October 2009

rican Dream Since 1946

HEADLINES

Metro Denver home re-sales slip; prices rise – The Denver Post

While home re-sales in the Denver metro area declined in September compared with a year ago, median

sales prices for houses and condos increased, according to data released Wednesday. A total of 3,846 homes

sold in September, down 9.8 percent from September 2008, according to Metrolist data. Meanwhile,

median prices for single-family homes rose 4 percent to $225,000, compared with $216,500 a year ago.

Condo prices increased 3.6 percent to $145,000, compared with $139,900 in the same month last year.

“With condos, it’s affordability and location,” said independent real-estate analyst Gary Bauer. “We also

have this underlying effort going on called the green movement, and more and more people are looking

closer to work or alternative transportation.”

An increasing number of move-up buyers in the market has pushed the median prices higher as well, Bauer

said. Move-up buyers typically purchase homes in the $150,000-to- $250,000 range, he said.

“The majority of the activity has been in the lower price ranges,” Bauer said. “The higher price ranges are

stagnant.”

The number of homes on the market declined 17.1 percent to 19,834, compared with 23,923 a year ago,

a number that’s likely to continue falling through the end of the year because of the holidays and the high

number of first-time buyers in the market.

Metrolist: Denver home sales decline in September, but so do unsold homes –

Denver Business Journal

Metro Denver home resales were down in September from the same month of 2008 and from August of

this year, but buyers continued to chip away at housing inventory, according to a Metrolist Inc. report

Wednesday. Resales are sales of homes that have been sold at least once before, and don’t include newly

built homes, and are also called existing home sales.

Average sold price for all existing homes, including single-family homes and condominiums, jumped 4.88

percent to $251,112 year over year, and were basically flat from this August. First-time buyers, attracted

largely by the federal government’s $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit, continued to dominate the

market last month, according to Gary Bauer, Littleton-based independent residential real estate broker and

Metrolist analyst. Purchasers qualify as first-time buyers, if they haven’t owned a home for the previous

three years. The tax credit expires Nov. 30, but real estate trade groups such as the National Association of

Realtors and National Association of Home Builders are lobbying the U.S. Congress to extend the credit

another year.

Home market strong in September | InsideRealEstateNews.com

The Denver-area home sales market, boosted by the $8,000 tax credit for qualified first-time home buyers

as well as an increase in move-up buyer activity, showed signs of strength in September, shows a report

released today.

“September continues to be a month of a lot of activity,” said independent real estate broker Gary Bauer,

who released the report based on Metrolist data. “I’m very surprised, and very happy, with the amount of

activity. As we both know, first-home buyer had a big impact on the market. But one of the other positive

things is the fact that there has been an increase in the high-end and move-up markets, too. “

HEADLINES

Homes priced from $150,000 to $250,000 – which represent near the top of the first-time home buying

market and the bottom of the move-up market – are up 3 percent from the previous eight months, he said.

Still, it is the first-time buyers who are driving the market, he said.

“I have to thin that first-time home buyers accounted for 35 percent of the activity last month,” Bauer said.

By contrast, in the 2000 to 2001 period, first-time home buyers probably accounted for 10 percent of the

market. And because not all homes purchased by first-time buyers are foreclosures or short sales, in some

cases the sale of those homes will allow people to move-up, Bauer noted.

Perhaps most surprisingly, despite the large number of first-time home buyers in the market, who typically

purchase lower-priced homes, the average and median price of homes sold last month was higher than in

September 2008. The average price of a single-family home sold was $274,433, 5.5 percent higher than the

average price of $260,118 in September 2008. The average price of a home sold and closed last month was

slightly higher than the $273,972 in August.

The median price of a single-family home, meanwhile, was $225,000, 4 percent higher than the $216,150

in September 2008, although slightly below the $227,000 in August. The median is considered a better

gauge of the market than the average, because it is less skewed by the mix of low-priced and high-priced

homes than the average. The 5,228 homes placed under contract in September was down only 0.8 percent

from September 2008, when 5,269 homes sold and only by 0.4% from August, when 5,248 homes sold.

Weekly sales record hits record in September | InsideRealEstateNews.com

Last month was the strongest September since at least 2001 for the weekly sales rate. The weekly sales rate,

an often over-looked metric, is an important one for gauging the demand for housing, given the existing

supply. For example, total sales were down slightly in September from August and a year earlier, but so is

the supply, so the sales rate is up dramatically.

The weekly sales rate last month was 6.09 percent, according to a report released today by independent

broker Gary Bauer, who prepares a monthly report on Denver-area housing activity based on Metrolist

data. Metrolist tracks homes sold by area Realtors. What that means is that more than 6 percent of the

unsold homes, on average, were placed under contract each week in September. There were 19,834 unsold

homes on the market last month, the lowest September inventory since 2001. The sales rate, by contrast,

was 5.09 percent in September 2008. The one percentage point may not seem like much, but it has risen

by 19.6 percent from a year earlier.

“This underlines everything we have been saying about the Denver market,” said Bauer. “Yes, we have been

impacted by the ‘Great Recession.’ But we have not lost our market. We still have consumers out there who

are striving to realize the American Dream of home ownership.”

Bauer said he had one client who lived in a Northglen home that they bought about 40 years ago for about

$12,000.

“They decided to put it on the market to see what would happen,” Bauer said. “If they didn’t get their

asking price, they planned to put it back on the market in the spring. In the first six days (of the listing)

we had 20-plus showings and put it under contract for the full asking price,” of about $155,000. Indeed,

many people seeking lower-priced homes are being out-bid, he and other brokers noted. That is absolutely

true, said Scott Nordby, co-owner of Innovative Real Estate.

“That is a true indication the market is turning,” Nordby said. He said that the weekly sales rate is so high

because of the $8,000 federal tax credit available to qualified first-time home buyers.