But the market for the past several years has, like an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, found itself stuck in a holding pattern. It isn’t sinking, but it isn’t advancing either.

The number of homes available for sale in metro Denver surged 17.2% last month, from 9,846 in March to 11,539 in April, according to the .

But it is down 3.6% over the year. A similar pattern played out last year, when the inventory jumped 22.5% from March to April to reach 11,964.

The median price of a residential property sold in April was $605,000, up from $590,000 in March. That is close to the $604,000 media price reached in April 2025 and the $602,000 median price measured in April 2024.

For single-family homes, the median price was $670,000, up 4.4% from March, but only $10,000 higher from the price a year earlier. For condos and townhomes, the median price was $385,462, down 0.5% from $387,500 a year earlier.

The number of sales rose 2.35% to 3,926 from March, and is down 5.9% from a year ago. But the year-to-date total of 12,631 is down 3.7% from the same period in 2025, and on par with 2024 and 2023 levels, according to DMAR counts.

The number of days it took a listing to sell was a median of 14 in April, down from 16 in March, and up from 13 days in April 2025. But otherwise, fairly steady.

“There was a time when Denver’s real estate market moved with the seasons,” said Amanda Snitker, chairwoman of the DMAR Market Trends Committee and a local Realtor, in comments accompanying the report.

“Prices climbed each spring, peaked between April and June, then eased into fall. That predictability has faded,” she said.

From 2017 until the pandemic boom, heightened competition in the spring would drive up prices and tighten inventory, Snitker said. That pattern broke when a buying frenzy took the median price from $473,450 in February 2021 to $616,500 in April 2022.

Rising mortgage rates broke the pattern, and the seasonality has yet to fully return, she said.

Snitker advises Realtors to highlight the pattern as one of “stability” rather than “stagnation” with their clients.

But a more negative take points to an impasse that could resolve to the downside. The for Denver dropped 2.2% year-over-year in February, the weakest performance among the 20 major metros that the index tracks.

Denver’s decline was just below Tampa’s 2.1% decline and in contrast to the 0.9% gain for the 20-city index. Chicago’s index was up 5%.

Thom Malone, principal economist at Cotality, said in the report that all the signs of a classic price mismatch between buyers and sellers are emerging.

Many sellers, sitting on ultra-low rate mortgages from earlier this decade, have been able to wait out buyers. But Malone argues that the pressure on sellers to find an exit will only build over time.

“This spring is a critical test. Sellers who sat out last year are relisting, and we may finally see the desperation required to trigger meaningful price cuts.”

Metro Denver’s average apartment rent in the first quarter was $1,758 a month, which was $4 higher than the fourth quarter average but $61 lower than a year earlier, according to an update from the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.

“No news is good news for renters and people in the housing market right now. We didn’t see many changes quarter over quarter,” said Scott Rathbun with Apartment Insights, which puts the report together for the AAMD.

Average monthly rents range from $1,945 in Douglas County to $1,614 in Adams County. The average rent in Denver County, which has the highest amount of new construction and the highest vacancy rates, is $1,789.

Rents are averaging $1,411 a month in 1970s-era apartment buildings and around $2,289 for newer units that came online this decade.

Average rents are back to levels seen in the fourth quarter of 2022, which has improved affordability, Rathbun said. That is without adjusting for inflation or the freebies landlords are increasingly offering to win over new tenants.

Concessions, at a two-decade high, reached 10% of advertised rents, which works out to between four and five weeks for every unit advertised.

Accounting for the more robust concessions, “effective” rents are down 8.6% over the past year, while advertised rents are down a more modest 3.3%, according to Apartment Insights.

Landlords typically don’t extend concessions when leases come up for renewal, but they are also much less likely to try to squeeze out rent hikes above the original rate in this kind of market, Rathbun said.

The region’s apartment vacancy rate fell from 7.6% in the fourth quarter to 7.5% in the first, and it remains above the 7% vacancy rate measured a year earlier.

That rate is for stabilized buildings that have moved beyond their initial renting phase. The vacancy rate is closer to 10.9% when new buildings in the lease-up phase are added into the mix. That is down from a rate above 12% late last year.

“I’m hopeful that the downward pattern of vacancy continues. The number of apartments under construction has continually declined from the 2023 peak, which might lead to fewer deliveries in the coming quarters, giving providers a chance to catch up,” said Erica Sanchez, a vice president of operations with Places Management LLC, and a member of the AAMD board.

Developers delivered 2,796 units in the first quarter, and the market absorbed 3,210 units. But an overhang remains. Over the past year, renters have absorbed 8,893 of the 12,070 units added.

Rathbun said around 24,000 apartments are under construction across metro Denver, which works out to about 12,000 new units a year for the next two years. While below the recent pace, it should keep the market balanced.

The bigger concern comes beyond that. Compared to the peak reached in 2023, the number of proposed units has “fallen off a cliff,” Rathbun said.

An estimated 46,700 apartments across 190 projects are proposed but not yet under construction in metro Denver.

About 20,000 of the proposed units, or around 4 in 10, are tied to projects that rushed to get ahead of Denver’s Expanding Housing Affordability (EHA) policy, which took effect July 1, 2022.

The policy required new apartment projects of 10 or more units to keep between 8% to 12% of units affordable to households making 60% of the area median income or pay something called a linkage fee. Those units must remain income-restricted for 99 years.

Developers filed about three years’ worth of site plans in the month before the new rules took effect, which allowed them to be grandfathered in and not subject to the stricter requirements.

The projects originally had 18 months to break ground, but that deadline has been pushed back a couple of times, with the latest extension about to expire later this year.

On May 4, a proposal to offer a 36-month extension will be voted on by the Denver City Council.

