Venerable, founder of Paragon Homes, and his wife, Amy, listed the Cherryville Road home for $7 million.

The 9,000-square-foot mansion sits on just under an acre backing onto the High Line Canal, in a pocket that pairs Cherry Creek School District boundaries with Greenwood Village tax rates.

Venerable paid $1.4 million for the lot in June 2023 and finished construction in 2024, working with architect Mike Woodley.

Giving Woodley creative control was an easy decision. “I have a ton of confidence and trust in him.”

The result is a style Venerable says is rare in Denver: Scandinavian Modern, heavy on glass and natural light, with a low-maintenance exterior built for a mountain climate rather than a metro one.

The roof is standing-seam metal, and the siding is factory-finished wood — choices Venerable said he leans on more in his Vail projects than in Denver.

“That����ap what makes the exterior maintenance-free,” he said. “You don’t have to mess with it constantly.”

Inside, the layout leans contemporary rather than ornate, with an open floor plan built around entertaining.

The kitchen — with imported Italian cabinetry and a Cristallo stone island — opens to a great room and a formal dining area, which in turn opens through multislide doors to a patio and pool.

“The kitchen is the heart of the house,” Venerable said. “Everybody ends up there. Without a good kitchen, a house has no soul.”

The primary suite includes his-and-hers closets, including a two-story closet for his wife built out to roughly 1,000 square feet with its own staircase to the basement for off-season storage — some friendly one-upmanship inspired that feature, Venerable said.

“One of her friends had an elaborate closet. I said I’d make one better.”

The basement has a commercial-grade gym with a cold plunge, along with a separate rec room intended to give kids their own space apart from the main living areas.

Venerable said the home was designed to meet the needs of his wife and sons. But now that both sons have finished college and are moving out of state — one to Arizona, the other to New York — the couple have more house than they need.

“We’ve got an 8,000-square-foot house, an acre yard, a hot tub, a pool no one uses,” Venerable said. “It was built for the previous chapter of our life, not the next one.”

Listing agent Libby Weaver of Helm Weaver Helm of Compass-Denver said the home’s flexible layout gives it broad appeal. The main-floor primary suite could suit empty nesters, while the finished basement and pool make a case for a family with teenagers.

“We’re seeing buyers who are empty nesters but want space that children and grandchildren can come and enjoy,” Weaver said. “They want more space, more amenities, so their families can congregate.”

Weaver said the pool — four feet deep throughout, popular for games and floating — along with the fire pit and hot tub, make the property a natural draw for a family with kids still at home.

“It����ap a real desirable house for a family,” Weaver said. “It����ap definitely an entertainer’s house.”

Read more from our partner, .

The median home price in Cañon City now exceeds that seen in Chicago, and in Montrose, home prices are just below those of Fresno, Calif., , an online loan platform.

Even in Fort Morgan, out on the Eastern Plains, median home prices are at levels seen in Virginia Beach, Va., which, for those who have never visited, is the equivalent of a Colorado Springs on the ocean.

“A home’s price tag only tells part of the affordability story. What matters most is how that price compares with what local households earn,” said Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s chief consumer finance analyst, in comments included with the report.

The U.S. Census Bureau defines a as one having an urbanized population ranging from 10,000 to 49,999 residents. There are 538 that fit the bill, and LendingTree refers to these anti-metros as towns.

LendingTree ranked micropolitan areas by their median home prices and also looked at the ratio of home prices to median household income to measure affordability.

Historically, the rule of thumb was for buyers to avoid homes priced three times above their household income — though buyers and lenders alike have stretched that boundary significantly since the pandemic.

The higher the ratio, the less affordable a market is and the more financially stressed residents are likely to be.

Of Colorado’s 10 micropolitan areas, five ranked in the top 50, a disproportionate representation. Put another way, half of Colorado’s micropolitan areas rank in the top 10% nationally for highest home prices.

The Breckenridge micropolitan, which includes Summit and Lake counties, ranks as the fourth most expensive housing market in the study with a median home price of $748,200 and an affordability ratio of 7.1.

Only Nantucket and Vineyard Haven in Massachusetts and Jackson, Wyo., stress their residents more when it comes to expensive housing.

The Steamboat Springs micropolitan, which covers Routt and Moffat counties, ranks as the seventh most expensive market in the study with a median home price of $564,500 and an affordability ratio of 5.9.

Given that those are ski resort communities with a mix of wealthy vacation homeowners and blue-collar resort workers, their top ranking doesn’t come as a surprise.

Tougher to explain is why resortless Montrose ranks as the 19th most expensive micropolitan area in the country, based on a median home price of $388,400 and an affordability ratio of 5.4.

And why is Fort Morgan, an agricultural hub with a median home price of $338,600 and an affordability ratio of 4.6, even on the list, much less in the 30th spot?

One possible explanation is that commuters working along the northern Front Range have turned it into a bedroom community.

Not far behind Fort Morgan is Cañon City, which has become a prison of unaffordability with a median home price of $324,000 and an affordability ratio of 5.2.

Homes now cost more in Cañon City than they do in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, according to LendingTree.

Interestingly, the Edwards micropolitan area, which includes Vail, and the Rifle micropolitan area, which includes Aspen, didn’t make the top 50.

Garfield County, while not a housing bargain, accounts for about eight in 10 residents in the Rifle micropolitan, corralling the high home values seen in Pitkin County.

Likewise, the pricey home values in Vail and Beaver Creek are diluted by the abundant mid-tier inventory seen in the more populated communities of Eagle, Dotsero and Gypsum.

Durango, Alamosa and Sterling also didn’t qualify for the 50 highest micropolitan areas in home prices.

The number of closings fell from 4,158 in June to 3,667 in July, an 11.8% decline, and they are down 5.7% year-over-year, according to .

