Denver Colorado Real Estate | April 2010 Market Statistics
May 11th, 2010 Categories: Market Trends
Busy. Swamped. Slammed. Insane!
Real estate in Denver, Colorado is different. It’s different and the same.
Different than last year, and really different from 2008. We fell off a cliff that year, and we’d been dangling from it for a few months prior.
Ever since the 2008 correction, it’s been a slow climb back. Real estate in Denver has felt a little better every month. Many transactions are fraught with difficulty, but overall Denver real estate seems more and more on solid ground.
Now this. A complete frenzy. It’s been a busy month, with sales, closings, price reductions, tax credits.
Will the end of the tax credit signify the end of the recovery? Not likely. Most of the buyers and sellers I’ve been working with wouldn’t have qualified anyway. Or else they didn’t want to sacrifice “the right house” for a tax credit.
Look at the April market statistics. Pending sales have increased nearly 28% from this time last year. 28%!
We’ve seen an increase in closed properties of over 23%. The days on market has dropped by nearly 23 days, meaning it’s taking less time to sell a house.
Trends indicate we’re in a “value” driven market. Buyers are searching for value, and pricing must meet their expectations. If the price doesn’t meet with buyers’ value model, a seller will be faced with two scenarios:
1. No offers for weeks or months while other homes in the neighborhood are selling.
2. An offer so low that sellers feel it’s not realistic.
In fact, it may be realistic, or at least close to realistic. Sellers should always counter an offer. Never reject. You’ve lost control of the deal if you refuse to counter, and you aren’t engaging with someone who actually liked your house enough to bother making an offer.
The next two months will be interesting. We probably pushed some of the late spring and summer buying forward with the tax credit. Even if things slow a little, we’re still in good shape from this time last year.
Search Denver Real Estate at Gretchen Faber’s web site: www.GretchensDenver.com.
[…] Last month we had 3,883 properties under contract, which bodes well for June closings. But this is a 41% decline from April! We were busy in April. These numbers didn’t actually come as a complete surprise. We expected a slowdown when the credit ended, but not 41%. […]