Rathbun said a much better route would be for Denver to repeal its EHA requirements, given that market rents are now affordable to households making 60% to 70% of the area median income.

That is showing up through a rising vacancy rate for affordable developments, which are struggling to compete with market-rate units.

“It would make it easier for developers to build new units and fill that (future) backlog,” he said.

An earlier version of the story said rents were back to 2021 levels, but the AAMD updated the figure to 2022 levels.��

After all that work, the Lakewood City Council finished the job in December, passing final changes to the city’s land-use blueprint designed to pave the way for the construction of more diverse and dense housing, like triplexes and quadplexes, anywhere in Colorado’s fifth-largest city.

“It was very condensed, very intense in terms of the time we put into it,” Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom said.

Fast-forward to the April 7 special election brought to a ballot by residents unhappy with the changes.��When the��initial results popped up on the city’s website at 8 p.m. — showing — Strom was dumbfounded.

“In that first 10 seconds when you get those results, it was a pretty good kick in the gut,” she said.

How Lakewood might proceed from here is anything but clear. The special election result was just the latest twist in a yearslong battle over how to make housing more affordable for Coloradans, especially those in low-income and working-class families who have largely been priced out of the market.

The election also highlighted a battle that has played out in other Colorado communities in recent years. In , Steamboat Springs and Littleton, among other places, attempts by elected leaders to spur housing price relief through zoning changes or affordable housing initiatives have run headlong into residents’ desire to keep their communities as they are.

Lakewood’s mayor is still committed to changing the city’s zoning code, but she acknowledged that she and her colleagues may need to take a different approach.

“The code is so complex — it’s hard to expect a voter to understand it to that degree,” Strom said.

Karen Gordey headed up the Lakewood Citizens Alliance, one of several issue committees that formed last year to collect signatures for a citizen ballot initiative to repeal the city’s zoning updates. The 15-year Lakewood resident said the city tried to do too much all at once, while failing to appreciate how important the look and feel of a neighborhood is to those who live there.

“The hope is that this election sent a strong message to the council — to listen to the citizens and not make radical zoning changes,” Gordey said. “This went way too far.”

State Rep. Rebekah Stewart, a former Lakewood councilwoman, worked on earlier iterations of the code changes that voters spurned. She said the city’s leaders crafted ambitious ordinances that provided the tools and incentives to alleviate Lakewood’s housing shortage.

The state had an estimated shortfall of 106,000 homes and apartments in 2023, the most recent year available, and needed to build at least 34,100 housing units per year, not counting vacation homes, over the next 10 years to keep up with slower population growth, according to .

Despite a��recent slowdown in metro Denver home prices that have surged upward for a decade or more, the median sale price of a single-family home came in at $630,000 in February — up 2.4% from January’s $615,000.

Price relief won’t come, Stewart said, if everything simply stays as it is.

“This has been years and years of work and community stakeholding that was undone in a single night,” she said of the Lakewood council’s redrafting process during the last half of 2025. “We have a problem, and the election didn’t solve that.”

Complying with state housing law

Voters’ decision earlier this month may also have raised another problem: Lakewood’s compliance with state laws passed in 2024 and last year that aim to increase and diversify housing stock across the state.

The bills, passed by legislative Democrats, broadly require cities — especially those on the Front Range — to implement various zoning changes and undertake detailed planning to ease and incentivize housing development. The measures push accessory dwelling units, the packing of more residential units around transit stops and a reduction in the square footage that must be devoted to parking.

“I do believe Lakewood is now out of compliance with state laws, which is really unfortunate,” Stewart said.

But Strom isn’t convinced that her city is crosswise with state law. The mayor is confident the city can tweak its code less comprehensively to ensure it is complying with the state’s housing mandates.

“There may be instances where we can do little one-offs (to come into compliance),” Strom said.

A shows 18 cities out of compliance with one or more of the housing laws passed over the last two years. Lakewood is not one of them, but the list is current as of April 1, which preceded Lakewood’s special election.

Cities and counties that don’t comply with the laws run the risk of losing out on tens of millions of dollars in state grant funding, Gov. Jared Polis’ office has said.

Several metro Denver cities sued the state last year over the laws, claiming that the mandates encroach on their home-rule authority to manage land-use policies as they see fit. Several of those plaintiff communities, including Aurora, Westminster, Lafayette and Centennial, appear on the state’s list as being out of compliance with the state statutes.

The Lafayette City Council is in the homestretch of , an effort that began last year. A survey conducted by the city showed mixed support for the proposed changes, with about 48% of respondents backing “missing middle” housing in a limited way, particularly if it’s paired with strong design standards to maintain neighborhood character, according to .

Missing middle refers to housing of slightly higher density, including duplexes, triplexes and attached townhomes, that might fit near single-family homes without being as imposing as large apartment buildings.

The Denver Post requested an interview with the governor, or an adviser on housing policy, to ascertain what effect the special election results could have on Lakewood’s standing. Polis’ office provided a statement instead.

“The governor is committed to working with Lakewood and other local governments to reduce or eliminate government imposed barriers and red tape that block or increase the cost of housing and we are assessing the impacts of this election,” said Eric Maruyama, a spokesman for the governor.

Max Nardo, a housing and smart growth senior associate with the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, said it wasn’t clear what price communities might pay if they don’t comply with state housing laws. Colorado, he said, didn’t really start addressing housing and zoning issues at the state level until about three years ago. And many of the measures passed by the legislature, he said, are still being rolled out.

The problem is bigger than mere compliance with state laws, Nardo said. Lakewood had gone beyond what the state required, he said.