Some of that slowing is seasonal, as families try to solidify their housing situation before the new school year starts in August.

But a rise in 30-year mortgage rates, which went from around 6.3% in June to closer to 6.8% by the end of July, may have also deterred some buyers.

“The people moving through this market are moving because life is asking them to — a growing family, a job change, a divorce, a death, a downsize,” said Amanda Snitker, chairwoman of DMAR’s Market Trends Committee, in comments accompanying the report.

“Those transactions don’t pause for market sentiment, and they’re a large part of why sales have held as steady as they have,” she said.

New listings fell 5.3% to 5,447 in July from June and are up 1.6% from a year earlier.

There were 13,115 active home and condo listings at the end of July, up 2.9% from June but down 6.3% from a year earlier. July’s average inventory going back to 2002 is 15,347, according to DMAR.

The median price of a single-family home that closed in July was $660,000, down 2.2% from the price of $675,000 in June, but 1.5% higher than the $650,000 median price seen a year earlier.

Condo and townhome median sold prices fell 2.6% to $380,000 on both a monthly and annual basis.

Condos are also taking more than twice as long to sell as homes, a median of 40 days compared to 17 days.

Although mortgage rates have remained stubbornly high this year, household incomes have been rising too, improving affordability in the starter home market for the eighth consecutive month, , the Seattle-based brokerage.

Redfin defines a starter home as one that ranges from the bottom 5% to 35% of homes in price. The cutoff starts at 5% to eliminate distressed sales and foreclosures.

In Denver, the income required to afford the typical starter home is $108,689, while the estimated median household income is $116,323 a year.

About 68% of starter homes in Denver are affordable to a household earning the median income, according to Redfin.

“We saw a need for something different from what����ap currently on the street,” Rifkin said.

The two Denver natives run local development firm Outwest Investments, and submitted a proposal Monday for a new two-story building at 1550 S. Pearl St.

The ground floor will hold a 2,500-square foot restaurant and 4,300-square-foot parking garage. The second level will host four or five offices.

Rifkin said the restaurant tenant has yet to be finalized but will be “very big news for south Denver.”

“We think there are some other ways we can activate the street besides dinner and the farmers market on Sunday,” he added.

The new building will replace an existing one, constructed in 1963. In May, Outwest purchased the property for $1.6 million from a group of physical therapists that operated there.

Rifkin said he considered an adaptive reuse of the property but found it was in pretty rough shape.

“It probably would have been more expensive than building something new,” he said.

Rifkin tapped local architect Taylor Hawley, who recently started his own shop, Ovolo, to draw up the plans.

One of the new offices will be used by Outwest Investments, which currently operates with its four employees on Evans Avenue just off Interstate 25. The remaining tenants will be family offices that have worked with the firm to raise money for its other projects.

Rifkin said the firms are leaving Cherry Creek. They can still enjoy being adjacent to the neighborhood and getting its walkable feel without paying the premium, he noted.

“When they want to go to Sushi Den at night they can park there and tell all their friends to park at their office,” he said, referencing the well-known eatery just a half-block to the north.

The total project cost is between $6 million and $7 million, Rifkin said.

Outwest specializes in building apartments and retail in the high country. Though the projects are almost always privately funded, they are often built to serve those making between 80% to 100% of the area median income who want a nicer living space to call their own in an expensive housing market. Outwest has projects from Silverthorne to Granby.

Sometimes, the duo partner with employers who will lease out units and sublet them to workers.

“That has always worked well because that will deleverage our risk,” Rifkin said.

Outwest was launched seven years ago, after the pair collaborated on a project in New York City. Rifkin was with a private equity firm and Bechler was the broker. The two have known each other since playing on rival high school lacrosse teams, and both graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Rifkin, 33, is a skier, and Bechler, 34, is a snowboarder. One of their first projects together included building housing along with a bar with golf simulators and a coffee shop in Fraser, just north of Winter Park Resort.

Read more from our partner, .

For four years, the property next to his house on York Street in Denver’s City Park neighborhood had devolved into a nightmare. Squatters set up camp in the abandoned 3,300-square-foot apartment building, he said. There was rampant drug use and frequent police presence. Last spring, a fire erupted on the back porch, sending plumes of smoke into Francisco’s residence and threatening to ignite other houses on the block.

“It’s been 24/7 stress having to live here,” Francisco said.

So when John Crays, a local investor, approached Francisco last year, he was immediately intrigued. Under Denver city ordinance, a neighborhood landowner is afforded what is known as a against the owner of a neglected or derelict property.

But these systems are difficult for the average homeowner to navigate. So Crays proposed an alternative: Francisco could assign his right of action to the investor, who knows the ins and outs of the city and court system. Ultimately, a judge appointed a caretaker to take possession of the property, and, eventually, the house will be sold.

“It was a leap of faith, but I was desperate,” Francisco said. “John has been a huge help.”

Crays has been making the same house calls all around the city, convincing discontented neighbors to let him take their problems off their hands. With the help of a housing attorney, Crays has begun to tackle Denver’s through civil court actions designed to pry troubled properties from their absentee owners.

The city seems happy to let him do his thing. Denver officials say they’re reluctant to take people’s property away and have a high constitutional bar to clear if they choose to do so. Plus, the city attorney’s office, which prosecutes such cases, has limited bandwidth to tackle this problem.

Denver has only moved for a court-appointed caretaker for problem properties four times since the start of 2025 — and city officials acknowledged that two of them were in response to Crays filing his own lawsuits.

“Folks are struggling and having to deal with a nightmare every single day,” Crays said. “There’s finally an answer that won’t take years or decades.”

Denver needs a method for dealing with problematic properties, said Zach Neumann, co-founder and CEO at the , a nonprofit organization that helps people facing eviction and foreclosure.

