This is a deep dive into a local real estate market powered by Inman Market View. The goal: To put more local data in the hands of the Inman community, and to place it in a context that’s highly relevant for the U.S. brokerage industry.
One of the biggest housing stories this spring has been a much-needed boost in inventory in many parts of the U.S.
Nationwide, inventory exceeded 1 million for the first time since the winter of 2019, with 50 of the largest metros in the country posting annual inventory gains in May.
Out of those metros, one that has seen a significant inventory improvement is Denver. The Western mountain market posted a 20 percent annual growth in new listings during the three-month period of March through May, the second-highest jump among any large U.S. market, according to listing data from Realtor.com.
In a market where many buyers have felt locked into their existing low-rate mortgages, and where current prices are unaffordable for many, some have pointed to new construction as a possible explanation of a listing resurgence in places like Denver.
But local agents and Denver market experts who spoke with Inman suggested that existing homeowners — not builders — have done the most to provide new supply to the market over the past year.
SEE HOW YOUR CITY COMPARES TO DENVER WITH MARKET VIEW
The reasons Inman’s sources gave were complex, ranging from broad factors that much of the country is experiencing alongside the greater Denver housing market, and unique issues with regulations and ownership costs that are sending some investors and other owners packing.
These are the numbers — and reasons — behind Denver’s year of extraordinary inventory gains.
Steady gains
The Denver-Aurora-Centennial, Colorado, metro area has seen sustained growth in new listings this spring, providing buyers with more options and opportunities.
Almost 20 percent more new listings hit the market in the greater Denver area this spring than during the same period last year, bringing overall new supply levels to roughly where they were in a typical spring before the pandemic began.
Active listings over the same three-month period were up 65 percent in the metro on an annual basis, and were 89 percent higher than their 2017-2019 levels at the same time of year, according to data from Realtor.com. All in all, inventory in May represented a solid, three-months’ supply.
Still, there were signs that this robust momentum in new supply might be slowing down in recent weeks.
During the month of May alone, new listings were up only 4 percent year over year to 7,017 new listings, according to REcolorado numbers that align closely with those tracked by Realtor.com.
As inventory has grown, sales have also been a mixed bag.
Closed listings were down 5 percent year-over-year in May, according to REcolorado. In perhaps a more encouraging sign for June sales, however, the number of pending listings over the same period was up 12 percent from the year before.
Buyers taking their time
While new listings are up across the board, subdued demand for homes in Denver and nearby areas has further pushed the local market in a more buyer-friendly direction, Inman found.
Because of high prices (the median closed price on Denver homes has hovered around $600,000 since 2022, according to REcolorado) and mortgage rates, as well as general economic uncertainty in the U.S., many potential buyers have taken a more careful approach to homebuying than has been typical in recent years.
Christine Dupont-Patz | RE/MAX of Cherry Creek
“I feel right now that the buyers are just being very selective,” Christine Dupont-Patz, broker and co-owner of RE/MAX of Cherry Creek Inc., told Inman. “There seems to be no rush.”
Jackie White of Your Castle Real Estate said she sees a lot of what she calls “tire-kickers” these days: buyers who want to take their time and do more due diligence than they’ve been afforded in recent years during what used to be a rapid-fire market.
“With the cost of insurance having gone up in recent years as well as the interest rate [increasing the cost of homeownership], it’s just making [buyers] do a lot more due diligence before making an offer,” White said. “The total cost of ownership is being met with more scrutiny because of those increasing costs, and with homes having longer days on market, they feel like they have time to consider the home and it’s OK if it goes under contract and they lose out because there’s likely several other homes active that they would consider.”
By contrast, in the years during and shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic, buyers were scrambling to find any home that would suffice, Dupont-Patz explained, both to find shelter and hop on low interest rates. Without those factors at play today, and with more inventory at their finger tips as well as impending economic uncertainty in response to tariffs, there’s no real urgency for buyers.
“Now, you really feel where buyers are, ‘I want this to be my forever home. I want this to be where I’m going to raise my kids,'” Dupont-Patz said. “And I have clients who are downsizing, so the big thing is, how can they age in place? Is the neighborhood walkable for them? Does it have the amenities that they want as they get older? So it’s really taking a much longer term view of what they want to buy.”
