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Under $300k New Homes Are Nearly Extinct
MetroStudy released their first quarter report on new home construction for metro Denver. Only 1% of new home starts in the first quarter had a base price below $300k, down from 3% of new home starts a year ago. Only 22% of new homes started had a base price < $400k. Just 2 years ago,…
A Very Surprising Showing Trends Chart
I received First Alliance Title’s monthly showings chart from Your Castle Real Estate and the number of showings in March and April this year dropped from January and February levels. In January and February home showings averaged about 23 showings per home per month, the highest levels ever recorded for the first 2 months of…
Record Amount of Under Contracts
Here are the home sales results for April for the 7 county metro Denver area I received from SMDRA. Sellers sold 4,499 homes and condos last month, a small 1% decrease from last year. Homeowners placed 6,416 new homes and condos for sale last month, an increase of 5.1% from last April. We ended April…
Buying a Home is a Full Contact Sport
The first 4 months of this year has been a constant reminder of the effort it takes for people who want to buy their first home in our crazy market. Buying a home is a full contact sport, no flag football here. An Australian friend from church calls our football a “sissy sport” as our…
Metro Denver Stats You Need to Know
The metro Denver area ranked second in the country on a list titled “10 Best Cities for Business Graduates to Move To” compiled by Move.org. Washington D.C. ranked #1. Move.org had 3 primary ranking factors: “unemployment rate, number of job openings per 1,000 in a business or financial occupation, and the average cost of living…
Why Inventory Levels May Get Worse
I read a story last week in the Business Journals that reported on 3 recent surveys of homeowners. The first survey by YouGov of 1,330 homeowners revealed that only 30% of them plan to leave their current home in the next decade. In a second survey by Bankrate.com, only 19% of homeowners plan to move…
Housing Affordability is Dropping & 3 Solutions
NAR just created and released a new metric called the Realtors Affordability Distribution Curve and Score. It’s a unique metric; but I can’t find what data they use for household income, down payment, interest rate on a loan etc. But, this metric definitely reveals a big imbalance between what potential home buyers can afford and…
Will Mortgage Rates Soon Hit 5%?
Mortgage bond pricing is down about 100 basis points over the last few trading days and the 10 Year Treasury Bill is up nearly ¼%. Why are rates moving higher? Strong economic growth is expected Inflation is rising Tight labor market Rising wages The U.S. Treasury is issuing tons of new debt this year The…
Apartment Rents Start Rising Again
The Apartment Association of Metro Denver released their first quarter report last week. Average apartment rents had fallen for 3 consecutive quarters last year; but that trend stopped in the first quarter as average rents rose 1.7% or by $24 to $1420 a month. The last time rents dropped in the first quarter was in…
Metro Denver is Growing Quickly
According to the U.S. Census Bureau metro Denver grew by 1.77% per year from July 2010 to July 2017.If we continue to grow at this pace our population will grow by roughly 1.5 million people by 2040. Denver is one 28 major metro areas that are growing by at least 1% a year.
Local Economic News
In February Colorado employers added 5,400 new jobs and the unemployment rate remained at 3%. Average hourly earnings increased by more than a Dollar to $28.38 an hour. Over the last 12 months Colorado employers have added 62,200 new jobs. According to SmartAsset Aurora has the 3rd highest rate of homeownership for singles in the…
How to Offer an Appraisal Guarantee with 5% Down
I came up with this solution for first-time home buyers last week who are using the Fannie Mae HomeReady loan program that offers a lower monthly payment with either 3% or 5% down. I came up with this solution for first-time home buyers last week who are using the Fannie Mae HomeReady loan program that offers…
