Autumn’s chill has come early again to metro Denver’s housing market, with the pace of sales in September down sharply from August and median prices gliding gently lower.
The number of homes and condos sold in September in metro Denver fell 20.2% from August, but remain up 2.2% year-over-year, according to a monthly update from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.
That decline in sales wasn’t as severe as the 28.2% drop between August and September last year, which confirmed the end of what had been a strong seller’s market.
Jill Schafer, chair of the DMAR Market Trends Committee, which puts together the Market Trends Report, said the market last month was the most competitive that sellers have seen in a September since 2013.
But she dismissed calls that buyers now have the upper hand.
“There have been changes, but we have not shifted to a buyer’s market. Let me repeat that. We have not shifted to a buyer’s market,” Schafer said in an opinion included with the report.
What are some of the changes? Home are taking longer to sell, price reductions have become more common, and sellers are having to make more concessions.
Listings in metro Denver now spend an average of 32 days on the market, with another 37 days under contract, according to the DMAR report. But if a listing undergoes a price reduction, something that happens with 37% of homes now, the time to achieve a sale quadruples.
A price reduction stretches out the average time a listing is active on the market to 58 days, versus only 13 days when there isn’t a price reduction.
Sellers are having to give ground in other ways. About 41% of the homes sold came with a seller’s concession, which averaged $3,682. Two years ago, only 29% of homes received a concession.
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The median sold price of a single-family home in September was $450,000, down 1.3% from August, but up 4.65% from a year earlier.
The median sold price of a condo was $312,000, down .08% from August and up 3.24% from September 2018.
The number of properties listed for sale didn’t budge much, coming in at 9,286 versus 9,350 in August. There were 5.4% more homes available on the market than a year earlier.
The report also noted that more short-term rental properties are coming up for sale as Denver cracks down on owners who violate city rules.