The question, he said, is whether that should be in the hands of private investors or whether a community ownership model could lead to more equitable outcomes.

“The tools being used here are some of the most coercive legal tools available, so they’re ripe for abuse,” Neumann said.

Genesis of a plan

Crays first took an interest in neglected properties 15 years ago after seeing one in his Baker neighborhood.

Unhoused individuals had set up camp in the backyard, while rodents and raccoons turned the house into their own.

Crays learned that Denver keeps a , which it updates quarterly. The July document lists 310 properties across Denver’s 11 City Council districts.

For a property to be declared a it generally must be an unoccupied building that city inspectors have identified as unsafe, a nuisance, habitually in violation of city codes, or at least one year behind in property taxes.

The city can issue fines if the property owner doesn’t submit a remedial plan or doesn’t comply with registration requirements. And yet, the same properties continue to remain on the city’s list year after year.

Crays figured he’d show up to a hearing for the property, at which he assumed the city would take action. He also approached the house’s owner, gauging whether he wanted to sell. That owner, he said, expressed no interest in fixing up the property or putting it up for sale.

Fifteen years later, the house at 119 Ellsworth Ave. remains on the city’s list.

“That was the genesis of finding a more effective method,” Crays said.

Early last year, Crays started reaching out to neighbors of the neglected properties on the city’s list. He found that “nothing was happening at the pace that would make much of a difference,” he said.

The city’s lien process simply wasn’t moving the needle, Crays said. Whether it’s $999 or $35,000, he said, if a property owner doesn’t care about liens, another won’t change their behavior.

“Cities in general are a little hamstrung,” he said. “They can’t be as effective of a tool as a private business owner.”

allows the city, an affected neighboring landowner or any other person who has suffered damages due to the condition of a property to bring legal action against an owner who refuses to fix up their building.

These parties can request an injunction ordering the owner to follow court directives; ask for the appointment of a receiver to take possession of the property to complete all work needed to make the place habitable; or petition the court to demolish the property.

Crucially, neighbors can also sign over their rights to a private party, such as Crays.

‘A little bit of hope’

Susan Bingler bought her first home in 2019 in Denver’s Chaffee Park neighborhood.

About three years ago, the house next door became abandoned. Bingler watched as people set up encampments on the property, openly used and sold drugs, and once set a truck on fire. People living there have kicked in her fence and threatened her safety, she said. Bingler began carrying pepper spray every time she took her dog out.

One day in November, she looked at her Ring camera and saw someone outside the house. As she readied to call the police again, she stopped. This person didn’t look like the normal crew hanging around the property.

That’s when she met Crays, who explained his plan for Denver’s neglected buildings. Bingler immediately bought in.

“I told him I’ve been working with the city for seven years and I’m sick of being afraid to live in my own home,” she said. “Someone finally showing up gives me a little bit of hope that I can one day feel comfortable in my own backyard.”

Bingler signed a document, assigning her rights as a neighbor to Crays.

The investor, under this arrangement, takes on all responsibility and legal fees associated with the lawsuit and doesn’t charge the neighbors anything for the service. Crays, though, does stand to benefit financially if a court awards damages. He also has the opportunity to bid on the properties if they go up for auction.

On Nov. 17, a limited liability company associated with Crays filed a lawsuit in Denver District Court, alleging that the building at 4801 Shoshone St. was a “nuisance property” full of vagrants and criminals. The property owner, Julie Wiley, hasn’t been seen for a year and may actually be dead, the complaint states.

Wiley could not be reached for comment.

Thus began the winding legal process, one in which the property owner did not participate.

In June, a judge granted a default judgment against the owner for $250,000. Weeks later, the same judge directed the Denver Sheriff Department to enforce the judgment through the sale of the property.

Crays, through his LLC, will receive the money from the eventual sale since he’s the named plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The investor and his attorney, Christopher Conant, have been following this same playbook around the city.

Crays said he didn’t know how many neglected properties he’d targeted. Court records show the pair has filed lawsuits in at least eight cases since the start of last year under various LLCs. In four cases, Crays said a judge has either appointed a receiver or the house in question has been sold at auction.

One of these homes he purchased himself, a 1,600-square-foot, two-bedroom house in Curtis Park. Denver property records show the house has been and is being . Crays, through one of his LLCs, paid $50,000 for it at auction.

To supplement the legal action, Conant has been filing records requests with the city’s , seeking details of enforcement actions taken by the city against properties on the neglected and derelict building list.

Nine times out of 10, Crays said, the absentee property owners inherited the home but don’t live there. Many can’t be located or don’t have an interest in engaging.

Nearly all the property owners The Post attempted to contact for this story did not have working numbers or did not return messages seeking comment. Some were dead.

In one case, the listed owner on a property in Washington Park West said he didn’t even know he owned the home until the reporter contacted him.

Earl Broderson, the sole listed owner for 749 S. Lincoln St., said he was part of an investment group some 20 years ago that flipped Denver properties. He said his partners defrauded him and that he didn’t have many records. Broderson said he had no idea Crays had filed suit against him over the derelict house.

“It’s not in my nature to neglect things,” he said. “I feel sad for the neighbors. I’m gonna have to apologize to some people.”

Some owners, though, are around — and fighting back.

Flavia Montecinos owns a million-dollar home along Denver’s East Seventh Avenue that has been coined the “Poop House” after neighbors flung bags of excrement onto the property to protest its derelict conditions.

Crays and Conant filed suit against Montecinos in October, using the same rights afforded to them by neighbors, as they sought to get a receiver appointed or require the owner to demolish the house.

Montecinos did not respond to messages from The Post, but told BusinessDen last year that the property was under a remedial plan with the city and that she was about to get a permit to resume work on the house. A city spokesperson confirmed the remedial plan was approved.

