Northwest Denver Real Estate Market Statistics for September 2008.

Better late than never. Below you’ll find the first of what will become monthly installment of market data for the Northwest Denver real estate market. The format will certainly evolve over time and feel free to let us know if there is something that you’d like to see that isn’t included.

Some general info regarding our statistics: all data is courtesy of Metrolist, Incorporated. Metrolist does not guarantee nor is in any way responsible for its accuracy. Aside from the disclaimer, we are looking at residential statistics for the DNW (Denver North West) market area within Metrolist’s system. Residential properties can be detached single family residences, duplexes, or triplexes. Anything with more than three units or a HOA (home owners association) isn’t going to be captured here. We may expand our reports to cover the condo market in the future but for the time being we’re sticking to the aforementioned property types.

Below we’ll go through a few graphs regarding market data. Full sized graphs as well as a complete list of the sold properties by address for September 2008 are available for download.

Average net sales price is the metric that most people follow and report on. You can see that Northwest Denver was trending lower from Q3 2007 through Q1 2008. The local upward trend in average net sales price seems to have preceded some of the overall statistical upticks reported by S&P/Case-Shiller among others. We were doing quite well through August 2008 as the graph shows. The key here will be to see how October’s numbers shake out. The economic onslaught didn’t really kick in till October and I would think we’ll be seeing a continued slowing through the remainder of 2008. One other thought is that the Northwest Denver real estate market is more influenced by the relatively small number of high priced homes. As they go, the market tends to go. As I’ve stated previously, the higher end segment of the market in general (over $500,000) is starting to run into difficulty due to financing restrictions.

As far as sales volume with regard to total number of properties changing hands, again we were moving along quite nicely until September. This graph tends to look similar on a year over year basis as the most properties will sell through the summer months and barring some external stimulus (substantially lower interest rates could do it) things slow down through the holidays. The total number of homes is relatively steady for September 2007 compared to September 2008 so overall I don’t see anything alarming going on here.

The graph above shows the distribution of the sold properties for September 2008 by price range. The majority of Northwest Denver solds are within $150,000 to $300,000. This will continue to be the case given our existing housing stock is predominantly one story homes with under 1000 square feet. We will delve further into the segmentation of the local market in our October 2008 market statistics post via an illustration of the absorption rates and inventory by price range. For now it is apparent that the first time buyer, sub $300,000 price point continues to be the bread and butter of Northwest Denver real estate. 

The graph above follows a typical trend in terms of previous years with one exception. The dip you see in days on market for January 2008 was due to a sudden drop in mortgage rates late last year. We had clients close late December 2007 with a 30 year fixed rate of 5.25%. Should those rates come back around I would expect to see similar results. After all, it’s not typically the purchase price of the home so much as the total monthly payment a buyer is going to have to make that influences their search parameters when it comes to price.