I stare and stare and wonder what it is that is supposed to be plain and obvious in front of my face. Ever been there? Well, once a month I subject myself to that to make sure I am staying current with the Denver Real Estate market.
At the very beginning of this year the local MLS provider published some figures for last year. Admittedly, their data must be flawed because they always post early in the cycle. But they are consistently bad, so I guess that is good. An example: MLS data indicated on 1/3/2012 that 1857 single family homes sold in December and on 1/24/2012 that number was 2184 (my personal search criteria on 2 different dates).
Anyway, what I was going googly eyed over was this real estate listing and sale data in Denver. 2 things I saw after a while…1: when the average number of active listings went down below 10,000, the average price started to climb and 2: The actual number of closed sales also tends to increase? Fewer listings but more sales? Only in Denver!
Some folks have focused on the average asking to the average sale price thinking there is a correlation… and I am here to say there are more folks dreaming big and testing the water when the market proves to be upwardly mobile.
| Year | # Active | Average Asking Price | # YTD SOLD | Average SOLD Price |
| 1984 | 18142 | 98678 | ||
| 1985 | 19430 | 98071 | ||
| 1986 | 20002 | 100612 | ||
| 1987 | 19777 | 105771 | ||
| 1988 | 18240 | 101577 | ||
| 1989 | 11846 | 121696 | 19272 | 103868 |
| 1990 | 9869 | 140245 | 20476 | 102766 |
| 1991 | 8563 | 151705 | 21547 | 109071 |
| 1992 | 7922 | 157538 | 27215 | 115154 |
| 1993 | 6282 | 196067 | 30763 | 126168 |
| 1994 | 7028 | 230011 | 29710 | 138301 |
| 1995 | 7984 | 238346 | 27810 | 150736 |
| 1996 | 8708 | 237997 | 29522 | 159328 |
| 1997 | 8866 | 249318 | 30981 | 169587 |
| 1998 | 8063 | 276971 | 35139 | 185785 |
| 1999 | 6571 | 306958 | 35500 | 208296 |
| 2000 | 6898 | 353590 | 37012 | 239779 |
| 2001 | 9247 | 360826 | 35888 | 257394 |
| 2002 | 15190 | 357050 | 36272 | 268926 |
| 2003 | 15498 | 355900 | 36677 | 277856 |
| 2004 | 14332 | 370038 | 41682 | 289971 |
| 2005 | 16428 | 381777 | 41365 | 307529 |
| 2006 | 18109 | 331231 | 39208 | 317112 |
| 2007 | 18709 | 424390 | 38845 | 310418 |
| 2008 | 14995 | 511601 | 37988 | 270261 |
| 2009 | 12263 | 496675 | 33114 | 264803 |
| 2010 | 13941 | 409416 | 30777 | 282080 |
| 2011 | 8854 | 470408 | 31437 | 279858 |
Let me know your thoughts…Is it time to buy? Time to sell? How could I help you?
