Denver housing market sees record number of homes under contract in June

A record number of homes went under contract in June as Denver's housing market continued its summer rebound, according to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors' latest market trends report, which covers the 11-county Denver metro.

Buyers closed on 5,581 Denver-area homes (including both attached and detached) in June, with another 7,676 under contract at the end of the month.

The June numbers continue a trend that began in May, when pending sales "skyrocketed." That foreshadowed a productive June, since deals typically take about a month to close.

The June increase in pending listings — up 27.4% from a year ago, and 16.3% from May —is evidence that buyers are still snapping up available homes at a rapid pace.

New listings totaled 7,364 in June. But the number of pending listings at the end of the month outpaced the new supply. June ended with 6,383 active listings, down nearly 33% from a year ago.

That lack of supply has pushed prices even higher. In March, prior to Covid-19 shutdowns, the average price for a residential property in the 11-county metro passed the $500,000 mark for the first time, reaching $513,535. The average price fell back below half-a-million in April and May, but shot back up to $509,736 in June.

Sellers continue to have the upper hand in all but attached homes in the $1 million-plus "luxury" segment.

Even in that segment, considered to be the hardest-hit during the initial months of the Covid-19 outbreak in Colorado, closings on detached single-family homes doubled from May to June, reaching 230.

New luxury listings jumped 17.14% from a year ago, and pending sales reached 430, up 58.9% from June 2019.

The news wasn't all good for the luxury market. Year to date, listings are only up 1.76% over 2019. Taylor Wilson, a DMAR Market Trends committee member and a broker associate at Compass, called that small uptick in new listings "a shocking figure that depicts the true damage of Covid-19," noting that new listings have seen double-digit growth since 2016.