Jessica Nicolella, NMLS# 1869497

10/01/2025

Something about hosting families whose homes I’ve helped finance at my house feels full circle. Helping with homes, opening my home, introducing people to new friends, reconnecting old friends, and building my community. 😍

I love how this annual tradition of bringing my clients and business partners together has grown; my husband makes the pumpkin pancakes, this year my son grew the zinnias for the centerpieces in “his garden” with my mom’s help, mom and my daughter arranged them and picked the mini pumpkins from Mom’s garden to make our space festive, and the perfect fall day surprised us with sun when we’d expected clouds. 🌤️🥞🍂

Relaxing brunch on the patio while the kids play in the yard and gathering with my people makes this work-from-home, number-crunching girl’s soul light up!

03/19/2025

10/18/2024

We stood near each other at a concert last year.

Both of us mothers of two, both of us with a deep love of dancing, both of us buried a bit in our responsibilities and roles and having somewhat forgotten who we were outside of our dual jobs as mothers and in businesses.

We exchanged numbers, met for coffee once after postponing at least 4 times due to the various contagions that wrack every house with young kids each back to school season, and when we finally made it work we talked for hours like old friends and discovered how many things we had a shared passion for: live music, dance, musical theater, Colorado.

I shared that I’d competed in a dance competition for charity and then started taking dance classes again after a decade-long break and that it was filling me with such joy and we shared our love for our families and commiserated over the intense demands that young children have on their mothers’ bodies, minds, and hours.

We texted occasionally over the coming months but never were able to make a plan that worked until we met up again (intentionally) at the same concert this year, where she shared that she had started dancing again, and had auditioned and been cast in the musical that made her fall in love with dance and musical theater.

She told me that I, over the course of our one coffee date 10 months past, had inspired her.

I was moved beyond words.

I’ve spent a lot of time and energy on my own mental and physical health and life balance over the past several years, and to hear that I had a hand in her choice to prioritize her health and pursue her own joy…I don’t think there could have been a higher compliment or affirmation.

Last week a dear friend and I had the privilege of seeing her sparkle and shine in her return to the stage, as Rosie, in Cabaret.

Now she is inspiring me. What beautiful circular paths this life can bring.

10/11/2024

"I never thought my mortgage broker would invite me to something like this." I LOVED hearing that when my first guest arrived in my kitchen on a recent Sunday morning.

🏡My business is homes and I love navigating the complexities of qualifying to buy a home, refinancing to save money or access equity to improve a home or buy a second home or investment property to provide income for their family while providing other people with homes, BUT sometimes the pace of business keeps me wrapped tightly in my spreadsheets and models and credit report analysis.

There are thousands of people who do what I do for work in Colorado, but in addition to always striving to be awesome at my job and achieving my business goals to support my family, I want to be the human who invited you over, met your kids, or learned that you also dabble in hip hop dance. Taking time out to bring people together at the place I call home reminds me what home is all about: a place to gather good people and have good conversations and serve good food and let kids run wild in the backyard. I do what I do because I want more people to enjoy that sense of home and grow roots in their community to make it grow and bloom.

I had the privilege of hosting a day of fun at my own home and getting to enjoy time with the people who trust me with these important decisions and support me in growing my small business, and I can't wait to do it again!

I'm saving the recipe:
1 quart: clients who became friends
2 cups: partners in the local business community
2 parts: friends and family who became clients
1 VAT of pumpkin pancake batter 🥞
1 perfect fall day 🍂

🔶🔶🔶Will you join us next year?🔶🔶🔶

06/15/2024

Great Scott!

I’ve circled the sun 43 times. Incredible to realize how many tiny moments have happened to connect me to the amazing people and world around me while huge cycles like circling the sun are happening in the background all the time.

Thank you, friends and loved ones from my earliest years up to brand new budding friendships, for thinking of me as your busy days went by, wishing me a happy birthday if you had space in your day, and being a sparkling piece of what that reminds me why it is great to be alive and embrace each tiny moment.

Yesterday started *very* early with a professional challenge that I would not wish on anyone, continued to a successful closing that I couldn’t leave my computer long enough to attend because I was so consumed by pulling the puppet strings behind the curtain to make it happen that I could not pause to drive down the highway, and reminded me of the value of standing behind my word, doing my best, showing up for the hard conversations, and the power of speaking with kindness, truth, and clarity under pressure, as that plus amazing teamwork is what got us to the finish line. Have to say, my 43-yr-old self has learned a few things along the way.

