Bear Dance in Larkspur, Plum Creek Golf Club in Castle Rock and Colorado National Golf Club in Erie.