Despite a continued rise in home prices this past month, analysts at the Denver Metro Association of Realtors said they’re seeing more market stability in the latest price and sales numbers for the 11-county metro area released Wednesday.

“The market today is not a version of what once was; it’s a new ecosystem entirely,” Amanda Snitker said in the news release. She’s the chair of the DMAR Market Trends Committee and Metro Denver Realtor, which track data for the association.

“Prices have stabilized, sellers are adjusting expectations and buyers, though more cautious, are still highly motivated when the numbers make sense,” Snitker said.

Analysts said that the fall market has, in some ways, shown a reverse of the normal trend where sales taper off into the holidays. This year, they note, the typically brisk spring season was abnormally flat, while the fall market has shown some signs of life.

The new numbers covering October, the association reported, show a median-priced single-family home in the area last month having increased to $650,000, up 2.36% from September’s median of $635,000. The new median is an exact match to the median price one year ago.

ATTACHED HOME PRICES FALL

Meanwhile, attached homes fell slightly to a new median of $388,220. The number of inventory homes of all types on the market at month’s end was 12,495, dropping 4.42% from the previous month but still up 14% over the course of the year.

Snitker said that the sales climate still presents a challenge for sellers, following a huge runup in prices that Denver and many other areas experienced following the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020.

“The recalibration of home prices has been occurring, not with a steep decline, but with a gradual shift in balance,” she said in the new report. In the broader period since April 2020 as the pandemic was ending, the metro area has seen median prices increase almost 34%.

Meanwhile, despite a 4.6% year-over-year drop in the number of listings entering the market, new properties arriving are continuing to outpace buyer demand. However, homes were on the market for a slightly shorter period and were selling at 98% of their list price.

“The Denver market has, in many ways, hit its reset button,” Snitker said. “We’re not witnessing volatility, we’re seeing normalization. Sellers must recognize that realism sells, while buyers who act decisively can secure homes under far more rational conditions than in recent years.”

The slow pace of the market’s recovery was most noticeable in the midranges close to the median price. But the report noted a slightly more encouraging picture in the upper ranges, above $1 million.

“October appeared to be far less scary for the $1 million-plus price range than expected,” said Andrew Abrams, who analyzes the luxury end of the market for DMAR, in the report.

PROMISING LUXURY HOME SALES

“Detached properties continue to disproportionately outpace attached properties in sales transactions and volume, but both segments showed signs of improvement,” Abrams added. He noted that detached home sales in the higher range increased 17.46% over the previous month and attached sales increased 14.29%.

“The cherry on top,” Abrams said, “came from a $10.13 million condo sale in Cherry Creek North and an $8.15 million home sale in Cherry Hills Village.”

The DMAR Market Trends Report covers data from Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Douglas, Elbert, Gilpin, Jefferson and Park counties.  DMAR represents over 8,000 Realtors in the metro area.