Some loving care in the form of an incredible massage from my talented and dear sister Siri got me on my way to ending the day with a beautiful gathering—I enjoyed truly yummy mocktails, wings, tacos, and my most favorite treat of sweet friend plantains from Zeppelin Station and danced to Black Pumas at Mission Ballroom. Met some new friends and laughed with some I’ve been laughing with for over two decades.

Finished the night with an impromptu stop at Great Scott’s Eatery in Broomfield with my husband, who annually dyes his normally blue hair purple in June to honor my birth month. We’ve both driven by this place for 20+ years on the way to and from countless concerts and it was time to enjoy not just the destination but the stops along the way.

Looking forward to the next 43 years and all the laughs and lessons they will bring! 🪩🎶🎉💃💕

05/03/2024

Not one person cares about an appraisal…am I right?

Until it comes in low.

Actually, we found someone who does care, and is on a mission to help bring buyers and sellers together with real data.

We hosted many of our real estate partners in two packed sessions with Anthony Young-Appraiser at our Greenlight Mortgage Group HQ last week, and I never thought I’d say an appraisal class was cool, but here we are.

Things we learned:
⎆how to use time adjustments and the current list to sales ratio to bring precision and data into a pricing conversation early on and get more accurate with your listing and offers (and articulate your value in the post-NAR settlement world)

⎆how to use the free tools on tophap.com to create a heat map of home values more likely to be comps for a home than just the old “one mile radius” rule that has torched many a deal by eliminating more relevant comps from consideration simply due to geography

⎆when to consider cost to cure as an alternative to an adjustment on an appraisal report (potentially reducing or eliminating and appraisal gap)

⎆how to explain out bad comps up front in your appraiser packet instead of ignoring them and hoping for the best

In other words...how to speak appraiser (cue: Australian accent from the Foster’s commercial).

To top if, off we enjoyed great company, a rooftop view of the Flatirons, refreshments, and empanadas!

📲Send me a PM with your email if you’d like an invite next time we do something cool to share with our housing community.

02/25/2024

Moonlight and snowshoes are one of my favorite traditions.

My dear friend, Mim, has been organizing a night-time snowshoe when the moon is full about once a year–this was the 20th! It almost didn’t happen this year, but I reached out to say I’d be happy to organize it if she didn’t have the time, and she made the time. I’ve been with her on most of them, and it is a time that I often see close friends, often meet new friends, and sometimes have friends that I only know from this special event.

An often-talked-about one that I missed was when I was due with my eldest within the next week and still determined to go. I had to bail at the last minute, which gave all of my friends who had been worried about me going into labor an hour-long hike from the cars and another hour-long drive from the hospital significant relief, but I was crushed to miss out.

When we go on this outing, we all get out of our comfort zone, we all take care of each other and don’t go further or faster than the whole group is comfortable going, and we all talk about life in the quiet of the woods while the moonlight hits the sparkles on the snow.

Last night, we had some heartfelt conversations about the polarization of our world and how we as a society have grown to be so quick to see our differences and so willing to overlook the humanity in the people we’ve been taught to hate.

We are all human, and our needs, wants, and ideas are probably 95% the same, but we focus on the 5% or less where we are different.

How can we–in this world where the people we connect with are often fed to us through algorithms that find people exactly like us–choose to reach out, branch out, look fellow humans in the eyes, and learn how to understand one another?

How can we quiet the noise of the world and create moments and traditions that bring us together and prime us to truly see the humanity in the people with which we share the world, and choose to build the future we want to live in together?

How can we lose our fear and practice our curiosity?

02/20/2024

I did not hit my goal last year.

I’ll bet I’m not alone.

Here’s what I’m doing this year to change that:
-lowering interest rates
-dropping home prices

Kidding!

What I’m really doing, Michael Jackson recommended in 1988. I danced and sang my heart out in the living room to this song, and it popped into my head this morning.
“I’m looking at the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways.”

I can’t control the rates or the market, but I can adjust my perspective, improve my habits, and not let my clients overlook a market with rare opportunities because the short-sighted news cycle is leaving the most valuable pieces of home ownership (appreciation) out of the equation.

What are you doing to change your ways and prepare for the busiest months of this year’s buying and selling season?

02/18/2024

My inner child and my actual child look a lot alike.

We’re often called twins, and we get the huge-eyed looks from people as they glance from her face to mine and back and say, “you look JUST like your mom.” I think this compliment is mine; she thinks it is hers.