“Lakewood was doing more — its reforms included smaller homes on smaller lots throughout the city,” Nardo said. “It followed a two-year process and had favorable polling in the community. What more can you ask for?”

His organization put out a news release two days after Lakewood’s special election, calling it a “low-turnout” election that didn’t accurately reflect the will of the city of 156,000 people. The release noted that just over 22,000 voters overturned the zoning changes, “roughly 20% of all registered voters in the city.”

“Research consistently shows that the residents most likely to participate in local zoning debates and special elections tend to be older, wealthier homeowners who bought into their communities years ago at much lower prices, and have more time and capacity to engage in public processes than renters, essential workers, or young families,” the organization said in its release.

Housing policy is necessarily a statewide issue because the housing market is not confined to any one community, Nardo said.

“This outcome underscores that this is a collective action,” he said. “A city cannot solve it by acting alone.”

‘Checks and balances’

Kevin Bommer, the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, called the notion of local governments in Colorado needing to defer to state lawmakers on the subject of housing policy “hogwash.”

Cities and towns are best equipped to know what is needed inside their borders, he said, not part-time legislators who convene for less than five months a year in Denver. The housing laws that the General Assembly passed over the last couple of years created pressure and artificially accelerated a process that takes time and public input, Bommer said.

“If folks at the state Capitol hadn’t pushed this forward with mandates, the municipalities could take the time to work with their citizens and come up with a long-term vision,” he said.

It didn’t surprise him that residents would revolt when they didn’t feel their elected representatives were taking the right approach to overhauling zoning codes in a way that could potentially impact their neighborhoods.

“This clearly shows that residents are the ultimate form of local control. And ultimately, they said the vision that was laid out (by the City Council) was one that they aren’t on board with,” Bommer said. “The last time I checked, that was called participatory democracy — it isn’t always pretty.”

Godrey, who led the charge to repeal Lakewood’s zoning rewrite, said the city could find other ways to address the housing shortage without opening up the city’s many single-family neighborhoods to “blanket upzoning.” Converting vacant office space to residential uses is one approach, she said.

“This election was about having checks and balances — and you got to hear the voice of the people,” she said.

Peter LiFari, the executive director of Maiker Housing Partners, says it’s the powerful emotional element that comes with homeownership that makes the issue difficult to solve locally. Maiker is the housing authority in Adams County.

“Homeowners are highly motivated to protect their most precious asset,” he said. “There are some things that we can’t easily make a decision about at the local level because they’re so visceral.”

Despite the council’s loss at the ballot box this month, LiFari said Lakewood’s attempt to address its housing challenges was far from over. Crafting and refining housing policy takes years, if not decades, he said.

But without that thoughtful work, he said, Colorado is never going to fix its affordable housing crisis.

“I would tell Lakewood to go at it again — it takes a couple of bites at the apple for people to get comfortable with this,” LiFari said.

Strom, the mayor, said the issue may go quiet for a little while as she and her colleagues lick their wounds from what was a bruising electoral battle. But the need to adjust the city’s zoning code to account for Lakewood’s evolving housing situation is not going to disappear.

“This is not over — we have things in the code that need to be updated,” she said.

Storefronts along Walden’s Main Street have emptied, including the 10th Frame, a bowling alley that closed its doors when it failed to find a buyer after more than a year of trying, said Samantha Martin, the county’s administrator and a long-time resident.

“We have talked about it multiple times, and there is no perfect answer,” Martin said of strategies to stem the declines. “Right now we don’t have an action plan.”

Since 2020, Jackson County has lost a larger share of its population, 12.2%, than any county in the state, leaving it with 1,211 people as of June 30, 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Young people continue to depart for better jobs in larger cities. A loyal remnant is aging in place, even when moving to a lower altitude might benefit their health, Martin said. But they can defy time for only so long.

When homes come on the market, some heirs convert the properties to family vacation homes in Colorado’s “moose viewing capital.” If they do get listed, investors looking for short-term rentals snap them up, leaving limited options for anyone looking to relocate.

Long accustomed to drawing people without even trying, Colorado last year experienced its slowest population gains since the late 1980s. Winners and losers are coming into sharper focus as the battle intensifies to retain and attract people.

Defying predictions that the state’s population gains would be back on track by now following the pandemic, a majority of Colorado counties have lost their demographic momentum.

Much of Colorado’s growth is now concentrated in a belt of counties stretching from Weld down to Elbert and El Paso counties, temporarily bypassing Arapahoe, which had the state’s biggest population loss in raw numbers.

Of Colorado’s 64 counties, more than half, 33, lost population last year, including four of the state’s largest: Arapahoe, Denver, Boulder and Pueblo counties.

Resort areas, with some of the highest home prices in the country, are starting to shrink, joining the aging agricultural counties on the Eastern Plains that have suffered a steady drip of population losses for years.

More than a third of Colorado counties have fewer residents than they did in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That group includes Jefferson County, the state’s fourth most populous county.

After Jackson, Sedgwick, Otero, Hinsdale and Pitkin counties have the largest five-year percentage declines in population.

Colorado added 225,688 people in the first half of this decade, including 24,059 last year. A majority of the state’s gains this decade have come from immigration, which contributed 130,218 people. But that source, already down under the Trump administration, may dry up this year.

“Certainly in 2026, we can expect very weak or negative net international immigration to Colorado,” said State Demographer Kate Watkins.

The White House in every major metro area in a news release after the county and metro area Census numbers came out. Metro Denver earned a mention for having one of the biggest declines after Laredo, Texas, where immigration flows dropped 95%.

“In Denver and its suburbs, the net immigration rate fell by almost three-quarters. In the Chicago area, it was slashed by nearly two-thirds,” the release said.