In November, Montecinos countersued Crays over what she said were harassing calls from neighbors and derogatory signs on the property.

“The plaintiff is an opportunist and has purchased claims belonging to ‘neighborhood owners,’” she wrote in her Nov. 4 countersuit, “and seeks to delay and impair the construction.”

Another homeowner in Arapahoe County sued Crays last year, alleging the investor did not disclose issues with the property before he sold it to them in 2022. Crays also did not obtain construction permits for work conducted on the house, the lawsuit alleged.

A jury in May awarded the couple $72,500, finding Crays liable for breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation and false representation. Crays is appealing the case. His lawyer, in a statement, noted the jury awarded only $2,500 for the breach-of-contract claim, “a result that reflects the jury’s rejection of the vast majority of the allegations in the case.”

Crays told The Post that he hired a general contractor for the work and that those individuals never obtained the correct permits.

“I hired the wrong contractor, but I didn’t do anything dishonest,” Crays said.

Limited bandwidth from the city

The city appears content to let the private investors run point on neglected properties.

The , since the start of last year, has filed or joined motions for receivers — the court-appointed caretakers — four times: two were in response to Crays filing suit against neglected and derelict properties; one was led by a neighbor who hired their own attorney; and the last was a joint effort with the city’s .

The Community Planning and Development Department has a committee that considers these properties, which the city calls “the worst of the worst.”

“The bar is so high for us,” said James Hicks, the city’s neglected and derelict properties administrator. “It’s not something we take lightly.”

He acknowledged that the city attorney’s office has “limited bandwidth” to tackle these cases.

Crays knows the city only moves for a receiver as a “last resort.” But for him, “it’s the thing I’m shooting for in some cases.”

Courtney Ronner, a city spokesperson, said the department understands neglected properties are an area of concern for residents. She pointed to the recent creation of a new inspector position that focuses solely on these types of properties, as well as dozens of hearings designed to spur owners into action.

Meanwhile, the Community Planning and Development Department worked with the City Council to develop more stringent enforcement mechanisms that will soon allow the city to issue higher fines to neglectful owners, along with stricter requirements and improved procedures.

“That said, all situations are different and there are many reasons why a property may fall into disrepair,” Ronner said. “Some properties become neglected because the owners have passed away or fallen on hard times. The city must balance the impact on the surrounding neighbors with the rights of property owners who are owed due process.”

Neumann, the foreclosure and eviction defense attorney, said he wonders whether the current approach — letting private investors collect judgments and capitalize on foreclosures — is the best way for a city to deal with blight.

The system, he said, is built on default judgments, which occur when a court rules in favor of a plaintiff because the defendant failed to respond to a lawsuit or missed a court date.

“That process can proceed against a party who may not know what’s going on or doesn’t have the resources to fight it,” Neumann said. “That can introduce risk for consumers.”

A recent example in Denver points to another option.

In 2017, the city pushed for a receiver and auction of a neglected property in Denver’s Cole neighborhood that was owned by former Colorado legislator and Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights author Douglas Bruce.

At auction, a private foundation partner of , a nonprofit organization that operates affordable housing complexes, bought the land for $4.63 million and converted it into . The organization also sold a parcel of the property at a steep discount to Habitat for Humanity, which built 17 townhomes to sell.

But the city could only get the property to auction; it couldn’t determine who bought the land and for how much. Mile High Ministries raised major capital to make it happen and certainly did not get a discount, said Jeff Johnsen, the organization’s executive director and CEO.

Detroit also serves as a good example of what can be done with a community ownership model.

Officials in 2008 established the , a public-benefit corporation dedicated to transforming vacant and abandoned properties into “inclusive community assets.” The city manages nearly 60,000 properties and has sold tens of thousands of homes and vacant lots since its inception for prices well below typical market value.

Neumann acknowledged that dealing with blight remains a complicated question with no easy answers.

“In the absence of a well-funded community ownership approach, the use of these types of legal tools is probably better than nothing,” he said.

Crays, for his part, said he was just operating as an investor at the beginning of all this. Now he’s seen that his work goes beyond the dollars and cents.

“I didn’t see how much impact I was gonna make on neighborhoods struggling with these properties,” he said. “After dealing with so many of these families — the situations they have to live with — I have a lot of sympathy for these people.”

But when Clayton Homes announced in December that it was shutting down the state’s largest modular manufacturing plant, located in Adams County, it raised a critical question.

If Clayton, the nation’s leading manufactured homebuilder, couldn’t justify operating in Colorado, what are the survival odds for the 18 newer and much smaller home-construction innovators the state has backed in recent years?

Before the housing crash in the late 2000s, Colorado was home to a half-dozen modular factories. Clayton’s Heibar facility, formerly known as Precision Building Systems, part of Oakwood Homes, was the last of that generation to finally call it quits.

Enter , which is trying to fill the void, to the point of acquiring equipment and hiring some of the workers let go last year by Clayton’s Heibar Installation plant.

Vederra’s 140,000-square-foot facility in Aurora is two-thirds the size of the shuttered Heibar plant. And the company says it has co-developed a proprietary model to create factory-built homes and apartments at a significantly lower cost.

Founder Nathan Peterson, who has spent 25 years in the modular industry, pointed with pride during a factory tour on the equipment deals he managed to land, some at pennies on the dollar.

He is leasing space rather than buying land for the factory. He has avoided investing heavily in robotics, in part because he lacks the money, but also because it would create a burdensome overhead when work orders slow.

Silicon Valley tried to address the inefficiencies in the home construction industry through a startup called Katerra, which deployed advanced robotics and software throughout.

