Business/Technology Reporter
If you look at the median price of houses sold last month in the state, they were pretty flat compared with a year ago, according to data from the Colorado Association of Realtors.
The seven-county Denver metro region saw median prices of single-family houses drop 1.2% to $630,000. Colorado’s was up a tiny fraction of a percentage point to $590,000.
But depending where the house — or condo — is in the state, prices are falling much faster. In the city of Denver, single-family homes sold for 3.6% less than a year ago. Boulder County saw a 10.3% plunge. Gilpin County prices dropped 24.7%, but it’s a small county with only eight houses sold last month, from 10 a year ago.
Other counties, including Pueblo, Summit and Grand, saw median prices inch higher in July.
Here’s the thing behind the data: More than 60% of houses sold this year had some sort of concession, at an average amount of more than $10,000, according to data shared by Cooper Thayer, a Denver-area Realtor with the Thayer Group.
Lowering buyer costs without cutting the prices
Sellers are doing their darndest to keep a higher sales price by offering to help their buyers pay down an interest rate, to cover closing costs or another financial incentive that keeps the sales price higher. Other concessions include paying for title searches, property appraisals and even repairs that show up after an inspection.
Homeowners just don’t want to settle for a lower price. According to the National Association of Realtors, more sellers offered concessions nationwide last year than a decade earlier. And lately, home warranty policies and help with closing costs are the most popular, as seen in this chart:
Kelly Moye, a Realtor in the Boulder area who tracks the data closely, said her analysis shows that 52% of the sales in the Front Range had a concession.
“The average concession is 3% of the purchase price, so on a $600,000 house, that’s an $18,000 concession,” Moye said. “That does not come off the sale price so it (the listing price gap) is actually wider than it seems because sellers are paying down interest rates and it’s not showing up in the sales price.”
The data in the Denver metro area also shows the same trends that began as interest rates started climbing three years ago: More houses are for sale and they’re taking longer to sell. Active single-family listings are up nearly 60% in two years, while the number of condos and townhomes for sale is up 86%.
Sellers still cutting prices
Even with concessions, sellers are caving and lowering prices. Statewide, sellers are getting 98.6% of what they asked for on houses, and 98.2% for condos and townhomes.
Getting to 100% means houses are being accurately priced, Thayer said. The goal is to price a home based on what it’s worth today — not last fall or not during its price peak. That’s a challenge with sellers.
“There is a difficult psychological hurdle for sellers to overcome to reduce their prices to remain competitive in the market, especially since, on paper, the value of their home may have been significantly higher just a few years ago,” Thayer said in an email. “Buyers are now recognizing they have much higher leverage in their transactions to ask for lower prices, more repairs and more concessions.”
Even with concessions, successful home sellers in Boulder County received 97.2% of what they asked for. Four years ago in the hot pandemic market, they were getting 104.8%. And back then, sellers didn’t offer any concessions.
Moye said that a recent client, a young couple, had their pick of houses in a community in Firestone, where there are a lot of “motivated” sellers who have had their houses on the market for more than four months.
“They offered the list price and asked for $30,000 back to pay down their rate. And that’s what they got,” Moye said. “So when the stat comes out, it’s going to look like the seller got 100% of the sales price but they didn’t. They got that minus the 3%, actually it was more like 4%. Concessions are really skewing the number so it’s not totally accurate.”
Buyer’s market?
It’s still tough to be a buyer though. Prices are still high. In Boulder County, the median sales price was $871,250, unchanged from a year ago. It’s also higher than four years ago, in July 2021, when median prices hit $827,000 during the pandemic rush to move to larger quarters.
But switching over to the more affordable area of Aurora, some prices are actually up, said Sunny Banka, a longtime Realtor in the region. In one central Aurora ZIP code, 80012, the median sales price was up 1.3% to $465,000 from a year ago July, which is still a bit flat.
However, Banka said, July prices fell $20,000 from June, just a month earlier.