Immigration had been masking big declines in people moving from other states. Domestic net migration was why Colorado averaged population gains of 100,000 people a year in the 1990s, and more than 72,000 a year in the ’00s and ’10s.

Since 2020, it has only contributed 17,729 people total.Until housing costs become more competitive, it is hard to see how it rebounds.

That leaves natural change, or births minus deaths, as the main driver of population growth going forward. In Colorado, that currently contributes a little over 20,000 people a year.

But as more baby boomers die, expect that to shrink too. Nationally, natural decline, or more deaths than births, is expected to set in by 2030. Colorado isn’t expected to hit that grim milestone until 2047.

“We are a young state relative to the nation as a whole,” Watkins said.

Population declines elsewhere will result in fewer adults available to move to Colorado in the years ahead.

Growth is now concentrated mostly in Weld, Douglas, Adams, El Paso, and Larimer counties, which gained a combined 26,678 people last year, more than the statewide population gain.

A lower birth rate, higher living costs that deter domestic migration, and slower immigration are all contributing to more modest population gains. And that slowing has set off a battle to capture whatever population growth is available.

Where the population is shrinking

Arapahoe County led the state with a net gain of 4,621 immigrants last year, but it also saw the most residents move out to other parts of Colorado or other states, 9,859. That contributed to a net loss of 1,940 residents in the 2025 count.

Since 2020, Arapahoe has lost nearly 32,000 residents domestically, which was offset by a gain of nearly 35,000 immigrants.

When immigrants leave Colorado for other states, they count as outbound domestic migrants, Watkins said. That could explain, in part, why counties like Arapahoe and Denver are seeing such large domestic outflows.

So why didn’t more immigrants, as well as other residents, stay put?

“Like every county in Colorado, we’re experiencing a crisis of affordability in the housing market,” said Jill McGranahan, a spokeswoman for Arapahoe County.

To what degree high housing costs pushed immigrants to move to more affordable places is hard to parse out. Some immigrants never intended to land in Colorado in the first place.

In 2023, Denver spent more than $35 million to handle an unexpected surge of immigrants, mostly from Venezuela, including purchasing 14,800 tickets to send them to other cities.

Denver had the state’s second-largest population loss last year at 978, reflecting net domestic outflows of 8,023, less a natural increase of 4,197, and continued immigration of 2,871.

Denver and Arapahoe counties rank high for births, and they should remain gateways for young adults relocating from other states.

Denver has a big surplus of new apartments that is pushing down rents. And home construction is set to take off in Arapahoe County, especially south of the airport.

A harder demographic hurdle to overcome will be a shrinking gap between births and deaths, which Jefferson, Boulder, Pueblo and Mesa counties are staring down.

When there aren’t enough homes available for young families at prices they can afford, they either delay moving forward with children or move elsewhere. Not only is inbound migration limited, but so are future births.

“We wanted to help people age in place and stay in their homes, but what that means is these homes don’t turn over?” asks Phyllis Resnick, executive director of the Colorado Futures Center.

If homes don’t turn over or not enough are built, families wanting to have children are forced to move elsewhere. They might end up in Weld County. Or Idaho or South Carolina.

“Our birth rate and our death rate are getting closer and closer together,” acknowledged Chris O’Keefe, the planning and zoning director for Jefferson County. “People enjoy it here and they age here. People don’t leave their houses.”

Over the past five years, the county has recorded 28,791 births and 26,745 deaths, according to the Census Bureau.

Home to nearly 10% of the state’s population, Jefferson County has contributed only 2.3% of the state’s natural increase since 2020. Denver, by contrast, accounts for 12.3% of the state’s population, but has contributed 22.3% of the natural increase.

Fewer children means fewer enrollments. Jefferson County Public Schools, the state’s second-largest school district, has seen a wave of closures, especially on its eastern side, which has older neighborhoods.

Developments such as Candelas and Leyden Rock further west, by contrast, have brought in young families. But it isn’t enough to offset losses in Lakewood and Wheat Ridge.

Vivian Elementary, where Mollie Crampton had her two young sons enrolled, was among the schools shuttered in 2022.

Declining enrollments are linked to the county’s stagnating population, which in turn, Crampton argues, is linked to the county’s high home prices.

“I think a really big part of it is affordable housing,” she said. “Prices just don’t go down.”

Lakewood enacted rezoning ordinances to permit higher density in an effort to increase supply and lower home prices and rents.

But long-time residents of the state’s fifth largest city, skeptical that the zoning changes would work and worried about crowding and congestion, rallied to call a special election to repeal the measures.

Crampton said she voted early in Tuesday’s election — against repealing the recently enacted rezoning ordinance.

“If it passes, I think a lot of people will leave because they can (only) afford to buy a home in another state, or another county,” Crampton said. “There’s never going to be more inventory.”

According to early results posted by elections officials Tuesday night, voters in Lakewood overwhelmingly approved four measures that restore the zoning code the city had before elected leaders changed it last year to prod more home building.

Pueblo and Mesa counties have had the largest natural decreases this decade — with Pueblo down 2,787 and Mesa down 1,738.

Mesa County has offset that with relatively strong domestic migration this decade, allowing its population to grow by 7,135 people vs. 1,110 for Pueblo.

Fremont County has also managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat, increasing its population by 1,102 this decade, despite a natural decrease of 1,629 people.

Both are retirement havens that have attracted residents from the Front Range with lower living costs, and in the case of Grand Junction, a more temperate climate. Colorado’s aging population is working in their favor.

By contrast, resort areas, where housing costs are so high that even doctors and corporate managers struggle to find affordable accommodations, are seeing residents leave.

