Moving to the Centennial State: A Mini-Guide to the Housing Market in Colorado

Colorado is an appealing place for potential transplants. The Centennial State added 70,000 residents in 2017, a growth rate of about 1.4 percent.

That’s a good amount of growth. Yet the housing market in Colorado still varies depending on which part of the state you’re in.

Denver is still the most populated city and county in the state. But El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs, is closing in fast.

In fact, at least one report predicts that the Colorado Springs housing market will become the hottest market in the entire country in 2019. Keep reading to find out some Colorado housing market basics.

The Denver Housing Market

There are plenty of good reasons to move to Denver. You’ve got plenty of arts and culture opportunities inside the city. If winter recreation is more your thing, you don’t have to travel far outside of the city to find stellar ski slopes.

But the Denver housing market has been up and down lately. The prices are high, but fewer people are buying.

Anyone trying to buy a house in Denver in the first part of 2018 ran into a white-hot sellers’ market. Both real estate agents and referral agents stayed busy.

As the year dragged on, though, housing inventory went up in the Denver area. Houses and condos began staying on the market longer. By year’s end, metro Denver home sales were down 5.5 percent from 2017.

That said, the average price of a Denver-area home is still more than half a million dollars. If you want a condo instead of a home, you should prepare to pay an average of about $350,000. Home values in Colorado show no signs of declining anytime soon.

The Colorado Springs Housing Market

If you drive 70 miles south of Denver to Colorado Springs, you’ll get a different story. In Colorado Springs, buyers are more likely looking at both high prices and low availability.

Colorado Springs has a lot of jobs and a lot of young people. As young people move up the career ladder, they’re more likely to stop renting and start house-hunting.

Colorado Springs has a sleepy reputation that doesn’t match the reality on the ground. Its population is rapidly approaching 500,000.

So what’s a buyer in the Colorado Springs housing market to do? For starters, you should know that an offer is more than just the price tag of the house.

Things like closing costs also factor into which bid the sellers choose. In Denver, you can sometimes get away with trying to split closing costs. But in Colorado Springs, you may have to offer to pay all the closing costs yourself if you want your offer to stand out.

Closing costs will vary depending on the price of your house. But you should prepare to pay about 5 percent of the home’s sale price.

The Housing Market in Colorado

Denver and Colorado are the two biggest markets, but the housing market in Colorado is much more than those two cities. Fort Collins and Boulder are also seeing robust housing sales right now.

Prefer a less populated region? Consider heading west to the Grand Junction area.

Housing market news tends to focus on residential properties. But finding commercial properties can also be challenging in certain conditions. Check out our blog post on commercial property searches to learn more.

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