April 2020 and the Denver housing market will be a month to remember!

We started the month with “stay at home” orders from Denver County on March 23rd and The State orders began March 26, 2020.

Real Estate was not considered “essential” for the entire month of April and so showings were not allowed. You could look at a property only if it was “under contract”.

Both above factors were the biggest reason it is hard to compare this past month to anything we’ve ever seen before. I’m going to break it down because it is just amazing! It’s not terrible at all. As a city, I feel like our Real Estate professionals did a pretty good job overall for our clients. Because no matter what happens in the world people still needed to move.

Once we heard we were going to go into a major slowdown we’ve been saying that May and June are the new March and April. Missing the spring months doesn’t mean that people wouldn’t move, we have a lot of pent up demand.

We had 6,855 home for sale at the end of the month. Our record high was 29,045 and the lowest was in 2015, with only 5,025 homes for sale.  The average for this month is 14,929.

In April, there were 4,679 homes listed for sale and 3,280 went under contract.

We were showing houses, in masks, booties, gloves and using more hand sanitizer than usual. I was shooting video on my phone before the shutdown happened in case someone wanted to do a virtual walk through. As soon as I could get back into houses, I was showing homes to out of state buyers over Zoom.

Denver Housing Market Stats for April 2020:

Average closed prices ($503, 231) were up 1.52%, median prices ($440,000) up 4.76% from last year.

Detached

• Average price was $550,177 down .31 % from last year
• Median price was $475, 425 up 3.35 % from last year

Attached

• Average price was $379,495 up 3.365% from last year
• Median price was $322,000 up 6.89% from last year

Last month I talked about low inventory will continue to push prices up and that is reflected above. If you are wondering about what your home is worth, be sure to give me a call or send me a message. Inventory in home types and price ranges vary greatly right now. As a city overall we are in a seller’s market but not every neighborhood and type of home within that neighborhood will be in that category.

Last month I also talked about changes in mortgage, specifically with Jumbo loans and with people who are self-employed. The banks changed the rules on them many times through out April. That segment of our buyers and sellers have had a setback, but not a shut down, they just need more information, time and potentially restructure what that loan would have been. 

Thinking of Selling?

It is still okay to sell if it isn’t a “seller’s market”. If you need to move, there are plenty of ways to get top dollar and stand out from the competition. It is never too early to start planning. You know I will be watching the market closely, weekly and monthly so if you want information specific to your home, let’s start watching your specific market now.

Thinking of Buying?

Buyers, you need to be more prepared than ever and you need an experienced agent to not only help you navigate but negotiate if you want to win.

How is COVID going to affect the Denver housing market in the long run?

I took a poll on my Instagram asking people if their home was their “ideal home during COVID”. Seventy one percent said no. I wasn’t surprised. Most people needed an office, some wanted more outdoor space and a few wanted to be closer to work. (My poll had less than 30 people answer, so it isn’t scientific but they are all real people.)

A question being asked all over the industry is do you think people will want to move out to more rural areas and by the sounds of the people who took my poll (all happened to live in Denver except for one who lives in a high rise in another city) didn’t want to move out of the city.

Things to put on your radar:

We might see a headline like this “Bank-Owned Properties up 200%”. While that sounds scary, there have only been 26 short sales so far this year. Compared to 2012 during the same time, we had 1,191, and in 2010, 8.2% of all the closings were distressed. Currently, we are at 0.1%.

April is only one month in our Denver housing market, we will probably see a drop in total sales for the year. The National Association of Realtors projects a 13.5% drop compared to a 3% increase that was projected prior to the pandemic.

People still need to buy and sell real estate, let me know how I can help you.