Denver Real Estate in April: Active Inventory up Sharply

Inventory up 44% from March; Inventory up 23% Year-over-year

Every month I track about 35 local housing markets in the US, and I usually post several markets at a time. But this is worth noting.

The Denver market is still hot, with historically low inventory, prices increasing, and homes selling above list price, but we are seeing a sharp increase in active inventory. We are still a long way from the “only looky-loos and crickets” phase of the housing cycle, but there is a clear sea change in active inventory.

The Denver Metro Association of Realtors® (DMAR) has released their data for April this morning. From the DMAR: DMAR Real Estate Market Trends Report

While inventory is on the rise, so are prices. The average price of a single-family detached home in Denver Metro is $825,073, representing a 3.93 percent increase from last month. With consecutive months of increased prices and interest rates, a buyer's monthly mortgage has increased as well. The average close-price-to-list-price ratio in April for the detached market was 107.29 percent. …

“While buyers may be thinking they overpaid if they bought two months ago, this is not the case,” commented Andrew Abrams, Chair of the DMAR Market Trends Committee and Metro Denver Realtor®. “They likely got a slightly lower interest rate and the market is continuing to rise, just not as fast. In the chaos of the recent market, buyers had been waiving their inspections, doing full appraisal gaps and even offering to make their earnest money non-refundable before getting an inspection. Now, we are shifting to a more responsible market. There will still be bidding wars, appraisal gaps and limited inspection items on future properties, but the frequency of those will be less.”

The increased interest rates are already impacting the amount of inventory sitting on the market. While Denver Metro is still relatively low in inventory, the word “historic” is no longer applicable as there were 610 fewer properties on the market last year compared to today. The market usually sees an 8.59 percent increase in month-over-month inventory. This month, it saw an outstanding 44.26 percent increase.

emphasis added

DMAR reports total residential active inventory (detached and attached) was 3,204 at the end of April, up 44.3% from 2,221 at the end of March, and up 23.5% year-over-year from 2,594 in March 2021. Inventory is up 171% from the all-time low set in January of this year.

IMPORTANT: This is still lower than normal for active inventory. Usually, in Denver, active inventory bottoms around 4,000 units in the winter, and peaks in the summer at around 7,000 units.

New listings at 6,881, were up 14.3% from 6,020 in March, and up 3.7% from 6,635 in April 2021.

Closed sales were at 4,912, down 11.9% from 5,576 in April 2021.

I’ll have data on many more local markets in April soon.