Thursday, December 15, 2011

Single-family median prices fell in October in Colorado

Median home prices for single-family homes fell in Colorado and in the state's two largest market areas. According to median home price data for October, released by the Colorado Association of Realtors, the median home price for single-family homes was $225,800 during October, which is a drop of 3.2 percent from October of 2010. Statewide, the median home price was $204,400 during October, a drop of 7.6 percent from the same month last year. The median price in the Pikes Peak region fell 7.5 percent, yeear over year, falling to $187,400 during October.

The first graph shows the median single-family home price for the state and for the metro Denver and Pikes Peak regions. Median home prices fell dramatically in all three measures following the financial crisis of late 2008, but moved back up quickly by mid-2009. Since mid-2009, however, median home prices have been largely flat in metro Denver and in the Pikes Peak region. Statewide, the median price has been moving down since 2009. Statewide, sales prices are likely being pushed down by declining markets in western Colorado and in the central mountains.



The metro Denver area, where the median price is 14 percent below its June 2007 peak levels, has recovered the most. Metro Denver prices appear to have stabilized since 2009 and the median price generally moves between 220K and 240K. Following an initial recovery in late 2009, the statewide median price has shown a largely downward trend since early 2010. The statewide median price is now 16 percent below its June 2006 peak, and fell below 200K during most months of the past year. The Pikes peak median price is 18 percent below its July 07 peak and has been generally flat since late 2009, moving between 180K and 200K.

during recent months, however, the median prices appear to have entered negative territory when compared to the same months of the previous year. As can be seen in the second graph, the year-over-year changes in all three areas have been negative each month for the past six month.



This downward trend is mirrored in other home prices indices for Colorado such as the Case-Shiller, CoreLogic and FHFA indices. See here for past analyses using other indices. The year over year declines shown here tend to be larger than those of the other indices, and is likely due to differences in method.

The home price data provided by the Colorado Association of Realtors is based on home sales transactions that are listed in the MLS systems for each area and do not include for-sale-by-owner transactions or new homes sold directly by home builders.