The 4½-year-long seller’s market is clearly transitioning into a “balanced” market and may be moving toward a buyer’s market by 2020, judging from statistics garnered from REcolorado, the Denver MLS.
In December, for example, the median days on market for City & County of Denver sales was 20, the highest since Feb. 2014, and the ratio of sold price to listing price was 98.5%, up from 98.3% in November, but otherwise the lowest since Feb. 2012 — nearly seven years ago.
January statistics won’t be available until early February, but a study of the 403 homes sold in the first 21 days of January shows that the median days on market is even higher — 28 days — and that the ratio of sold price to listing price has dropped to 97.2%.
The number of sold listings in December was 783, the lowest for a December since 2011. This compares to more than 1,000 sales in every December from 2014 to 2017. The number of active listings for this December was 1,605, the highest for any December since 2013.
Now let’s look at Jefferson County statistics.
In December the median days on market for Jeffco sales was 24, and the ratio of sold price to listing price was 98.6%. Both stats were the worst (relatively speaking) since February 2014, nearby five years ago.
As with Denver, a study of the Jefferson County homes sold thus far in January shows that the median days on market will remain above 20 and that the ratio of sold price to listing price will dip even further. With 307 sales thus far and another 308 listings under contract over 20 days, I predict that the number of sold listings will be the same as or higher than January 2018, when 553 Jeffco homes were sold. The median sold price will continue to climb, though less quickly.
Given these statistics, you can imagine our surprise at how well our own listings have performed this month.
For example, broker associate Kristi Brunel listed a home on a busy street (usually not a good selling point) for $520,000, which was above what neighborhood comps suggested. She got it under contract for 13% more in four days. There were 60 showings and 13 offers, but there were 20 or more other offers which weren’t submitted once buyers knew how high the bidding had gone. Saturday’s open house, just hours after Friday’s big snow storm, was so busy and with so many cars parked on the street that one neighbor asked Kristi if it was a church function!
I had a similar experience with another listing. I got multiple offers which bid up the home to 7% over its listing price within four days, and the open house was the busiest I can recall. A Golden listing of mine which didn’t sell in December sold readily in January for nearly its listing price, and a $1.1 million listing of mine in downtown Golden sold in less than a week with multiple offers driving the price up by $75,000 following an open house where I needed help to accommodate the flow of buyers.
So you can understand why I don’t quite know what to make of the current real estate market — except perhaps that Golden Real Estate knows how to sell homes better than other brokerages!
What we do know with certainty is that there are many disappointed buyers who did not win the bidding wars on these Jeffco listings and that homeowners who think they should wait until spring to put their home on the market should consider doing so now — and with us!
As I’ve written in the past, there are multiple reasons why winter is a good time to list a home, but our experience with these few listings is surprising even me. But beware — the reason that the MLS statistics are not as good as our own experience at Golden Real Estate may be that other brokerages are not listing their homes at the right price and not providing the kind of marketing for which Golden Real Estate is famous.
Buyers are definitely getting wiser and not making offers on homes that are overpriced. Give me or one of our broker associates a call and ask us what we consider the right price to list your home.
