Colorado real estate market cools in June as inventory rises, prices stabilize

Despite a 22% increase in active listings statewide year-over-year, closed sales dropped 14% over the same period.

The Colorado Association of Realtors said in its June report that housing affordability remains challenging as prices continue to climb, interest rates remain high, insurance rates rise, and property taxes increase.

Summer’s busy sales season appears to have peaked early, said Denver-Douglas County realtor Cooper Thayer.

“Market activity showed a sharp decline in June, indicating we’ve reached this year’s seasonal peak,” Thayer said.

“With more homes on the market and less incentives for buyers to move quickly, we can expect prices to cool quickly entering the fall,” Thayer said.

Realtor David Anderson said the Pueblo market didn’t experience a spring selling season.

“And we continued our downward trend over the first half of the year with new listings down 15.6% compared to June 2023,” he said.

“However, year-to-date, we are only down 3.5%. Pending sales are still down 12.6% from June 2023 and are (down) 13.7% year-to-date. Solds were down 22.6% from a year prior and are down 14% year-to-date. None of this is good news for sellers as buyers continue to wait for interest rates to come down with additional concerns ranging from economic uncertainty, the upcoming election and employment keeping many on the sidelines.”

Statewide, the median sales price is up 2% over last year to $560,000 from $549,000, while the percent of list price received dropped slightly from 99.7% in June 2023 to 99.2% last month.

“Median sale prices in Douglas County remained near all-time highs last month at $725,000, coming in 2.6% higher than this time last year,” Thayer said.

Months available supply statewide increased by 38.5% from 2.6 months in June 2023 to 3.6 months last month and at the same time, the average days on market increased 13.5% from 37 in June 2023 to 42 last month.

Fort Collins has more than three months of inventory compared to less than two weeks at the beginning of 2022, said realtor Chris Hardy. That gives buyers leverage when they didn’t have any in 2021 and 2022.

“Sellers have had to make quick adjustments to their sale expectations as many homes have lingered on the market for weeks and even months, which is far beyond the days or hours it took to sell an average home just a year and a half ago,” Hardy said.