Pitkin County, home to Aspen, has seen its population shrink by 4.3% this decade, while San Miguel, home to Telluride, is down by 3.7%, and Eagle County, home to Vail and Beaver Creek, has lost 2.5% of its population.

On the whole, the forecast calls for continued growth, although at a slower pace than in prior decades, Watkins said. Colorado reached 5 million people in 2010 and hit 6 million last year. It should cross 7 million by 2045.

New homes, new faces

Weld County Commissioner Scott James, 63, grew up in LaSalle and has had a front row seat in the county’s transformation from farm and oil fields into Colorado’s fastest growing county.

With 46,992 people added over the past five years, including 7,146 last year, Weld County surpassed Boulder County in population before the pandemic, and last year it surpassed Larimer County.

In 1998, James moved to Johnstown, which had 3,200 people at the time, and he paid $136,400 for a home in what he said represented an “iconic Americana slice of life.”

The town now counts around 21,000 people, who live largely on former farms and ranches, said James, who witnessed the transformation when he was mayor.

“These guys would sit in the back of the room and almost hang their heads — but what choice did they have? The farmer has a chance to cash in on all his hard work,” he said.

One thing that Weld County shares in common with the state’s other growing counties is an openness to home construction. And those new homes open the door to babies.

Weld County has welcomed more than 25,000 babies in the past five years, while Adams County has added 33,349 and Douglas County has added more than 20,000.

“People who want a bigger home and more land, it’s available to them,” said Jeff Keener, president and CEO of the South Metro Denver Chamber, which is based in Lone Tree.

Douglas County hosts the state’s largest master planned community, Sterling Ranch, which has ranked in the top 50 nationally for the past six years and has sold more than 3,000 homes since construction started in 2017.

Parker and Castle Rock have also been actively adding homes at lower price points.

“The home-rule cities have done a really good job of planning for that,” Keener said. “They have worked really hard to put in a wide variation of housing prices.”

With greater housing availability, the fastest-growing counties are also winning when it comes to net domestic migration. Weld County added 31,411 people that way since 2020, while Douglas County added 27,490 and Larimer County added 12,518.

Domestic gains in Weld and Douglas surpass the 17,729 added statewide, which reflects their ability to lure residents from other parts of the state.

James said he sees nothing but opportunity for Weld County, provided people can think differently and stay open to new ideas.

“We are excited about geothermal, we are excited about renewables — and by God, bring on nuclear,” he said. “The fact that Weld County is a county of almost 400,000 people tells me we’re doing it right.”

Update made noon Wednesday: The general location of Jackson County has been updated.

The special election vote strikes a blow against those who have been pushing for more density in the state’s fifth-largest city in the hopes of increasing housing supply and lowering home prices.

The four measures passed by nearly 2-to-1 ratios, with more than 15,000 votes in favor of repealing each ordinance and approximately 8,700 votes to keep them, according to

Tuesday’s special election was set in January after a group of citizens gathered enough signatures to get the measures on the ballot as part of an attempt to reverse the city’s zoning changes.��Cathy Kentner, who headed the anti-rezoning committee Lakewood For All, said she was “very happy” with Tuesday’s result.

“It’s truly a win for the people over big-money special interests,” she said, noting that her side was far outspent by those pushing for the zoning changes. “I think the voters are saying they expect more from their (city) councilors. They voted for these councilors, and they expect them to represent them. And this zoning change is not representing your constituents.”

Kentner said this was the second citizen initiative put on the ballot in Lakewood in the past decade, a sign the city needs to do a better job talking to its 156,000 residents before enacting big changes to land-use policy.

“To move forward with zoning, they need to talk to the people whose property rights they’re changing,” she said.

Sophia Mayott-Guerrero, a former Lakewood City Council member who serves as campaign manager for Make Lakewood Livable, conceded that the rezoning effort had failed Tuesday.

But she said the special election was a “low-information, low-turnout” election that was marked by “fear-mongering” on the other side.

“I understand if what you believe is that you will lose your home, that you would vote this way,” Mayott-Guerrero said. “But we have a system of housing and zoning that needs to be updated. It’s based on things from 50 years ago, and with this defeat tonight, we will continue to have a housing affordability crisis.”

The City Council passed four ordinances in 2025 that together encourage the construction of more varied housing types, and by extension, greater density — with the ultimate aim of lowering home prices in a notoriously expensive metro housing market.

Despite a��recent slowdown in metro-Denver home prices��that have galloped inexorably upward for a decade or more, the median sales price of a single-family home��came in at $630,000 in February��— up 2.4% from January’s $615,000.

The median sales price, however, remains 2.2% below��where it was a year earlier.

The changes the City Council made last year allow diverse housing types — duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes and townhomes — anywhere in the city. They also limit new home sizes to 5,000 square feet and encourage the conversion of vacant or underused commercial buildings to housing.

The new rules went into effect Jan. 1.

Opponents of the rezoning effort said the changes would endanger the character of established neighborhoods while not actually helping reduce home prices. In a news release issued this year, the opposition called Lakewood’s rezoning efforts “a blueprint for crammed, profit-driven development, bulldozed trees and ignored infrastructure.”

Those backing the city’s rezoning effort countered that without policies designed to diversify Lakewood’s housing inventory, working-class families representing teachers, firefighters and health care workers will never be able to afford a home in the city.

Mayott-Guerrero told The Denver Post last month that “the idea that we can keep structuring our housing in the same way and get a different result doesn’t make sense to me.”

The battle over affordable housing runs deep in Colorado, with the��state mandating higher density��in recent years and, in turn, being��sued by cities��that claim the legislation treads on their home-rule authority. Last fall, Littleton voters passed a measure that better protects single-family-home neighborhoods��from multifamily housing projects.

