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Recent reports about home sales from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors and the Colorado Association of Realtors confirm that prices have finally started to drop in the metro area, even though they remain considerably higher than they were at this time last year.
It’s been a dizzying decade for housing-cost hikes along the Front Range over the past decade, as documented in a new analysis by the real estate website Point2. Statistics reveal that the median price for a single-family home more than doubled in four Colorado metro areas – Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder and Fort Collins – from 2011 to 2021. The increases are so mind-boggling that Point2 breaks them down by day over that ten-year span, ranging from a daily increase of $66 for Fort Collins to a staggering $107 in Boulder.
Denver’s daily increase? Point2 calculates it at $94.
This phenomenon wasn’t unique to Colorado. Point2 examined the median single-family home prices during 2011-2021 for 187 of the largest communities in the United States. Two of these (Detroit and Boise) saw price increases of more than 300 percent over that period, while nine others experienced leaps of 200 to 299 percent and sixty others went up by 100 to 199 percent.
By last year, the median single-family home price had topped $1 million in three California cities – San Jose, San Francisco and Anaheim – thanks to jaw-dropping spikes. For instance, the median price in San Jose went from $570,000 in 2011 to $1,640,000 in 2021; the overall $1,070,000 jump translates to $266 per day. And earlier this year, Honolulu joined the $1 million median price club.
Boulder, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs are categorized by Point2 as midsize cities, and all three landed among the ten with the biggest increases in that category. Boulder finished second, behind only the Naples, Florida, area, while Fort Collins came in sixth and Colorado Springs ninth.
Here are the first ten entries on the midsize cities list:
Meanwhile, the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metropolitan statistical area made the top ten for large metros, winding up in the eighth slot by virtue of a median single-family home price that went from $231,400 in 2011 to $607,100 in 2021. The difference of $375,700 represents a 162 percent upswing that worked out to an average price climb of $94 every day:
The Denver Metro Association of Realtors survey for August estimated the median single-family home price in the area at $645,000 – a dip of under 1 percent from July. That makes 2021 prices seem like a bargain – unless they’re compared with those in 2011.
