Unsold Homes in Greater Denver Rise to 14-Year High

Home buyers in Denver have tip-toed into the spring selling season with caution, creating the biggest backlog of available properties in more than a decade.

Listings of condominiums and single-family homes in the Mile High City rose 22.5 percent to 11,964 last month, the greatest number since fall 2011 and a year-over-year jump of 71 percent, the Denver Post reported, citing figures from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.

“Buyer activity, which is usually strong during the spring months, showed signs of a potential early peak,” Amanda Snitker, chairwoman of the DMAR Market Trends Committee and an area Realtor with Coldwell Banker Realty, said in a statement.

This year’s buying season is like spring weather across Colorado, she said. Sunshine one day, snow the next.

What appears to be dampening buyers’ eagerness to close deals are high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty, according to the Post.

Denver’s unsold inventory rose five times faster than the rest of the U.S., whose listings ticked up 6.1 from a year earlier, with the total number of available homes up 13.7 percent, according to Redfin.

The number of new listings across the region increased 10.8 percent last month to 7,062, up 18.1 percent from a year earlier. Listings spent a typical 13 days on the market, compared to 39 days across the U.S.

Sellers offloaded 3,883 homes last month, compared to 3,999 a year earlier. Nationally, home sales were up 13.1 percent on the year, according to Redfin.

“A lot of people who would normally be making moves right now are standing still,” Bliss Ong, a Redfin Premier agent in Seattle, said in a statement. “They want to ride out this period of economic uncertainty and wait until they feel more secure to make this huge financial decision.

“The people who are buying are picky.”

During the years of tight supply, Realtors argued that a lack of supply is what was holding the Denver market back, according to the Post. But with plenty of available homes, what buyers likely needed was better affordability, or lower home prices and mortgage rates.

The typical price of a single detached home that sold in greater Denver last month was $665,000, up from $660,000 in March and $660,500 in April last year.

Condos rose 0.55 percent on the month to $389,900, down 6 percent year over year, mostly to compensate for higher homeowner association fees.

— Dana Bartholomew