The campaign to retain Lakewood’s rezoning regulations has outraised the opposition by a ratio of nearly 6-to-1 — $269,000 to $46,000, according to on March 31.

The issue committee Make Lakewood Livable — which supports keeping Lakewood’s rezoning ordinances — has pulled down big-dollar contributions from developers, including $10,000 from Cardel Homes and $50,000 from Boulder-based Conscience Bay.

Its top donor is the Action Now Initiative. The Houston-based nonprofit advocacy organization, which is a part of the national philanthropy Arnold Ventures, gave Make Lakewood Livable $75,000.

Arnold Ventures was launched by John Arnold, a former Enron executive and hedge fund manager who previously spent in support of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s election and a 2024 Denver affordable housing sales tax proposal that was rejected narrowly by voters.

The top contribution on the side in favor of repealing Lakewood’s rezoning, which was supported by three issue committees, is $2,500.

Metro Denver home and condo sales shot up 28.1% between February and March, reaching 3,631 closings, according to a .

Despite a very sluggish start to the year, which saw the weakest January for home sales since 2008, purchases in the first quarter are now down only 5% compared to the same period a year ago.

Buying activity in metro Denver normally dials up with warmer weather, but last month’s increase in sales volume outpaced and the .

The median number of days it took a listing to find a buyer dropped to 16 from 32 in February, another sign of a market heating up.

Sellers were also active, posting nearly a fifth more homes for sale in March than in February, although new listings, which were at 5,986, remain down 6.2% from the 6,383 that hit the market in March 2025.

The inventory of active listings rose 9.6% to 9,846, which was only slightly above where it stood a year ago.

The biggest curveball buyers faced was the resumption of hostilities with Iran, which responded by limiting tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

That in turn caused oil and gas prices to spike globally, stoking fears of another surge in inflation. Bond markets responded by lifting interest rates, which had dipped below 5% for 30-year mortgages in February, but were averaging 6.46% on Thursday, according to a weekly survey from Freddie Mac.

“Just as rising mortgage rates threatened to stall the momentum building through February, buyers responded with conviction,” said Amanda Snitker, chairwoman of the DMAR Market Trends Committee and local Realtor, in comments accompanying the report.

She said that volatility and opportunity often arrive together and that buyers and sellers who showed up prepared were rewarded.

March buyers were likely well along in the process and may have had a lower mortgage rate locked in when hostilities in the Middle East flared back up on Feb. 28.

In a signal that March’s momentum could continue, the number of pending sales shot up 30.7% from February to 4,612 and they are 5.1% above year-ago levels.

Barring a quick end to the Iran conflict, future buyers will likely face the constraint of higher mortgage rates. And home prices are on the rise again, which could further weigh on affordability.

The median price of a single-family home that sold in March was $645,000, up 2.7% from February’s median price of $628,086. Prices remain 2.3% below where they were last year.

Condos and townhome prices, which have been lagging for the past two years, had an even stronger rebound. The median price of a condo sold in March rose to $397,000 from $379,950 in February, a 4.5% gain. Condo prices are now up 1.9% from last year.

Buyers still hold the upper hand in Denver and most other metro markets,

There are about 40% more sellers active than buyers in metro Denver, which is below the 46.3% surplus of sellers nationally.

Sellers unable to find anyone willing to pay the price they want have been pulling their homes off the market, waiting for a more opportune time, according to Redfin.

About 7.4% of all listings in January in metro Denver, or 904 by , consisted of “relistings.” That ranked fifth highest among major metro areas.

The withdrawal of the request for the city to annex 800 acres in Douglas County was made official Tuesday by the Castle Pines City Council. At the meeting, elected leaders passed a resolution devoting the next four months to hammering out an annexation policy for the fast-growing city that straddles Interstate 25 between Lone Tree and Castle Rock. It will grant no new annexations during that time.

The council had been set to vote on the Crowsnest annexation request in April, but it faced stiff opposition from a group of residents who felt the project was too dense for a county that is still characterized by wide swaths of rural territory.

Developer VT Crowfoot Valley Landco LLC declined to tell The Denver Post whether it would try again this summer to annex the property, which sits at the southwest corner of Crowfoot Valley and South Chambers roads in unincorporated Douglas County. The limited liability company was formed in September and shares an Englewood mailing address with Ventana Capital.

In a , VT Crowfoot Valley said it “reserves all rights with respect to any future petition, application, amendment request, or other entitlement relating to the property.”

Donna Cook, a Castle Pines resident who helped form the citizen group and led the fight against the project, called this week’s move “a huge win for the city.”

She and a group of neighbors argued that annexation of the Crowsnest site would lead to the construction of an overly dense development that is incompatible with the area’s bucolic character. Aside from homes, the project would include about 120 acres devoted to commercial uses.

Further, opponents argued, VT Crowfoot Valley proposed a flagpole annexation, using Crowfoot Valley Road as a narrow connecting conduit to physically link Castle Pines to the Crowsnest site.

They called Crowsnest a “remote, disconnected island that would burden existing taxpayers with unsustainable service costs.”

VT Crowfoot Valley argues that Crowsnest’s plan is less dense than neighborhoods in nearby Parker and will be a multimillion-dollar boon for Castle Pines. It would also devote 132 acres to open space.

Cook said her group would closely watch how Castle Pines’ council crafts the city’s annexation policy over the next few months to determine whether to resume the battle against Crowsnest, should the developer submit another application.

“We would indeed fight, depending on what the final annexation policy states, to ensure that any future annexation is in the best interests of the city,” she said.

