Denver housing numbers head the wrong way in realtors’ newest report
Anyone waiting for the right moment to sell their home and move into something that better fits their current needs will find little cheer in the newest figures on the housing market, released Friday by the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.
That Market Trends Report for the 11-county Denver metro area shows home inventory climbing slightly entering a season where agents typically see a pickup in activity, as kids return to school and potential buyers settle back from vacations.
Agents were hoping last month that the Federal Reserve Board’s quarter-point cut in the premium lending rate might trend over into the mortgage market. That could nudge the cost of financing a home out of the six-percent range where rates have hovered for the past year, into a number closer to what buyers saw three years ago.
But despite the Fed’s action, current mortgage rates are hanging in the low-to-mid-six range — a consequence, agents say, of the rate cut having already been anticipated by lenders back in August.
Prices remain elevated
Meanwhile, new numbers show the median price of a home in the area as down slightly over the previous month to $589,900. However, that remains 2-1/2% higher than prices were running in September 2024, despite this year’s growing inventory of homes for sale.
Detached homes saw a slight month-over-month drop to $638,250, down 1.7% from the August price, but still more than a percent higher than a median single-family home cost a year back. The number of single-family homes on the market remains almost 18% higher than a year back, following lackluster sales.
In the condo and townhouse market, the median price was holding steady, but pending sales of those dropped to 5.56% over the month, while the number on the market climbed slightly, up 17% from a year earlier.
Coldwell Banker agent Amanda Snitker, who chairs the Realtors’ Market Trends Committee, said that the new numbers mark a notably steady course over the past year, a period when agents and sellers would have hoped for a pickup in sales.
Micro adjustments
“The seasonality and economic conditions of our market today are micro adjustments compared to a market where we saw large swings in demand and prices during 2020 through 2022,” Snitker noted in the report.
“The subtle adjustments show a nuanced buyer and a nuanced seller, requiring tenacity, trust and expertise to make the perfect match.”
For homebuyers, Snitker said, the opportunities are wider now with the increase in homes available.
Active inventory at month’s end was up 70% from the number of homes on the market back in 2022, when too many buyers were chasing too few houses. That led to intense competition for listings that had barely come on the market, driving prices skyward.
Buyers prefer detached
Snitker noted that sales numbers show buyers leaning toward detached homes over attached. Numbers of sales climbed 6.55% for single-family homes over the year, while sales for condos and townhomes fell almost 17%.
“Pricing strategies remain critical,” she added. The number of days on the market it took for a median-priced home to sell stretched slightly this past month, to 35 days on average, up from 30 in August.
She added that although rates remain above six percent, the newest rates do show a downward trend following the federal funds rate cut and are currently the lowest rates seen in 2025.
Uptick in luxury detached sales
For home sellers in the luxury price ranges, where inventory has been building fastest this year, the latest trends held slightly better news, agents reported.
Sales of single-family homes priced above $1 million saw an uptick in activity, rising 5%. However, attached homes in the higher range struggled with a falling number of contracts and a sharp drop in price-per-square-foot values.
Do the new numbers confirm Denver’s drift from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market?
“Generally, four months of inventory is considered moving into a buyer’s market,” Snitker told The Denver Gazette. “We’re starting to see that happening in the detached market in the million-dollar-and-up range, and in all price points in the attached home market.”
The picture in the higher range is complex, added Compass agent Colleen Covell, a principal in the Peter Blank Collective. Generally, the luxury range has been considered as those homes priced a million dollars and up; but rapid price increases have made that breakpoint less valid now, as Denver homes priced from $1 million to $1.5 million become more commonplace.
Focusing on the days-on-market as a threshold between a seller’s or a buyer’s market can miss a broader problem growing, as homes that remain unsold continue to linger while not being reflected in the sold stats, Covel said.
Misleading numbers
“In reality, houses are sitting much longer than that,” Covell told The Denver Gazette. “Buyers aren’t buying. We’re in a gridlock.”
Last month, Covell transacted the most expensive home sale recorded in the city of Denver over the past two years, a new-built modern design at 1860 E. Cedar Avenue, just south of Denver Country Club. The price was $8.35 million.
The DMAR Market Trends Report covers data from Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Douglas, Elbert, Gilpin, Jefferson and Park counties. DMAR represents over 8,000 Realtors in the metro area.
