Market Update | March 2023

Showing volume has definitely increased over the past three weeks despite the current rate pressure on Buyers. New listings are receiving extra attention, and generally, we’re experiencing a modest bump in prices across the Denver Metro.

A little fun economic context from Callan below:

Anyone else grow up adoring Water World? A childhood memory (1990s/2000s) of mine is that giant wave pool "Thunder Bay". One enormous wave went off every 10 minutes, with teenagers screaming in fake terror. After the wave passed (anticlimactic compared to the screaming) true Water World aficionados would run to the enormous "P" in the Pepsi logo scrolled on the bottom of the wave pool's shallow end. This is where the finale would happen. Waves would form simultaneously, reverberating off the walls of the pool from the initial wave, and would converge on the second "P" where a dozen teenagers (myself included) would be waiting, still screaming. There was a very special energy watching these two waves collide and being in the center of the semi-secret event.

Fast forward 25 years. I've felt like we've been watching and waiting for the convergence of the listing supply bottleneck and rising mortgage rate impact on buyer demand. Two significant shifts in the supply and demand curves. Approaching nine months from when rates first shot up, I think it's safe to say that buyer demand has remained the more powerful force. Housing prices in the Denver Metro are rising slightly.

Skeptics would point to the yield curve first inverting 11 months back in April of '22 (recessions historically hit on average ~18 months later). That said, recessions have nearly always preceded a reduction in interest rates, fueling buyer demand. For local homeowners and perspective homeowners, the stability in home values, and the stability that we expect in 2023, are positives.

Speaking of stability, Water World's "Thunder Bay" seems to have discontinued its giant wave, now sending little waves out continuously so there is no more congregating around the Pepsi "P," to the disappointment of MANY.