Home Prices Soared in July

I received and reviewed the 7 county metro Denver MLS Report courtesy of SMDRA & REColorado. Here are the facts-
6,600 closings happened in July, an increase of 20.7% from last July and a 29% increase from July 2018. According to DMAR the number of closings last month was the highest amount ever recorded in Denver!
Buyers purchased 1,889 attached homes, a 20.5% increase from last year and a 29.6% increase from 2 years ago.
Buyers purchased 4,711 detached homes, a 20.8% increase from last year and a 29.1% increase from 2 years ago.
Homeowners placed 7,007 new homes on the market last month, an increase of 16.3% from last year and a 18.5% from 2 years ago.
New attached home listings increased by 24.7% from last year to 2,278 new listings this year. This was 36% more than in July 2018.
New detached home listings increased by only 12.6% from last year to 4.729 new listing this year. This was a 11% increase from July 2018.
Buyers placed 6,449 homes under contract or pending last month, an increase of 24.1% from last July and a 29% increase from 2 years ago.
Average days in market dropped by 1 day to 24 days this July versus last July.
Median days in market dropped by 4 days from 11 days last July to just 7 days this July. We saw 7 days in 2017 and 2018 too.
Median days in market for homes priced in the $300's was just 5 days and just 6 days for homes priced in the $400's.
We ended July with 5,263 homes and condos for sale, down 36% from last July and down 27% from July 2018!
This puts months of inventory at .79 months or about 3 weeks!!!
Average home prices SOARED last month, up 9.8% from a year ago to $531,290 for the entire market.
Average home prices for attached homes rose just 7% to $381,340.
Average home prices for detached homes increased by 9.8% to $591,416. DMAR reported that this number hit $600k for their 11 county report which includes Boulder County.
Median sold prices increased 6.7% from last July to $455k for the entire market.
Attached median sold prices increased 6.7% to $330k.
Detached median sold prices increased 8.4% to $499,712.
The average closed to original list price ratio was 99.5% last month versus 98.1% in July 2019.
The average closed price per square foot above grade was $255 a square foot last month up from $245 a year ago.

In the critical price range of $200k to $600k here is what I saw-
72% of our new listings are in this price range
73.8% of our closings were in this price range
Only 53% of our active listings are in this price range.
In fact, 11.9% of our active listings are priced in the $1-2 million price range where there are 624 luxury homes for sale.
My Thoughts and Observations
I was surprised in a good way to see nearly exact percentage increases in closings for both detached and attached homes. I thought we might see attached homes sales not increase as much as detached homes as people look to move to the burbs for a yard. But, the reality is some buyers can't afford a detached home.
It's amazing to see how much stronger our real estate market currently is then it was 2 years ago.
Incredible to see home prices rise so much last month; but I know there are have been many bidding wars over the last 60 days.
To see median days in market drop by 36% while the average only dropped by 8% tells me 2 things. First, the "average" home is selling within 48-72 hours of being on the market. Second, mis-priced homes will still sit on the market as reflected in the average days in market data. So, it's STILL CRITICAL TO PRICE A HOME WELL! Your sellers are probably better off listing their home for sale just a little bit lower to create bidding wars that will drive the price up.
Amazing to see how many more homes sold in July vs July 2018! But, sales started slowing down the summer and fall of 2018 as mortgage rates hit 5% in September.
We have seen over 20k new listings over the last 3 months; but demand is still outstripping supply. You would never guess from this data that our unemployment rate is over 10%.
New listings year to date are back to what we saw in 2017 and 2018 and a little lower than 2019.
Pendings have been above 6,000 for 3 months in a row.
Median home prices rose by $28,500 in the last 12 months. Thus, a buyer who chose to wait to save more money to buy a home needed to save $28,501 in the past year to come out ahead. How many first-time home buyers think were able to do this? I would bet <1%. Thus, waiting doesn't make any sense. Why did average prices increase so much? According to DMAR's report there were 388 sales of homes priced above $1 million last month, an increase of 55% from last year!!!. New listings of homes priced above $1 million also increased by more than 50% and pending transactions more than doubled to 399. The luxury home market soared back to life this summer!.