February | The Denver Market Update
It’s been a slower start to the year, but we’re ramping up! We’re seeing fully updated homes (meaning stylish and staged) go under contract quickly, occasionally in competition, when priced appropriately. We won against 10 offers last week for buyers on a property that had a stylish aesthetic and zero need for buyer improvements. But properties that need a little work tend to be sitting longer.
Over President's Day Weekend, the real estate market did something unexpected. Usually, things slow down a bit during this time, but not this year. More houses were getting snatched up, and they were spending less time on the market. This likely gave us a sneak peek of what's coming this Spring in Metro Denver real estate market. Number of showings went up, but it seems like buyers are moving slowly and waiting for more inventory to hit the market. Inventory is expected to pick up around mid-April.
Last week, there were 14,827 showings, up by 6.0% from the previous week, averaging 3.1 shows per property. On average, it took 15 showings to get under contract in about 10 days.
Our daily active listings went up a bit in the last 2 weeks, around 3.2%, totaling 4,713 listings, including 1,015 new homes to market. New listings jumped by 5.7% from the previous week and a solid 11.9% from a year ago. Pending transactions also saw a boost, up by 14.1% with 982 listings going under contract. More listings entered the market compared to those going under contract for the second week in a row.
The "Odds of Selling" had a good bump, reaching 58.2% last weekend for listings in the next 30 days. February's average Odds of Selling have historically been around 54.3%, so we're trending a bit higher.
To achieve a “balanced market” with 6 months of inventory, we need a bunch more listings. We'd need 25,630 total listings to be “balanced” – right now, we're at 18.4% of that balance.
With rates hovering in the high 6%s, the consumer is looking for a ‘wow’ property and our current inventory is minimal, likely causing the slow start to the year.
