A dozen days into 2026 and there are more than 1,800 houses and condos for sale in the Aurora area, the territory of long-time Realtor Sunny Banka.
“It was 1,500 for the first eight days (and) 1,835 was the number yesterday or the day before, which is another 300 homes in just a couple of days,” Banka said Tuesday. “And we’re not even in the prime selling season.”
That’s actually about where Aurora was at the end of 2024 as the industry moved into a slow market in 2025. Expect a market similar to last year, which saw more houses hit the market, flat median prices and more concessions to attract buyers, according to local real estate professionals, like Banka, who said Aurora prices have fallen 5% to 8% in a year with some homes “down over $100,000 from what they would have listed for in 2024.”
Call it a buyer’s market even if the buyers seem to be MIA.
Buyers are still out there. They’re just a bit older — with the median age of 40 for first-time buyers — and have more money to spare, according to the National Association of Realtors data. Last year, they purchased nearly 41,000 single-family homes and 10,800 condos and townhouses in the Denver area. That’s still a big drop from the explosive 2020, when historic data shows 50% more homes and more than twice as many condos and townhouses sold in the area. Statewide, 67,732 single-family houses sold last year, a 3.2% increase from a year earlier, but down from the 96,286 five years ago.
Buyers have more choices these days, and many sellers aren’t under pressure to take just any offer, said Cooper Thayer, a Denver-area Realtor.
“That combination tends to suppress transaction volume even when conditions appear favorable on paper,” Thayer said. “In short, this market is less about fear or flight and more about friction. Deals are happening, but only when price, payment and product line up cleanly.”
Buying vs. renting differential
As members of the Colorado Association of Realtors prepare for their annual economic summit Wednesday, Thayer also planned to share a telling slide that adds perspective about where the buyers have gone: The monthly cost of buying a home is essentially 100% more than renting.
“That gap reflects not only elevated home prices, but also higher mortgage rates, property taxes, insurance and maintenance costs embedded in ownership,” he said. “Even with more choices, many buyers simply cannot, or choose not to, stretch their monthly budgets.”
He estimates that leasing an apartment in Denver costs $22,675 a year compared with $45,395 for a mortgage payment, which includes property taxes, insurance and other fees.
Historically, it’s been much better or much worse, depending on one’s perspective. The differential between buying versus renting hit a low of 12.7% in 2012, according to Reventure data shared by Thayer. And it had shot up to 118.9% in 2022, from 54.6% the prior year due to the pandemic home-buying frenzy that caused bidding wars and higher list prices.
The change from the frenetic pace of the pandemic home-buying market has helped shave off some of that differential, even as new apartment construction pushed rents even lower. In fact, the lull in the for-sale market is considered “more balanced” compared with those volatile early 2020s. And this isn’t just in Denver.
“2025 felt like a reset year for housing across Colorado,” Jared Reimer, Colorado Association of Realtors spokesperson and Fort-Collins-area Realtor, said in the organization’s monthly update. “There were no dramatic advances or retreats, just a market that stayed resilient and balanced despite ongoing economic uncertainty.”
Others shared a similar view, calling stability is better than volatility: “The outlook for 2026 is for conditions to closely resemble those seen in 2025,” said Jay Gupta, a real estate agent in Colorado Springs. “Looking ahead to 2026, expectations point to another stable year barring major disruptions,” said Heather Erb in Durango. Added Kelly Moye in Boulder, the 2026 forecast is “a balanced market, slight appreciation, and no clear advantage for either side.”
According to December data from the Colorado Association of Realtors, houses in the Denver-metro area sat for sale for 70 days, up 20.7% from a year earlier. Statewide, the number of days increased 11.8% to 76 days. The median sales price fell for both, down 2.6% to $560,000 in Colorado, and down 2% to $599,900 in metro Denver.
Patrick Muldoon, with Muldoon Associates in Colorado Springs, said it’s hard to predict what will come this year, an election year. The median sales price in El Paso County last year stayed flat at $490,000, but by the end of December, it had dropped to $469,950. Muldoon said he noticed last quarter that many local sellers took their home off the market in hopes of getting a better price in the spring. However, the housing market isn’t what it used to be, he said.
“I think they’re going to find out that spring is not better,” Muldoon said. “I cannot tell you how many times the seller was sitting at the other side of the table saying, ‘We’ve heard that. Our house is different.’ And that is a very hard disconnect to get across to sellers who think their house is better. Two years ago, nobody thought the housing market had shifted. Last year, people were admitting it. So maybe this year, everybody finally agrees (and) we need to get more aggressive. We’ll see as we work into the springtime.”
Condo/townhouse market bogged down by high HOA fees
But the market continued to get worse for condo and townhouse buyers and sellers, especially in the Denver metro area.
Considered a more affordable option for first-time buyers, the median sales price ended the year at $395,000, down 3.7% from 2024 and down from $501,578 at the end of 2022. In December, there were 6.4% more listings, 7.6% fewer units sold and the number of days on the market increased 21% to 75 days.
“We’d been pushing for $500,000. The prices have dropped dramatically,” said Banka in Aurora. “Will they continue to? They’re going to have to because we will have a glut.”
A large contributor to the weakening market is rising homeowner fees, which jumped because of the rapid increase of property insurance premiums and higher maintenance costs. Not taking care of those could prevent buyers from getting a conventional loan.
And every $100 increase in monthly HOA fees will impact a buyer’s loan, Thayer said. According to industry calculations, that $100 is roughly equivalent to $16,680 in a buyer’s purchasing power.
“It reduces how much monthly payment the borrower can carry while still staying within (debt-to-income) limits,” Thayer said. “Buyers feel it immediately because once DTI caps are hit, the only way to stay qualified is to lower the purchase price, increase the down payment, or move to a different property altogether. This is also why HOA-heavy properties are disproportionately sensitive to higher interest rates. As rates rise, every dollar of fixed monthly cost carries more weight, and HOA dues do not get cheaper when rates fall or prices adjust.”