Cooling continues as price reductions increase; sales prices fall but adding a boost to affordability
Sellers have really hung in there this year through market shifts, twists and turns. We've noted higher inventory this year than in 2021 and have been waiting for a purge of expired and withdrawn transactions. This purge is critical to drive our early market in 2023 where supply falls and demand picks up. Our purge finally showed up at the end of November where we saw an increase of withdrawn and expired listings plus fewer new listings hitting our market ending out last week with 6,030 listings available for sale in the 7 metro counties. Historically inventory drops again at the end of December as we get closer to the holidays. While I don't think we are going to have the rapid fire start to 2023 as we have seen in the last 3 years things are likely to pick up when interest rates drop possibly creating a tighter seller's market later in the year. We rounded out this week with approximately 2.1 months of inventory, 42.8% odds of selling, and nearly 60% of pending transactions last week making an average price reduction of -7.2%. Multiple offers and units under contract in 7 days or less cooled significantly with only 23.1% of homes closing in November selling for over asking price and 26.2% selling in the first week listed. Buyers have a great opportunity to take advantage of a market where their negotiating power is at its best levels in the last few years.
The market is still hot in some areas, and cooler in others. Here is a heat map of months of inventory by zip code in Metro Denver. Areas in red have a lower supply of inventory and areas in blue or green have a higher supply of inventory. hotter zones continue to be to the west of I-25 most notably Wheat Ridge, Lakewood and Littleton are still hovering 1-1.5 months of inventory. Cooling trends are noted in LoDo, south of DIA and into Parker and Castle Rock. Real estate is hyper local, be sure to check out your zip code in the Zip Code Index at the back of the attached single family and detached single family reports.