Katerra was a private equity darling until it burned through $2.4 billion in six years before abruptly liquidating in June 2021. Its sudden failure left two Denver apartment buildings and a hotel in limbo, although all three were eventually completed.

Equity investors and unsecured creditors weren’t so fortunate.

Vederra Modular, by contrast, represents a bootstrap venture, one that is relying heavily on state support but also finding a way to lower costs.

In 2024, the collateral support via the Innovative Housing Incentive Program, through Colorado’s economic development office, and $3.5 million in working capital from the state’s Proposition 123 Affordable Housing Financing Fund, administered by the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority.

Peterson acknowledged his factory wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without state funds, which have some strings attached — the creation of 150 local jobs and 316 affordable housing units a year.

“Vederra is one of a growing number of Colorado companies developing innovative new off-site construction methods such as modular, panelization, 3D printing, foundation and framing kits, and composite wood technologies,” said Hilary Cooper, director of Innovative Funding for Housing Programs at the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

Rather than betting big on one technology or a couple of companies, the state has spread its wagers across 18 housing innovators in 12 counties. The target they have set is the construction of 7,000 housing units a year, which would represent a sizeable chunk of the 35,000 or so building permits pulled in the state in 2024.

Over time, the hope is that innovation can shrink the state’s shortfall, which the State Demography Office estimated last fall at 106,000 homes and apartments.

“By helping these companies launch and grow, we can help more Coloradans live close to their jobs, and in communities they love,” Cooper said.

Modular construction involves building components, such as walls or trusses, or entire structures, inside a factory, rather than on the home site. Assembly lines can run day and night, protected from the elements, making for a more efficient and attractive work environment. Quality control is easier to maintain, and waste is much lower.

Completed components ship to the home site, where they are assembled or put on a foundation. Modular construction promises lower costs, higher quality and much faster completion time. But factories need a steady flow of orders to support their overhead, and that went away after orders dried up during the housing crash in the late 2000s.

Workforce housing in the mountains

With the Front Range currently facing a glut of apartments, Vederra Modular has zeroed in on the affordable housing market in resort communities where the shortfall remains acute.

The approach of building energy-efficient modules in a factory, while the land is prepared, aligns better with the short building season faced in mountain communities, said Paul Capps, president of Summit Housing Group in Missoula, Mont.

Summit Housing and the town of Granby are currently developing a 66-unit project called the Summit at Granby Apartments for people earning between 30% and 60% of the area median income in Grand County. That would likely put rents in the range of $600 to $1,200 a month for a two-bedroom unit based on the AMI.

They are also developing a related 75-unit workforce housing development within Nuche Village, which targets workers making 80% to 120% of the area’s median income.

Summit expects to close on its construction loans within the next 30 days, at which point it will give Vederra Modular the go-ahead to start assembling modules.

“We hope that the boxes can be built and shipped up there by November of this year before it gets too cold,” Capps said.

Time is money when it comes to construction. Each month of delay will cost Summit $100,000 in interest payments on its construction loans, he said.

Having apartments completed and occupied in one year rather than in two or three years could save Summit Housing between $1.2 million and $2.4 million in financing costs, he estimates.

Modules currently take about three weeks to build, Peterson said, and the company is working on a real-time labor management software called Vederra OS to keep the assembly line flowing more smoothly by reducing the idle time of workers.

Savings in the void

One of the key innovations developed by Peterson, in partnership with Dean Dalvit, owner of EVstudio in Denver, is a construction method known as Alt-Mod.

Traditional modular designs contain complete walls and floors ready to be shipped to the construction site. That allows boxes, which can contain a full room or a room and parts of other rooms, to be more easily stacked on top of or next to each other.

However, the convenience in assembly comes with a trade-off: overbuilt walls and floors and wasted construction materials.

Vederra’s method, which will be tested in Granby, only builds enough of the walls and floors to interlock with other modules.

“We intentionally leave a void space,” Peterson said. “That cuts the number of boxes needed in half.”

The approach involves more finishing work onsite, but it saves between 15% to 20% over traditional modular methods, according to EVstudio.

For The Summit at Granby, a traditional modular approach would require 93 boxes with a component cost estimated at  $13.7 million. The Alt-Mod method reduces the box count to 47 and brings the component costs to $9.4 million.

The system, however, does require more on-site labor to complete the unfinished spaces. Those costs rise to $1.93 million versus $581,000.

All in, the Summit at Granby carries a price tag of $18.7 million versus $22.6 million using more traditional modular methods, a savings of 17%.

Rodger Hara, an affordable housing industry consultant, said better economies of scale mean more affordable homes can be built.

Vederra and EVstudio appear to have made a promising breakthrough in that regard, he added.

Capps said lower costs can make the difference between an affordable project winning tax credits and getting completed or staying on the drawing board. And that can make the difference between workers in a community having a place to lay their heads near where jobs are or having to make long commutes on icy roads.

“The Alt-Mod program is a cost-saver and a game-changer in the affordable housing space,” he said.

Emergency housing on the go

Another innovation that Vederra is working on involves moveable “pop-up” factories that can be brought into disaster areas or into remote areas without homebuilders.

Vederra Onsite is developing a system to quickly set up 60,000-square-foot factories capable of producing 350 homes a year in areas where the housing stock has been destroyed or isn’t keeping up.

The idea is to put factories close to where homes are needed, whether it is a hurricane-scoured Gulf Coast community or a fire-scorched mountain town. As an added benefit, the factories could provide 50 to 75 jobs to residents who might otherwise be unemployed after a natural disaster.

Factories could also be set up in isolated places with acute housing shortages, like North Dakota’s Williston Basin experienced during the shale oil boom from 2006 to 2014.

Peterson said the Colorado Department of Local Affairs is funding a pilot plant. He is working to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency interested.

“We are trying to take one to Hawaii,” he said.

