Metro Denver home sellers appear to be holding their own, but they aren’t doing as well as sellers throughout much of the rest of the country, according to sales data released Tuesday.
In many respects, the seven-county region’s residential real estate market is flat.
Total resales recorded so far this year are just more than 19,000, a slight drop from the record-breaking sales pace of 19,623 clocked for the first five months of 2004. Median sales prices for the first five months of 2005 also have held steady compared with last year. And home appreciation since the start of the year has climbed roughly 2 percent, said Steve McGuire, a broker associate for Re/Max Professionals in Highlands Ranch.
Colorado’s sales figures are extrapolated through the end of the month.
Real estate experts, including McGuire, suspect construction of new homes is dampening the region’s resale market. There are more new houses being built than there are people to fill them, he said.
Net population gains projected for the entire state between July 2004 and July 2005 suggest he could be right, Colorado senior demographer Jim Westkott said.
The state anticipates 20,000 new residents in that period, he said. Given the average household size of 2.44 people, that growth would require about 8,200 new housing units statewide.
Yet, in the first quarter of this year alone, builders in metro Denver secured 5,157 permits for homes, condos and apartments, according to the Home Builders Association of Metro Denver.
“The market as a whole doesn’t feel good to me,” said Tucker Hart Adams, a regional economist with US Bank. “Of course, Realtors aren’t going to say that, and the homebuilders aren’t going to say that.”
Adams suspects people are using risky financial strategies, such as interest-only loans and adjustable-rate mortgages, to buy second and third homes as investments. She fears they won’t be able to find tenants for those homes or be able to sell them for much of a profit if interest rates rise as predicted.
The median price of a single- family home in metro Denver for the first five months of this year was $239,900, up 3.85 percent from $231,000 over the same period last year.
The median price of an attached home fell 0.57 percent from $157,900 to $157,000.
The average home price, which can easily be skewed by large home sales, was $274,314 for the first five months of the year. That compares with $261,292 for the same period last year.
Staff writer Christine Tatum can be reached at 303-820-1015 or ctatum@denverpost.com.