The zoning changes were designed to encourage construction of denser housing in Colorado’s fifth-largest city. Ballots for the April 7 special election, which , will be sent to voters starting Monday as Lakewood plays host to the latest Colorado battle over housing density.

The issue committee Make Lakewood Livable — which supports keeping Lakewood’s rezoning ordinances — has pulled in since the start of the year, while three committees urging voters to scrap the zoning changes have raised just under $40,000, according to reports filed by March 9.

The pro-rezoning side has pulled down big-dollar contributions from developers — $10,000 from Cardel Homes and $50,000 from Boulder-based Conscience Bay — while its top donor is Action Now Initiative. The Houston-based nonprofit advocacy organization, which is a part of gave Make Lakewood Livable $75,000.

Arnold Ventures was launched by John Arnold, a former Enron executive and hedge fund manager who previously spent in support of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s election and a 2024 Denver affordable housing sales tax proposal that was narrowly rejected by voters.

The top contribution on the side attempting to repeal Lakewood’s rezoning was $2,500.

“Ours is a true grassroots campaign,” said Karin Schantz, who supports undoing the zoning changes that she feels threaten rural neighborhoods like hers. “I chose my neighborhood because I wanted to be in the agricultural part of the city.”

Schantz, who has kept horses, chickens and goats on her tree-shaded Morse Park property over the nearly 20 years she has lived there, worries that Lakewood’s rezoning will allow “cluster homes” and other higher-density housing types to take root next to her half-acre property.

“It was a blanket rezoning of all of Lakewood,” said Schantz, who established the issue committee Imagine Lakewood to combat the rezoning. “And it’s really affecting the historic older neighborhoods.”

Sophia Mayott-Guerrero, a former Lakewood City Council member who now serves as campaign manager for Make Lakewood Livable, said the city spent more than two years — across 30 public meetings — hammering out the zoning changes.

The new code allows diverse housing stock anywhere in the city, limits new home sizes to 5,000 square feet, and encourages the conversion of vacant or underused commercial buildings to housing. Some of the housing types pushed by rezoning advocates are duplexes, triplexes and accessory dwelling units that come with less square footage but provide more dwelling units per acre than traditional standalone homes.

“The zoning code is designed to foster the type of housing that is built for the missing middle,” Mayott-Guerrero said, referring to types of residential buildings that can accommodate multiple families but aren’t as big as an apartment building. “The idea that we can keep structuring our housing in the same way and get a different result doesn’t make sense to me.”

Home prices in metro Denver have been a problem, especially for working-class people and young families, for years. Last month, the median price of a single-family home came in at $630,000, a 2.4% increase from the price in January.

But signs of relief for homebuyers have popped up in the last couple of years, with a recent report from First American Data & Analytics finding that the Denver region recorded the biggest drop in starter home prices over the past year of any major metropolitan area.

The battle over affordable housing runs deep in Colorado, with the state mandating higher density in recent years and, in turn, being sued by cities that claim the legislation treads on their home-rule authority. Last fall, Littleton voters passed a measure that better protects single-family home neighborhoods from multifamily housing projects.

Dissatisfied Lakewood residents collected more than 10,000 signatures last fall in a challenge to the council’s rezoning ordinances. In January, the council voted to send the four questions to next month’s special election.

Zach Martinez, the director of policy and advocacy at Gary Advocacy, says Lakewood’s rezoning ordinances are exactly what Colorado cities need to pass to make life more affordable for residents.

“The two things that are most costly for families are housing and child care,” he said. “The general approach in Lakewood is good because it allows people to build more housing on smaller pieces of land.”

Gary Advocacy is the policy arm of the philanthropic organization Gary Community Ventures, which was once headed by Johnston. The organization gave $25,000 to Make Lakewood Livable.

“People need affordable homes and that’s our priority,” Martinez said.

Charlie Anderson, the executive vice president of infrastructure for Arnold Ventures, echoed that sentiment in a statement.

“A lack of housing supply, particularly starter homes, has led to an affordability crisis for Coloradans,” he wrote. “Arnold Ventures has provided grants to support efforts in Colorado and across the country, including work in Lakewood, to build homes faster, better, and at lower cost, making housing more affordable for families and workers.”

Make Lakewood Livable is supported by a , including Housing Forward Colorado and Metro West Housing Solutions. It also has the backing of the Jefferson County commissioners and U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen and former U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter.

But the , the issue committee that has raised the most money on the repeal side, takes pride in not having big backing from “national or state advocacy groups parachuting into local issues.” It describes its campaign as one “started by local residents.”

Cathy Kentner, who heads up Lakewood for All — another group supporting the repeal effort — said the city’s rezoning initiative would do little to bring down home prices. It leaves too much power in the hands of developers to build what pencils out best for them, rather than focusing on building an affordable product, she said.

“This new zoning is likely to reduce homeownership opportunities because it allows an investor to replace a single-family home with a multiplex,” she said.��“A ‘no’ vote benefits corporations and the wealthy elite, and a ‘yes’ vote is for the people.”

Residents in this well-heeled Douglas County city, along with the mayors of nearby Parker and Castle Rock, say the 800-acre would pave the way for an overly dense development. It’s a plan that they don’t see as fitting with the area’s bucolic character — for an area that isn’t even contiguous��to Castle Pines.

“The sense of community we have on the east and west side (of Interstate 25) will be fractured,” said Donna Cook, a Castle Pines resident for the last 18 months. “I started the opposition to this because I didn’t see a benefit to the residents.”

Meanwhile, negotiations between the developer and Castle Pines continue in real time. Late last week, VT Crowfoot Valley Landco LLC adjusted the parameters of the project to make it more palatable to the city, reducing the number of homes proposed from nearly 4,000 to 3,646 — all single-family homes. It also nearly doubled the amount of open space it would dedicate on the site.