People from all over the country for a long time have found Denver an attractive market to move to because of its city amenities paired with easy access to nature. But some buyers from out-of-state today can be surprised by the area’s price points, Dupont-Patz said. As she’s seen the parents of millennials and Gen Z’ers start to move to the area to be closer to their grandchildren, their homebuying process is often more prolonged than expected because those transplants have slightly unrealistic expectations about how much property their can get for their dollar.
Insurance and homeowners association fee hikes have also put a significant damper on demand in the condo market in Denver, Dupont-Patz said.
Insurance premiums increased by an average of 58 percent between 2018 and 2023, according to the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, and are expected to rise by about 11 percent this year in response to wildfire and hailstorm risks, according to Insurify.
One of Dupont-Patz’s clients decided to pull their relatively new one-bedroom one-bath condo from the market after two months without a single showing.
“Unfortunately, we were not the only condo in the building that did not have one showing,” Dupont-Patz continued. “[Other agents and I] all came together and said, ‘OK, we’re all going to have an open house at the same time on a Saturday. We’re going to all cross-advertise it.’ If people came to the open house, we would give them a gift card to see the Rockies — and you can make all the jokes you want, ‘Well you can’t give that shit away with your Rockies,’ I know that’s a whole ‘nother conversation — no one, no one came to see the condos.”
Sellers ready to cash out
Jackie White | Your Castle Real Estate
White said that many condo owners are wanting to list now because those higher insurance fees, which are spurring higher HOA fees, are making it so that it’s more expensive to own a condo than to rent an apartment. “So we’re finding much longer days on the market for condos and townhomes and a really big inventory in that product.”
Some investors are likewise considering offloading rental properties because of recent legislation in the state that places more restrictions on landlords, White said.
As of last year, restrictions were put in place that make it more difficult for landlords to evict tenants, put limits on the cost of pet security deposits and rent and prohibit municipalities from limiting the number of people who can live together in a unit based on familial relationships, among other measures.
“So there are investors that are opting to cash in on the equity that they’ve gained on their properties as well,” White said. “When they look at the annual cash flow compared to the equity in their home, in many cases, the returns are 3 to 4 percent and so choosing to take that money and invest it elsewhere, perhaps out of state or in the stock market, would serve them well compared to hanging onto these properties with a lot of the legislation and regulation that’s in place.”
New construction’s part
Denver’s commitment to building during and after the pandemic seems to have had some role in its current healthy inventory levels, according to a Realtor.com report.
“Metros that built more housing like Austin, Nashville and Denver have generally returned to pre-2020 inventory levels,” the report stated. “Those with less new construction like New York, Boston and Buffalo, New York, have not.”
Ted Leighty | Colorado Association of Home Builders
However, more recent new construction is contributing little to new inventory this spring, Ted Leighty, CEO of the Colorado Association of Home Builders, told Inman.
“We do not believe that new construction is adding a lot of homes to the current number of properties on the market in the metro Denver area,” Leighty said in an email. “In 2024, our members pulled about 650 to 700 permits per month, and those homes are either coming to the market now or are already sold to their future owners. These new homes would represent a small fraction of the 13,000-plus homes currently on the market.”
In 2021, 30,006 building permits were issued in the Denver metro area, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Building Permits Survey, and in 2022, 23,009 permits were issued. By comparison, just 15,570 permits were issued in 2024.
That support from new construction was further weakening in the early months of this year, the data shows.
Only 4,881 residential permits were issued in the first four months of this year, down 10 percent from the year before. This annual decline was driven primarily by a 17 percent reduction in permits for single-family homes, while permits for multifamily units remained steady.
This multiyear decline has yet to feel much impact from the Trump administration’s tariffs on the kinds of imported goods that are used in residential construction, Leighty said.
According to the National Association of Home Builders, roughly $204 billion worth of goods were used in constructing new multifamily and single-family homes in 2024, $14 billion (or about 7 percent) of which were imported from outside of the U.S.
Colorado has not felt an impact as of yet, Leighty said, but builders are trying to prepare for them.
“At this point, we are not seeing tariffs having a direct impact on permits here in Colorado,” Leighty said in an email. “Mostly we are hearing that our members are adjusting their supply chains and budgets to adapt to the tariff situation. Like other markets across the U.S., we believe that mortgage rates and a general lack of consumer confidence are having a bigger impact on home sales and demand for new construction.”
