Home sellers came off the sidelines in January and showed buyers they were ready to play ball.
After declining in the final months of 2019, the number of new listings hitting the market surged 89.3% in January, according to a report Wednesday from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.
Sellers, missing in action for months, listed 4,853 homes and condos for sale in January, up from the paltry 2,564 they provided in December.
"I've always told my December buyers to not get discouraged by a lack of choices; just like Colorado's oft-changing weather, if they just hang in there, it will change," said Jill Schafer, chairwoman of the DMAR Market Trends Committee, in comments accompanying the monthly report.
And change it did. Buyers, starved after months of falling inventory, voraciously consumed the new supply. The surge in activity didn't show up yet in closed sales, which were down 34.2% from December and up 0.8% from January of last year.
But that's primarily a timing issue. The number of pending sales or homes under contract surged 43% from December and is up 24.2% from January 2019. Sales completed in February should surge based on the contracts reached in January.
Demand was so strong that even with the big jump in listings, the inventory of homes and condos available for sale at the end of the month fell to 4,941, a 1.91% decline from December and 16% drop from January 2019.
With the inventory of available properties back below 5,000, interest rates low and buyers anxious to own, flashes of the frenzied markets seen in the middle of last decade are starting to emerge again, said Steve Danyliw, a local Realtor and member of the market trends committee.
Frenzied as in having to write an offer on the hood of a car after touring a home so as not to let other buyers get ahead of your clients.
"If you are in the right price range, that is happening again," he said. "The low inventory is starting to speed things up."
Danyliw describes making an offer on a $380,000 townhome for $10,000 above the list price, only to find out later the offer was one of nine, and it came up short.
The average number of days a listing spends on the market is still rising and is now at 45, up from 41 in December. But Danilyw thinks that may be a peak and that it will come down.
Price gains are also starting to pick up steam. The median price of a single-family home sold last month rose to 2.45% on a monthly basis and is up 8.24% year-over-year and is now at $460,000. The median price of a condo sold rose to $310,000, flat with December and up 11.9% over the year.
