Congratulations Denver home owners! As of this month, the Central Denver (map) real estate market has doubled in value since 2011. The 12-month rolling median price for a home in January of 2011 was $340,565, and today it’s $685,000 with an annual rate of return of 7.4%.
The full 12 month measure accounts for the differences caused by seasonality. In the spring and early summer months, the higher end of the market is much more active and skews the data upward. As you can see from the graph below, the market is quite a roller-coaster when you don’t account for seasonality.
The reason that we mention this detail is to point out that even though Halloween has come and gone and we’ve already had our first snowfall, the market remains very hot right now. In 2019 the October monthly median price was $630,000 and this year we’re hovering at $750,000, that’s 16% appreciation!
While I don’t have a real crystal ball, and I don’t usually like to make off the cuff predictions, I feel quite confident during the upcoming colder months that the worsening pandemic will result in market restrictions similar to the ones we saw last April. Our inventory and number of transactions will plummet, but the demand for Denver homes will not waver. By late spring / early summer the restrictions will ease and home prices will soar once again.