Metro Denver Real estate listings surged in May as stay-at-home restrictions eased heading into peak home-buying season.
The number of houses on the market jumped 56 percent compared to April, according to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors. Still, sales were down 20 percent from the previous month, and about 50 percent relative to the same time in 2019, the report found.
“We are living in an unprecedented time with safer-at-home orders to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus and a nighttime curfew to diminish protests downtown,” Jill Schafer, chair of the association’s trends committee, said in a statement.
The listing surge is partly due to sellers putting their homes back on the market after withdrawing them when showings were halted in March, according to Schafer.
The average close price in May dipped slightly – 1.24 percent – to $495,925, according to the report. That’s compared to deals that closed in April.
Social distancing measures that banned in-person showings and kept potential buyers locked down in their homes froze Colorado’s real estate market in March. The COVID-19 pandemic threatens nearly a decade of booming growth for Colorado’s real estate. Job losses and economic uncertainty will likely keep some buyers on the sidelines even as social-distancing restrictions ease.