“It sounds like a huge drop but in the grand scheme of things, I’m seeing stuff come down way more than that,” she said. “But long story short, most sellers are giving concessions, anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 to $20,000.”
Sellers are also still covering commissions for the buyer’s agent, even after a big lawsuit last year helped publicize the fact that sellers don’t have to cover the buyer’s agent’s typical 3% commission.
“Affordable” condo market less affordable than ever
Condo prices in the Denver metro area have hovered between $390,000 to $423,000 for the past 12 months. In July, they fell to $292,500, down 6.5% from a year ago.
According to the Housing Affordability Index, which measures interest rates, median prices and incomes, condos are becoming increasingly less affordable, especially for first-time buyers. In July, the metro-area’s affordability index for condos and townhomes shot up to 108, compared to 66 for single family houses. The higher the number, the less affordable.
There are several contributing factors, even in Aurora, one of the most affordable cities to buy a home in metro Denver. There are large increases in new listings, up 4.7% from a year ago; rising inventories, up 15.7%; and it’s taking 55 days to get a condo sold, or 44.7% longer.
Plus, at today’s interest rates, each additional $100 in monthly HOA dues reduces a buyer’s purchasing power by roughly $15,400, Thayer said.
The problem with condos is the rising monthly HOA fees, which adds hundreds of dollars to the monthly cost of living in a condo. Higher maintenance costs and steeper insurance premiums on master policies are contributing to monthly fees.
Another issue condo communities are facing is that when the community pays too little a deductible or delays maintenance too long, properties face a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac mortgage blacklist. That hurts potential buyers who can’t get a traditional mortgage.
“So you have higher HOA fees and you can’t get it financed and investors don’t want them because we’ve got a lot of them on the market that nobody can buy,” Banka said.
She had five condo listings last month. Of those, the seller asked for one back and sold it for $65,000 less to an investor “one of those we-buy-ugly-houses-type scenarios.” She referred two of the condos to property managers to turn into rentals because they couldn’t qualify for traditional financing. And one went into foreclosure. Just one got a contract.
“The higher end (of home prices) is holding its own. But the lower end, that’s where the buyers are just getting hammered,” she said. “If you’re a buyer, you can go rent a brand new apartment for less. You don’t have to fix things.”
’Tis the season for slow home selling
But July tends to be a slow month. People aren’t shopping around because it’s summer.
“I personally blame it on the schools because if you think about it, kids get out of school in June-ish … and they’re back to school in August. The only month families have to do anything is in July so traditionally, July is a slower month,” Banka said. “I do more (sales) in December than I do in July.”
Moye called it “extreme seasonality,” but added, “Every July and August, it’s just downright super quiet, especially when it comes to condos and townhomes.”
But houses are still selling in Colorado, according to the data.
And on Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell indicated the central bank may soon cut interest rates. During a speech at an annual conference hosted by the Reserve Bank of Kansas City in Jackson, Wyoming he said “the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance,” reported The New York Times.
➔ See your county >> Colorado Association of Realtor July 2025 market update
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Other working bits
➔ Colorado has highest increase in pre-foreclosures. They’re called “zombie properties,” because they’re essentially abandoned houses with no one living in them and no one paying the mortgage. ATTOM, a market research firm that tracks property data, found that Colorado had the highest year-over-year increase in the zombie properties, up 115% to 58 from 27. That’s a very small number, but when such a rate is on the rise, that can be an indicator of the market. Plus, “Vacant and zombie homes can hurt the value of surrounding properties and start a negative spiral in a local housing market,” Rob Barber, ATTOM’s CEO, said in a news release.
➔ City of Denver cuts workers. As warned, the city of Denver had a sizable layoff of city workers this week, cutting 169 employees “as part of a larger effort to balance the 2026 budget,” officials said in a news release. Another 666 unfilled jobs are being left vacant. The budget gap is $200 million. Cuts hit newer workers but also long-time employees, including Anna Valdez, an employer for 34 years whose late grandfather, Bernie Valdez, has a city library named after him, Denverite reported.
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