A catastrophic wildfire in August 2023 killed 102 residents of Lahaina in Maui and destroyed about 1,900 homes and apartments. Nearly three years later, only 231 replacement homes have been completed, with building permits issued for another 549, according to a .

In January, Colorado extended a $1 million line of credit through Proposition 123 and a $1.8 million loan through the Innovative Housing Incentive Program for a pilot project to assemble the first pop-up factory.

After the homes are built, the factories can then be packed up and moved to the next crisis zone as needed, Peterson said.

The median price of a residence sold in the first half of the year is running at $599,950, according to the .

In a refrain that Talking Heads fans can appreciate, that matches the $600,000 median sales price in the first half of 2025, the $595,000 median in the first half of 2024 and the $600,000 median price in early 2022.

Outside 2023, when prices dipped a little more, the median sales price band has stayed in a very tight range over the past four years.

What has moved around more are condo prices, which are down about 5% or $20,000 compared to the first half of 2022, according to DMAR counts.

That reflects higher homeowners association fees, which are being pushed up by rising insurance and maintenance costs.

Mortgage rates are also playing in a tight octave. They averaged 5.7% for a 30-year loan in the middle of 2022, but were at around 6.92% in June 2024 and 6.4% last month.

That doesn’t imply that affordability doesn’t remain an issue. Insurance, property taxes, and HOA fees are higher than they were in 2022. And prices did get ahead of wages.

Yet, consumer inflation has risen nearly 14% in the past four years, so stable home prices represent a “real” discount for households that have seen their wages rise.

“The market has been resilient, given the amount of economic chaos and uncertainty. This year, we have had inflation increasing and a war with Iran. Midterm elections are coming,” said Amanda Snitker, a local Realtor who heads DMAR’s Market Trends Committee.

The busy spring selling season hit its peak in April rather than May or June. But an early shift into the summer season isn’t rare, she said.

Closings fell 6.6% between May and June to 3,924, and are down 5.6% from June of last year. But over the past four years, they have stayed eerily stable at between 21,000 to 22,000 sales in the first six months of the year.

In June, the median sold price for a single-family home was $675,000, while the median price for a condo or townhome that sold was $391,750.

New listings dipped 4% on the month and 3% year-over-year, a sign that homeowners aren’t feeling pressure to dump inventory on the market. Sellers, however, are under mounting pressure to make sure their homes show well and don’t come with deferred maintenance, Snitker said.

The mid-year inventory of listings was at 12,744 on June 30, down slightly from 14,007 at that point in 2025, but more than double the inventory levels seen in 2022 and 2023.

Barring a major shift in the economy or interest rates, Snitker sees the region’s housing market continuing to coast along its current path.

“The variable most at play is mortgage rates. Unless that changes in a meaningful way, we won’t see much difference for the second half of the year,” Snitker said.

Home prices will remain flat, and metro Denver’s inventory of listings will tighten a bit, she predicts.

But not everyone watching the market thinks it will follow the same trajectory. a real estate data platform and advisory service based in Florida, places Denver and the broader Colorado market high on its list for an impending correction.

CEO Nick Gerli forecasts a 5.9% decline in Colorado home prices and an 8.9% decline in metro Denver home prices a year from now.

“Prices across significant portions of the state are projected to decline over the next 12 months,” Gerli notes in an email. “This is not bad news. This is the reset buyers have been waiting for.”

If his forecast pans out, Denver buyers and sellers might soon switch their tune from “Once in a Lifetime” to “Burning Down the House.”

Both times, he has received zero offers, as in none, nada, zip.

“If someone came to the door and said I will offer you $180,000, I would say, ‘Great, take it!’ ” he said.

After failing to find a buyer on the second go-around with a list price of $259,000 last spring, he rented out his condo again, even though it meant losing $300 a month.

The U.S. housing market is not performing the way buyers, sellers, and the agents who represent them had expected this year.

It has even tripped up housing experts, such as the National Association of Realtors chief economist Lawrence Yun, who thought a rebound would finally arrive in 2026.

After a series of sluggish years, Yun had predicted a 14% gain in home sales nationally based on mortgage rates dropping below 6%.

Now he predicts only a 4% increase in sales and a 4% gain in home prices this year, with mortgage rates averaging around 6.5%.

He hasn’t given up on a double-digit increase in sales, but has pushed it out to next year.

“I think the housing market is bottoming in terms of unit sales — it’s pretty much occurring at the moment. It’s just a question of how much of an increase we can anticipate,” Yun told attendees at the earlier this month.

His recalibration traces back to weaker-than-expected job growth and the headfake 30-year mortgage rates made after the conflict with Iran reignited inflationary pressures.

Federal Reserve rate cuts, which were widely expected in 2026, appear to be off the table for now. Yields on the 10-year Treasury notes, which heavily influence mortgage rates, remain higher than expected.

If affordability is one pillar of a healthy housing market, a strong job market is another. U.S. job counts are at a record level, which should translate into a record number of home sales, Yun said.

That isn’t the case. Although the headline number is strong, Yun said that about half of states, including Colorado, have lost jobs over the past year.

“Housing has been in a recession for some years — essentially since mortgage rates spiked in 2022,” Selma Hepp, chief economist with Cotality, said at the NAREE conference. “And that has led to very low housing market activity, and also very low turnover.”

Home sales, measured against the number of households, are the weakest they have been since the early 2000s, when the country was dealing with the tech and telecom bust, Hepp said.

In a statistic that is not widely understood, per-household sales are weaker than they were during the housing downturn of the late ’00s.

And while home prices aren’t crashing as they did during the housing bust, they aren’t keeping pace with inflation. And Denver’s housing market is one of the weakest anywhere when it comes to price appreciation.

Cotality helps assemble the , a closely watched home price measure.