The developer plans to formally file its newest proposal — its fifth revision thus far — with the city on Tuesday.

Last week, the group People Against Annexing Crowsnest launched a . It describes the property, which is at the southwest corner of Crowfoot Valley and South Chambers roads in unincorporated Douglas County, as a “remote, disconnected island that would burden existing taxpayers with unsustainable service costs.”

VT Crowfoot Valley Landco, , shares the Englewood mailing address of Ventana Capital, a company that’s no stranger to development fights in Castle Pines.

The developer is proposing a “flagpole” annexation, using Crowfoot Valley Road as the connecting conduit to physically link Castle Pines and the site where it wants to build — an approach that the company described in a February news release as “a well-established path in Colorado law.”

But flagpole annexation efforts have faced a rough patch in recent months.

Last year,��Colorado Springs voters rejected a flagpole annexation for a planned 6,500-home development, dubbed Karman Line, over concerns about an adequate water supply.

And last month, a developer pitching a flagpole annexation into Palmer Lake to accommodate the construction of a Buc-ee’s travel center on I-25 — just south of the Douglas County line — withdrew its application following vocal community opposition to the project.

The Castle Pines City Council late last month approved a resolution finding the Crowsnest property eligible for annexation under state law. A vote on the annexation itself isn’t expected until late April.

Until then, opponents vow to fight — including with a possible ballot measure that would attempt to reverse any city approval. Lacy Bradley, a 3-year resident who has been helping spearhead opposition to the annexation, said Castle Pines is a low-density community with an emphasis on the peace and quiet that comes with plentiful open space.

“It all boils down to: It doesn’t meet Castle Pines standards,” Bradley said of Crowsnest. “I think it erodes the character of the city.”

Neighbors in the city of 16,000 also worry about where Crowsnest’s water will come from, the traffic it will generate and the development’s impacts on wildlife.

Ventana Capital was at the heart of a fight in Castle Pines a couple of years ago, when residents pushed the council to turn down the company’s attempt to build a McDonald’s in the upscale town.��Ventana sued the city, and last year, a judge upheld Castle Pines’ rejection of the fast-food giant.

The developer says its new project, now at 4.9 dwelling units per acre, would be less dense than Parker’s Looking Glass neighborhood directly to the north.

“Nearby projects like Looking Glass faced public concerns about wildlife, water, traffic and density that closely mirror what’s being raised about Crowsnest today,” Ventana’s Dan Williams wrote in an email response to questions sent by The Denver Post. “Parker worked through those concerns in a thorough public process and ultimately approved Looking Glass.”

Crowsnest, Williams said, wouldn’t be an “isolated subdivision,” since it’s “surrounded on three sides by existing and approved development, with a planned four-lane arterial bisecting the site.”

“In this case, the Crowsnest property lies less than a half mile from the existing Castle Pines boundary at its closest point, so it is already part of the same development corridor as The Canyons,” he said.

The Canyons, a 5,000-home development on the east side of I-25 in Castle Pines that is about half complete, generated similar pushback nearly a decade ago when it was getting underway, with concerns about traffic and wildlife corridors.

The developer points to an economic modeling report from financial services firm D.A. Davidson��that concluded Crowsnest could generate $650 million in revenue for Castle Pines over the next 40 years. That includes $263 million in projected sales tax revenue. The project will feature about 120 acres devoted to commercial uses.

It’s not clear whether those economic impact numbers would change as a result of alterations made to the plan late last week.

Parker Mayor Joshua Rivero said Crowsnest, by its proximity, will significantly��impact his town — and not for the good.

Traffic from Crowsnest’s homes will flood Parker’s southern street network, he said. Because the project was originally slated to have just 70 acres of open space — less than 10% of the total property acreage — Rivero said Crowsnest residents would inevitably slip over the town line and use Parker’s parks and green spaces “without paying their way.”

The developer bumped up its open space dedication at the site to 132 acres late last week.

“If this is built, these roads suddenly fail,” Rivero said, noting the careful planning Parker undertook in fostering its own growth. “It directly impacts all of us, and we want Castle Pines to understand what they’re putting on our back step.”

Castle Rock Mayor Jason Gray also weighed in last month . Aside from concerns about where Crowsnest would get its water — Parker Water and Sanitation District that it “is not ready and willing to serve the Crowsnest development” without more project details — Gray worries about impacts to his town’s “already burdened” Founders Parkway and Colorado 86 interchange.

“This traffic, which will never touch the rest of Castle Pines, will significantly create traffic safety and congestion concerns for Castle Rock,” he wrote.

Williams told The Post that the developers envision more roads for the Crowsnest site, including a thoroughfare dubbed Canyonside Boulevard that would connect Crowfoot Valley Road to The Canyons — and eventually to I-25.

“Together, these connections place Crowsnest within a broader network of planned corridors between Castle Pines and Crowfoot Valley,” he said.

For Irene Bonham, who lives due east of the proposed development in Parker’s Trails at Crowfoot Valley neighborhood, Crowsnest would literally be across the street.

Bonham, who is running for Douglas County commissioner, acknowledges the irony of resistance to new growth��from communities that have experienced their own explosive growth in recent decades. Parker, for instance, went from 3,000 residents in the late 1980s to 72,000 today, while Castle Rock’s population is fast approaching 100,000, up from fewer than 10,000 in 1990.

But she can’t help feeling like something is being lost.

“We have elk herds here, we have bald eagles — what would be the impact to them?” she said. “At some point, we’re starting to lose that distinction that made this area intriguing in the first place.”