Denver Home Prices at All-Time High
In some areas of the state, Colorado mortgages are more popular than ever. Homes are scarcely on the market before they are sold.
This sort of activity may not be the case in Denver, however, as the price for a detached single-family home in the area is at an all-time high, according to statistics released Thursday by MetroList.
The highest-ever average price - $405,700 - is just one of the interesting blips in that housing market that emerged from looking at the November 2006 sales and listing statistics from Denver-based MetroList.
For instance, the average price of a single-family home is still a healthy $310,562, up about $4,000 from October 2006 and 2.35 percent more than last year. Those seeking a Colorado mortgage on a condo would pay an average $222,459 and the average sales price is $195,747, also indicating a small amount of appreciation, about 5 percent over last year at the same time.
Still, there’s plenty of bad news to go around within the Denver housing market: the most telling being the number of days on the market it takes to sell a residential property. The average days on the market for a condo are 134, nearly approaching five months.
That’s almost a 14 percent increase over the time it took last year in November to sell a condo. Single-family home sales are taking an average of 103 days on the market to sell. That doesn’t sound quite so bad, but it’s almost a 20 percent increase in sales time compared with last year’s figures.
At the same time, there’s been a dramatic drop in the number of listings, which today stands at 27,530. In July, the number of listings spiked at 31,989, probably the highest number of homes ever available in the Denver area.
Still the drop-off is significant. People are applying for mortgage loans in the state.
“There’s several things happening here,” said Lance Chayet, mortgage broker-owner of Lakewood-based Hanover Realty. “People are giving up and taking their houses off the market. Some of it is seasonal factors. Another thing is that short sales and foreclosures are exerting negative pressures [on home values] and forcing some people out.”