Denver has consistently ranked at or near the bottom for its annual change in home prices in recent months.

In February, Denver dropped below Tampa to claim the biggest annual decline in home values among the nation’s 20 largest metros.

In March, Seattle, whose index fell 2.5%, overtook Denver, down 2%, for the bottom spot.

Add in inflation, and owners in weaker markets like Denver are losing more ground than they may realize, noted economist Elliot Eisenberg in an email.

In Denver, the median price of a single-family home sold in May is up 1.5% year-over-year, while the median condo and townhome price is down 2.5%, according to the .

Denver’s annual inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, reached 5% in May. Adjusting for inflation, the typical condo or townhome owner has lost 7.5% in “real” value.

In metro Denver, year-to-date home sales volumes are down 3% from levels seen the past three years and a quarter from the peak year of 2022.

And after accelerating the past two years, new listings are down 6% so far this year in Denver compared to last, a sign of seller fatigue.

The spring home-selling season, Eisenberg declares, was a “failure.”

Zillow’s chief economist, Mischa Fisher, also speaking at NAREE, said the unexpected rise in inflation this year didn’t push rates higher than where they were last year.

But they have acted as a restraint that consumers can’t shake off. And the chains serve as a reminder that the promises of relief, long anticipated, have yet to arrive.

“Mortgage payments have doubled, while incomes are up a third in the last six years,” Fisher said. “It really reset what it means to be a homeowner, and it reset how accessible homeownership is.”

Historically, 30-year mortgage rates are below their long-term average, Yun said.

But a stretch of unprecedentedly low mortgage rates of around 3% in 2020 and 2021 transformed the housing market in ways it is still trying to work through.

Yun and Hepp don’t forecast mortgage rates dipping below 5%, a level that would boost affordability for potential buyers and free more current owners to sell, any time soon.

Patience pays off for buyers

For Sundeep Viswanathan and Elizabeth Perkins-Pride, the rebound in interest rates this year has worked in their favor.

The married couple has kept a close eye on their Observatory Park neighborhood near the University of Denver for the past three years in search of a bigger home to accommodate their family.

But until recently, the market was working against them. Prices were elevated, the inventory was tight, and as buyers, they had almost no negotiating power.

Things have changed, even in one of Denver’s hottest neighborhoods.

Observatory Park homes that were going for $4 million three years ago can now be had for closer to $3 million, Viswanathan said.

“We have a lot of leverage and try to negotiate as much as we can,” he said. “We will try to get a good deal, and if we don’t, we will walk.”

The couple expects to close on a home next month that has been on the market for six months and is seeing a significant price drop.

The couple, who moved from California in 2013, paid off their original mortgage. They don’t wear the “golden handcuffs” of a low-rate mortgage that can’t be replaced.

Because they are bringing so much equity to the table, they are less sensitive to what interest rates are doing. But freeing up that equity will require them to sell.

“The challenge for buyers waiting on rates to come down is that everyone else is waiting for the same thing,” said Bret Weinstein, founder of Guide Real Estate, and the couple’s agent.

Lower rates will mean more demand and competition, which will cause buyers to lose some of the leverage they currently have working in their favor.

“For buyers who can comfortably make the numbers work right now, this market can offer a significant advantage,” he said.

The condo market is a quagmire

Although the lack of affordability remains a major headwind for the market, condos and townhomes, which represent an important pathway into ownership for many first-time buyers, are struggling.

Insurance costs have risen sharply, driving up association fees. Older developments are coping with deferred maintenance costs. Property taxes are higher.

Make has felt all those pressures and then some. He considered selling back in 2016 when he and his soon-to-be wife moved into a single-family home in the suburbs of Jefferson County.

But it didn’t feel right, and for years, the condo was a profitable rental. When he needed to raise some cash in 2021, he took out a home equity loan.

He thought he had locked in a low fixed rate, but it was actually a variable rate loan, one that is up to 8%.

“Condos are a tough hold right now, and they are a tough sell,” he said. “I thought this was going to be a long-term retirement plan.”

Condos, especially older and more affordable units, are in direct competition with apartments. Denver is among the cities that have seen a surge in new apartment supply this decade.

Fisher notes that in 2019, only 4.4% of Zillow rental listings came with concessions like a month or two of free rent. Now that is up to 40% nationally, with Denver and Austin approaching 70% of rentals offering concessions.

Zillow’s shows that typical rents in Denver are only 1% higher than the national average, while home prices are 30%  higher.

Over seven years, a Denver renter will come out ahead of a buyer by $108,151, assuming 3% home price appreciation and 3% rent inflation.

More renters who might have bought a condo in the past are staying put.

Yet, the market defies absolutes. Some listings still sell in a few days, while others languish for months, agents note.

“I’ve been traveling around the nation this year, and I am hearing a lot from you that it����ap a really wonky market,” Jessica Lautz, NAR’s deputy chief economist, told a gathering of Realtors on June 16 in Washington, D.C.

“You’ll list a home on the market, and sometimes it’ll sit for months. And sometimes it����ap going to have multiple offers, and they can be next door to each other,” she said.

Weinstein said interest rates are definitely impacting the market, but it����ap still very neighborhood-specific.

“Buyers are still active and getting deals done,” he said.

Absent a big drop in mortgage rates or a recession, Denver’s housing market may remain stuck.

And many people will find themselves in a holding pattern, as Viswanathan did for three years and as Make continues to be.

Aspen, Vail and Telluride aren’t the most expensive starter home markets in Colorado. Instead, it is Cherry Hills Village, not so much of a surprise, and smaller enclaves like Bow Mar and Columbine Valley, according to an

Zillow defines a starter home in a given city as one in the 5th to 35th percentile in terms of price. It takes an average of that group, which works out to around the 20th percentile, and uses that as the typical price for a starter home.

