A pair of national reports issued Wednesday provided an additional snapshot of the metro-area housing market, though some local real-estate experts said the data didn’t necessarily provide a complete picture.
The reports from Trulia and RealtyTrac focused on listing-price reductions and foreclosures, respectively.
According to Trulia, an online real- estate search site, the asking prices on 21 percent of homes listed for sale in metro Denver from July 1 to Aug. 1 dropped an average of 8 percent.
Nationwide, prices of 25 percent of homes listed for sale dropped an average of 10 percent, the report found.
But data from MetroList, the metro area’s multiple-listing service, shows that single-family home values — based on actual sale prices — have increased over the past 12 months, said Ron Woodcock, a broker with Re/ Max Southeast.
The discrepancy is likely a result of homes being priced too high when they are originally listed for sale, Woodcock said.
“Prices being reduced don’t have a thing to do with what a property is worth,” Woodcock said. He also noted that lumping data from the luxury- home market in with more affordably priced homes skews the numbers.
“You really have two separate housing markets,” he said. “Anything over $500,000 is considered a luxury home, and that market is still crashing faster than anybody ever thought it would. Single-family home values under that are going up in value.”
Meanwhile, a separate report by Realty Trac found that statewide in July there were 4,980 foreclosure filings, down 9.3 percent compared with the same month a year ago.
RealtyTrac’s count of foreclosure filings includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions. With one in every 432 homes receiving a foreclosure filing in July, Colorado has the 13th-highest filing rate, according to RealtyTrac.
Nationally, there were 325,229 foreclosure filings, down 9.7 percent compared with July 2009. Nationally, one in every 397 homes received a foreclosure filing.
The Colorado Department of Local Affairs’ Division of Housing, which uses a separate methodology, said last week that Colorado had a total of 10,233 foreclosure filings for the second quarter, marking a 15.7 percent drop from the second quarter of 2009.
The state has not yet released its foreclosure survey for July because not all counties have reported their numbers, said Ryan McMaken, spokesman for the division.
However, based on what he has seen so far, McMaken predicts that filings and completed foreclosures will be down from June, as well as from a year ago.
Margaret Jackson: 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
