It’s all my fault. Stats are late and I apologize, but I had the most amazing vacation…a week on a raft on the Colorado River IN the Grand Canyon. Epic. Go do it.
In reviewing the news and the reports I receive regularly, the data in this report doesn’t exactly match up to the doom and gloom that they are selling out there. I even emailed constructive criticism to the writer of a piece I read. Turns out he was the owner of the publication and he admitted to me that clickbait and overly sensationalized article titles are what keeps him in business. We will try to avoid those things in this modest publication.
First, please look at the graph with the red and black bars. I stole this fair and square from First American’s stats guru down in Denver. Her name is Megan Aller, and she is much smarter than me. I know this graph shows Metro Denver stuff and that isn’t quite us up here in the Boulder County areas, but the data is representative of the whole state if not the whole country. Inventory is an issue, and we all know it, but this shows the enormity of the problem. Bottom line: it says that if Metro Denver added 24,864 listings today, we’d have a balanced market (6 Months of inventory). If you think things are bad now, try seeing it for what it is – less awesome than it was a few months ago. As inventories start to grow, the market will actually look more normal. It’s a long, long, long way from bad.
We sales reps are getting a lot of requests for agents to receive our foreclosure list every week because they still believe the foreclosure tsunami is coming. It’s not coming but we’d be glad to share the list with you. Just send me an email and I’ll put you on this list. In the meantime, here is a good article about the current delinquency situation – Click HERE
While we wait for inventory to build and the foreclosure market to appear we will continue to see a lot more of what we have seen. Most markets are experiencing fewer sales this year over last. At first, this was an inventory issue (can’t sell what’s not listed), but now that problem is being exasperated by higher interest rates (can’t buy what you can’t afford). The increasing prices will continue throughout the year.
Boulder Real Estate Stats May 2022
Some notable items from around the region in this month’s report:
Boulder County has welcomed three additional communities to the $1M+ average price club. A dubious honor for sure due to the circumstances of how they got there. Losing 1,000 homes in a day to a fire is no way to build home values, but it happened, and we must live with it. Louisville has averaged over $1M since the beginning of the year. Superior and Lafayette have spent a few months each above the $1M mark. I’m sure we will christen at least one of them into the club permanently when we see the end of year averages.
Despite significantly lower monthly and yearly sales totals in most areas, Days on Market (DOM) dropped dramatically in most markets. There is clearly an appetite for home buying in the region and with the high percentage of cash buyers in this area, we may not see the effects of interest rates rising for months since they have no effect on a cash purchase.
I made a claim recently that Greeley is the best value in Northern Colorado. It may also represent a young couple’s only option to buy a home in Northern Colorado. In case you didn’t know it, Greeley has a population nearly identical to that of Boulder at about 108K. Boulder and Greeley have similarities in that both towns have a university, and both have a fairly young average age. The average price of a home in Boulder is $1,250,000 more than in Greeley, and that 1.2mil gets you an average of 623 more square feet. Let me say that a different way – in Boulder you pay 3.75x the price ($1,698,370 to $447,838) for a home that’s only 33% larger (1,465 sf to 2088 sf).
This market has been called Savagely Unhealthy by Housing Wire. I agree. In the longer term, higher interest rates may end up being a blessing in disguise. Currently, high rates are making life difficult for those who need to buy now. Today the Fed is pumping the brakes on the economy, the effect in the real estate market will be flattening out of prices. We need this kind of break. Every day the cost of a house has been going up. If this were to stop for a while, more people could save and plan and buy a home tomorrow at today’s price. Here is another great article to support my position HERE.
You can’t change the market; you can only work with what you are given. Embrace the change.
Cheers,