In Cherry Hills Village, a “starter” home averages $2.2 million. In Bow Mar, near Littleton and spilling into Jefferson County, it is $1.64 million. And in Columbine Valley, southeast of Bow Mar and surrounded by Littleton, it is $1.2 million, according to Zillow. In metro Denver, starter homes average $405,573.

Nationally, there are 242 cities where the typical starter home is worth more than $1 million, up from 80 in February 2020, before the pandemic set off a surge in home prices.

California dominates the list with 105 cities having starter homes above $1 million, up from 52 in 2020. New York, which went from 21 to 41, and New Jersey, which went from 1 to 21, saw the biggest percentage gain.

Colorado went from one to three million-dollar-plus starter home markets of the cities that Zillow tracked.

“The pandemic reset the cost of buying a home, spreading million-dollar starter homes from a handful of coastal states to more than two dozen states across the country,” said Kara Ng, senior economist at Zillow, in the report. “But while it may feel like a market of beer tastes at champagne budgets, those million-dollar starter homes are still the exception.”

So what would an “entry-level” buyer trying to break in at the $1 million price point need to earn? Assuming a 10% downpayment, or $100,000, and given a 30-year mortgage rate at 6.5%, a household would need to make $210,000 a year, assuming they didn’t have a lot of other debt and are working with a lenient lender.

But to avoid being stretched too much, defined as devoting more than 30% of their pay to housing, their income should be closer to $250,000.

So how is it even possible that it would be easier for an entry-level homebuyer to get a foot in the door in Vail than in Bow Mar? It mostly comes down to the mix of homes and the high level of public support extended in many ski resort communities.

Aspen and Vail, despite their reputation as ritzy housing markets, have enough one-bedroom condos priced below $1 million to keep them off the list, said Alex Lacter, a communications manager with the Seattle-based company.

Condos represent 54.8% of the homes in Aspen, with one-bedroom condos 16.3% of the inventory, according to Zillow. And while the typical home runs at around $3.3 million, the typical starter home is $860,982.

Vail’s condo share is just shy of 63%, with one-bedroom units 12.6% of the market. The typical home runs $1.7 million, but the typical starter home is at $860,133, nearly as much as Aspen.

That contrasts with Cherry Hills Village, Bow Mar and Columbine Valley, where strict covenants block the development of attached housing. The rules are skewed in favor of large lot single-family homes, and exclusionary zoning makes those communities more homogeneous in their housing stock.

Mountain resort areas, by contrast, are leaders in inclusionary zoning, or trying to provide homes that are affordable across a range of incomes, even though that has become an increasingly difficult task, and often involves the luck of the draw, literally via a lottery.

About 70% of the homes in Aspen that are occupied year-round have some form of subsidization or deed restrictions, according to the Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority.

That has allowed the ritzy resort to keep its starter housing stock priced below $1 million, while also allowing it to have bragging rights to the first home sale in the state to top $100 million. That $108 million sale in 2024 took place in the Red Mountain area.

Vail’s housing market has a higher share of vacation homes and a lower level of subsidization, with about 12% of homes deed-restricted, meaning there are limits on how much they can appreciate and resell for.

While Vail’s homes overall are about half as expensive as those in Aspen, its starter homes are comparable in price because of the smaller share of public subsidization.

Home and condo sales declined 4.3% to 4,004 across an 11-county area in May compared to the previous month, and the sales pace fell nearly 7% compared to May 2025. Sellers also showed signs of fatigue, with new listings down 9.5% from April and 17.5% from last year.

“A quiet exhaustion has taken hold on both sides of the transaction table. Homeownership attainability fatigue is leading buyers to pull back and sellers are locked in place,” said Amanda Snitcker, chairwoman of the DMAR Market Trends Committee and a local Realtor in comments accompanying the report.

Inspection contingencies, seller concessions, and rate buydown negotiations are all becoming more common after disappearing during the frenzied market seen in the recent past, she added.

Although prices surged at an unprecedented pace from late 2020 to 2022, they have bounced around in a narrow range since then. Going back to May 2017, median price gains have averaged 6% a year, which is ahead of wage gains, but close to historical rates of appreciation, Snitker said.

The median price of a single-family home sold in May was $675,000, which is up 1.5% over both the past month and the past year. The median price of condos and townhomes sold was $395,000, up 2.6% from April and down 2.5% for a year ago.

The pain point in terms of affordability remains mortgage rates. At today’s median home price, the monthly payment on a home with a 10% downpayment would run $3,498 a month at the current 30-year mortgage rate of 6.5%, compared to $2,580 at the 3.8% mortgage rate in play in May 2020, Snitker said.

“Focusing on a rate solution is far more productive than waiting for a 40% price correction that the data simply does not support. Every 1 percent decline in mortgage rates reduces the monthly payment on today’s median-priced home by approximately $315, a rate buydown or future refinance away from meaningfully changing the affordability equation without requiring any movement in price,” Snitker said.

But looking at the historical average of the 55 years that the 30-year mortgage has been popular, the current rate of around 6.5%, up from 5.99% before the U.S. and Israel began their bombing campaign against Iran at the end of February, is a bargain.

“This is a lower rate than the historical average. It is still a good rate,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the National Association of Realtors, speaking to the National Association of Real Estate Editors in Miami.

Yun had forecast a 14% rise in U.S. existing home sales this year driven by a decline in the 30-year mortgage rate to below 6%. And for a moment, rates did cross that threshold. But after hostilities began with Iran, they have risen back into the mid 6% range.

Yun now predicts that U.S. home sales will increase 4% this year. In metro Denver, home sales through the first five months of the year are down nearly 3% compared to the same period of 2025.

“Maybe we get 14% next year,” he said.