Nationally, small homes are holding their value better than large homes, but the opposite is true in the Denver metro area, according to a report Monday from , an online home-valuation website.
Small single-family homes, defined as those under 1,200 square feet, fell 3.3 percent in value over the past year in the Denver-Boulder-Greeley area, said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s vice president of data and analytics.
Large homes, those with 1,900 square feet or more, are up 0.3 percent in value between the second quarter of 2007 versus the same period in 2006.
In the most extreme disparity, small condos in Adams County fell 12.4 percent over the past year, while large condos in Boulder County rose 6.4 percent.
Nationally, large single-family homes are down 2.8 percent in value, compared with a 1 percent decline for small single-family homes.
uses resale data to place a value on the other homes in a given market, a different approach than Realtor resale reports, which determine median values for the mix of homes sold in a given period.
Across the metro area, median home values are down 0.1 percent to $230,727 during the past year versus a 2.8 percent decline to $251,588 experienced nationally, according to Zillow.
Single-family homes in metro Denver rose 0.3 percent to a median value of $254,628; condos are down 1.3 percent to $152,842.
Wide variations remain in the metro housing markets. Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, Jefferson and Weld counties showed declines in home values on an annualized basis, while Boulder, Denver and Broomfield counties showed modest gains.
Windsor, Longmont, Glendale, Bennett, Byers, Federal Heights, Commerce City, Northglenn and Aurora are among the metro towns and cities where median home values are lower now than they were five years ago, according to .
“Those are truly depressed areas,” Humphries said.
Depreciation leaves homeowners who have recently purchased or refinanced their homes vulnerable to foreclosure.
Staff writer Aldo Svaldi can be reached at 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com.
Steepest ups and downs
Property categories with the biggest declines and gains in values in the Denver-Boulder-Greeley area over the past year, according to home- valuation website .:
Declines
Adams Small condos -12.4%
Broomfield Small condos -9.2%
Weld Large condos -7.6%
Adams Small single-family -7.5%
Arapahoe Small condos -6.9%
Gains
Boulder Large condos 6.4%
Denver Small condos 6.3%
Boulder Small condos 5.7%
Denver Large single-family 5.4%
Weld Large single-family 4.1%
