Is a home in Denver Affordable?

The Denver Single Family Housing Affordability Index is a great tool to understand our housing market from a historical perspective. 

This index combines the regional household income trends with interest rates and local housing prices to calculate the proportion of local households that can afford the median priced house. From a buyer’s perspective, the higher the index the more affordable homes are, the lower the index the less affordable homes are.

Here’s how movements in the three variables affect the Index:

• Interest rates - if interest rates rise, the Index falls
• Home prices - if home prices rise, the Index falls
• Average income - if the average income rises, the Index rises

Quick Market Update!

The following chart was published last week by YCRE.  Overall, 

• Average sold prices continue to increase 
• Average DOM continue to decrease
• The amount of inventory is slowly increasing

Current Rental Information

The following information was provided by Apartment Association for Metro Denver.  

The trends for vacancy and rent continue to be in the landlord's favor.

 

YCRE Price Change Map

The latest YCRE Price Change Map has just been published. 
Please let me know if you would like a larger copy or a map of an area that is not shown here!

Red - Neighborhoods with little or no change in value
Green - Neighborhoods with the greatest positive change in value

Denver Neighborhood Trends

A friend recently asked me which neighborhoods in town were appreciating the most … I didn’t know the answer off of the top of my head but did a little digging.  

A recent analysis by YCRE looked at the market in various Denver neighborhoods comparing the movement and sales price in the past 12 months to the 12 months prior to that.  Below is the information for a couple neighborhoods that you might be curious about.

I thought it was interesting to note that even if a neighborhood did not have more sales than the prior year – all of them had an increase in sales price.

 

As for which neighborhoods had the biggest change:

·        *   Evergreen Park, Aspen Meadows and Jefferson Park were some of the top neighborhoods with over 100% increase in sales.

·        *   Globeville had the greatest increase in sold prices – 51%!

Another Look at the Real Estate Market

Here is another interesting graph showing the relation between the number of single family home sales and the increasing population in Denver.