12/06/2024
Fully story below.
Marry the house--date the mortgage! Buyers, this is a great time to negotiate: less competition, fewer bidding wars, and more time to fully consider a home before submitting an offer. And consider a "rate buy down" vs a price reduction to get below market interest dates for the next 2-3 years.
By Aldo Svaldi | [email protected] | The Denver Post
Metro Denver home price gains reversed course last month after a sharp rise in October. The region is on track to end the year with some of the weakest appreciation in the country.
The median price of a single-family home sold in November was $639,000, which was down 1.7% from October’s median price of $650,000. For the year, detached home prices are up 1.9%, according to a monthly market overview from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.
Condos and townhomes, also known as attached housing, moved in the other direction, with a median sales price of $410,000, which was up 2.5% from October but down 1.2% from November 2023.
“Buyers in this current end-of-year market are finding gifts on a level rarely offered. Of the homes sold in November, about 50% had at least one price reduction before going under contract, and roughly 60% of the sellers provided concessions to buyers, many in the form of interest rate buydowns or repair credits,” Amanda Snitker, the new chair of the DMAR Market Trends Committee and an area Realtor, said in comments accompanying the report.
Mortgage rates have remained stubbornly high and weaker demand may be motivating sellers to cut a deal. The number of closings in metro Denver was down 16.5% from October to 3,022, while the number of pending sales, or homes that went under contract but haven’t closed was down 10.5% on the month to 3,039.
Listings are also taking longer to sell, a median of 29 days compared to 26 days in October and 22 days a year ago.
The number of active listings was 9,310, down 14.9% from October and up 39.3% from year-ago levels due largely to a 41.5% decline in new listings. Sellers, who had put 4,693 homes on the market in October, listed only 2,747 homes in November.
“Month-over-month, November saw a decrease in the number of properties that closed and went pending,” Snitker said. “This is not surprising given the month’s complexity and the increase in mortgage rates, which returned to the seven percent range.”
Of the 20 major U.S. metro areas tracked in home price indices from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller, Denver has the smallest annual gain in September at 0.2%. The overall average for the 20 cities was 3.9%, while New York, Cleveland and Chicago had the biggest gains at 7.5%, 7.1% and 6.9% respectively.
CoreLogic, which maintains another separate home price index, had Denver home prices up 1% in October and it is predicting a 2.8% annual gain for 2025.
“Similar to much of the housing market activity, home prices continued to mostly move sideways in October,” said CoreLogic Chief Economist Selma Hepp in a report.
Metro Denver home price gains reversed course last month after a sharp rise in October.