She smiles big, and often tries to match outfits or accessories or hairstyles with me. I know this won’t last forever, but it is a beautiful thing to feel connected to and admired by someone I love with every piece of my soul, so I snap a picture and wrap the sweet memory carefully in my heart.

I want everything for her, but what I want most is for her to know what SHE wants. Not what society wants or her friends want or a future partner wants or the industrial capitalist machine wants or even what her parents want. I do want her to have the skills to recognize and navigate these expectations and select which ones she will choose to wear and which she will choose to put back on the shelf.

I mean this today more than I ever knew how to mean it before, and I mean it for BOTH my daughter AND the child I still am inside:

She is enough, exactly as she chooses to be.

02/14/2024

Real hearts aren’t pretty–they are weird-shaped, and messy when touched.

We’ll see perfect cartoon hearts everywhere today, on this holiday made to sell pink trinkets and cheap chocolate and flowers flown around the globe. Maybe we’ll see pictures of gorgeous flowers and feel sad that they weren’t for us. Maybe we’ll be the partner that tries, but fails, to meet fairy-tale expectations. We’ll miss those we’ve lost more than we did yesterday.

The real heart is hidden from view while constantly pumping without conscious thought and powering a body and a mind that would otherwise cease to exist. If you glimpse one at all it is likely a tragic end of a life.

In this world, it is easy to feel like you need to be a certain way: a perfect, packaged piece of perfection. We want to belong, and becoming what everyone expects seems like the sure way to fit and be accepted.

Is it possible that if we all showed our messy, weird-shaped sides a little more, we would feel that sense of belonging and connection we seek even more? Could we love and accept the messy parts of ourselves as they are today without shame and find the strength to grow into the person we want to be if we saw more messy parts in the people around us?

You know your weaknesses, and if you’re like me your brain reminds you of them more often than might be strictly necessary, but you’ve also got the power: keep pumping along to be the best version of you, be gentle with yourself and correct course as many times as you need to, connect with someone who might need a little extra love if you have some to share, and go easy on your expectations.

The real deal of being a human being is messy, and powerful, and worth it.

02/09/2024

Is this your life right now? Your buyer is trapped in a house that’s too small, their equity is trapped with them, and your commission on both their sale and their purchase is frozen inside like a snow globe where everyone can see the idyllic scene but can’t quite touch it.

They’re uncomfortable, their family’s needs are growing, and they don’t know how they could possibly move because most of their assets are in the home’s value. Their bank account doesn’t have excess funds for a traditional down payment, and all of you know they will get a better offer once their house is empty, cleaned out, staged, and in its best light, but they don’t want to have to move twice.

I don’t know the right solution, but I know for most buyers there is one out there.

They deserve to know if there is a way to get into the house 🏚that’s right for them right now and you deserve to start your year strong💪, with an extra commission, or maybe even two if they buy and sell.

❓Solid income to qualify for multiple payments?
✔️A home equity line of credit for down payment plus the mortgage they want on the new home until they sell and pay off the HELOC

❓Interest in maximizing net worth and receiving passive income?
✔️A home equity line or fixed loan for down payment, then the mortgage they want on the new home, and their current home becomes a rental for long-term equity gain

❓Want to be settled before they put their current home on the market?
✔️A bridge loan, or bridge solution, or cash bridge solution with no contingency

Send me a puzzle, let me see what pieces I can match up to get it solved!

02/01/2024

If you’ve ever taken on a project with a huge investment of time, money, and energy and dreamed of the ways it might change your life, you know exactly how I feel today. 🙌 Rough inspection passed!

My work means late nights, early mornings, weekend calls and meetings and number-crunching on a tight deadline. When my client finds the perfect house they need my stamp of approval to go with their offer and my guidance to feel comfortable knowing what to expect for a payment or just to calm those buying jitters and make sure every last question is answered.

I’m also always on call for all the mom things, from logistical to emotional, and I want to be there to make sure they get on the bus with everything in the morning, give a hug after a hard day, a high five after a great day, and catch the smiles at Little League or that beautiful song they are singing in choir after school. Driving to and from my office every day when 99% of my client meetings are virtual anyway steals time from me and my family.

This project is years in the making and revolves around creating a space that keeps me close to home where I can help with driving that-thing-they-forgot over to the school, while also giving me a professional space to step into when I need quiet concentration, and the flexibility to shift from one to the other as needed. The corner of my bedroom is no longer cutting it. 😧

I dreamed it, I manifested it, I planned for it design-wise and financially, and I’m one HUGE step closer to it being my reality! 🏘🤩👍