Tag: Denver Real Estate

More Metro Area Homes Went Under Contract in May 2020 Than Ever Before

Yes, the Covid-19 pandemic hurt the real estate market in April, but it sure made a rebound in May!  The 13-month chart below is for Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties.

Last week and this, you probably heard or read about how bad the real estate market was in April, and that was true here in the Denver Metro area, as it was throughout the country.

Pending sales of new and existing homes in April were roughly half the pending sales of April 2019. But pending sales in May surged to a number that was greater than the number for any month since before 2010, which is as far back as REcolorado’s statistics application goes.

The number of closings in May was somewhat low because of the low number of homes that went under contract in April.  The number of closings in any given month is always within range of the number of pending transactions the previous month.

(Note: The number of pending and closed sales for May is from June 1st, It could go up as additional May contracts are reported on June 2nd & 3rd.)

It should be noted that, despite the lower number of pending and closed listings in April compared to 2019, the median sold price was much higher — $435,000 vs. $415,000 in April 2019. The median sold price for May was also higher than the median sold price that month in 2019.

It’s also worth noting how quickly listings went under contract in April and in May. April listings went under contract in 5 days (median figure), which was even faster than last year, while May listings went under contract in 8 days (median) vs. 7 days last year.

These statistics may come as a surprise to those who think that the real estate market is on a downturn because of Covid-19.  I am as surprised as anyone at the resilience of our real estate market.

Driving the market is the fact that there is still a low supply of homes for sale and an over-supply of people needing or wanting to buy a home. That explains the low “Days in MLS” figure for April when the number of homes for sale was so low. Because so many sellers postponed putting their homes on the market during the lockdown, it became more of a seller’s market than before. That meant that the homes that were on the market had less competition for the large number of buyers.

Given what we’re seeing now, it’s hard to be pessimistic about the future of our real estate market, however pessimistic we might be about the country as a whole, given the rioting in multiple cities around the country, including Denver. We’ll see in June how much impact that may have.

Another wildcard is the possible resurgence of the coronavirus, given how our state, like others, has yielded to pressure to reopen earlier than CDC guidelines recommended. A resurgence could result in another stay-at-home order.

Denver’s Winter Real Estate Market Isn’t Slowing As Much As Reported

Here at Golden Real Estate, we are used to having a pretty active real estate market during the winter months, but recent news reports suggested that the market has slowed dramatically, with sellers more reluctant than in the past to put their homes on the market. Statistics show that analysis to be overblown.

Below is a chart showing 6 years of June and November listing activity on REcolorado.com (Denver’s MLS) limited to the City & County of Denver. (Further down I analyze Jefferson County statistics.) December numbers are not available yet, so I’m only showing November activity. It’s not exactly winter, but the trend over 6 years is still useful for the purpose of this analysis.

What the analysis shows is that there was in fact an increase of sales during November over the previous year and nearly as many new listings. The number of active Denver listings in November was less than last year’s peak but still higher than the four previous Novembers. Both median and average days on market were only slightly higher, and the median sold price was much higher than last November. Moreover, the ratio of sold price to listing price was even higher this November than it was in November 2018.  As for this month, there have been 384 new listings through Dec. 16th — exactly the same as during the first 16 days of December 2018.

In contrast to Denver and the full MLS, Jefferson County showed a slight slowdown in every metric except the number of sales and the median sales price, as show in these statistics garnered from REcolorado:

While the number of November closings in Jefferson County this year is comparable to previous years, the number of new and active listings this November is markedly lower than last year, and the median and average days on market are markedly higher. Despite the slowdown, the median sold price is higher—a new record for November—but the ratio of sold price to listing price is lower than all five prior years..

As for this month (through last Sunday) we have 257 new listings here in Jeffco, compared to 250 new listings for the same 15 days in December 2018, so that’s unchanged, but almost every agent I’ve spoken to senses a slowdown in real estate activity that is greater than we typically experience at this time of year.

As I’ve written before, winter is, in fact, a good time to sell a home, but it’s true some sellers continue to think otherwise. If a home is not overpriced, it can sell quickly in the winter months for a variety of reasons, the biggest one being that there is less competition from other listings, but there are countless buyers still getting alerts from the MLS, Zillow and other websites when a new listing matches their search criteria.  Sellers also appreciate that only serious buyers ask their agents to show homes at this time of year. Lookie-loos are really a fair-weather phenomenon.

Call one of us at 303-302-3636 for a market analysis, including localized winter statistics. By the way, Golden Real Estate, although based in Jefferson County, is also active and successful in the Denver market. Please consider us when it’s time to sell or buy!

Statistics Seem Not to Reflect a Coming Slowdown in the Real Estate Market

By JIM SMITH, Realtor

Because of recent national and regional reports that the real estate market is changing from a seller’s market to a balanced, or even a buyer’s market, I have drilled down into the statistics for real estate activity in Denver and Jefferson County, looking for evidence of that shift. After all, as in politics, all real estate is local, and even reports about Metro Denver’s real estate market don’t necessarily reflect what is happening in each of the metro area’s six counties.

So, are the Denver and Jeffco real estate markets changing from a seller’s market to a balanced or buyer’s market?  The answer appears to be “yes,” as I’ll show below, although the data in the 25-month charts above provide no indication of a coming slowdown. While 25 months might seem like an odd timeframe for a chart, I used it so you could compare this November (on the outer right) with November 2016 (on the outer left) as well as all the months in between.

Two measures of a market’s health are the trends in median sold price and the median days on market. The charts show continued year-over-year increases in the median sold price in both Denver and Jefferson County and only seasonal changes in the days on market. When median days on market are this low — ranging from 5 to 16 days in both Denver and Jefferson County over the past two years — you know it’s a seller’s market.

However, the listings that are currently active or under contract and those which have sold thus far in December suggest that, from a purely mathematical standpoint, 2019 statistics will document a shift in Denver’s and Jeffco’s real estate market.

As I write this on Tuesday, December 11th, there are 1,832 active Denver listings on REcolorado. The median days on market of those listings is 54, more than triple the median days on market for last month’s sales. There are 1,230 Denver listings that are under contract, and their median days on market is 24.  Of the 200 Denver listings which closed between December 1st and 11th, the median days on market was only 20.  Clearly, as those currently active and under contract listings change their status to “sold,” the median days on market will rise significantly by month’s end and into 2019.

The figures for Jefferson County mirror those of Denver. Median days on market for active listings is 42, median days on market for under contract listings is 25, and median days on market for listings sold December 1st to 11th is 19. As with Denver, it’s safe to say that Jeffco’s market has already begun to slow, and statistics will reflect that in coming months. 

If you’re thinking of selling your home, don’t let yourself be blindsided by this evolving market. You can still sell a home quickly in a slowing market, but only if you price it correctly. As I have written before, you can’t underprice a home, because competing offers will drive the price upward. And by pricing your home correctly, you’ll benefit from those competing listings that were not priced appropriately. Call me or another Golden Real Estate agent at 303-302-3636 if you’d like advice on pricing your home to sell.