Realtors describe a more stable and balanced market, but the pandemic changed many industry trends.
DENVER — The weather is warming up. The trees are starting to bloom. And for-sale signs are going up in yards across Denver.
Spring is usually the “rush hour” of home buying season, according to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors, but things have been unusual for several years now.
“I was just talking with my stagers, and I asked, ‘Are you busy?’ ” said Andrew Abrams, a Realtor and part of DMAR’s market trends committee. “And they said, ‘My phone rang all at once.’ And I think that's what everyone is feeling right now is, that we were kind of trying to feel out how the market was going go, and now it's here.”
And right now, Abrams said, DMAR data shows a few interesting story lines five years after the start of the pandemic.
First, inventory has recovered. It's still much lower than it was 20 years ago, but it's much improved from the worst of the pandemic years.
“Compared to 2006, we have about 10,000 properties on the market now versus about 27,000 then [in ‘06]," Abrams said. "But compared to where we were during those peak COVID years, where we'd have 1,500 to 2,000 properties, we have so much more.”
DMAR data shows 9,764 active listings at the end of March 2025, compared to just 1,921 active listings in March 2021, representing a more-than 400% increase in inventory. Homes are sitting on the market longer, too, giving buyers much more time to make decisions. Year-to-date data shows, in March, homes spent a median of 28 days in the MLS. But in 2021 and 2022 YTD, homes only spent four to five days in MLS.
Home prices rose dramatically during the pandemic but have eased slightly as interest rates rose. At its peak in April 2022, the median close price of a home in Denver (attached and detached combined) was $615,500. In March 2025, the median close price was $599,000.
“Today for a seller, it is really doing all the prep work to ensure that the house is staged well and then priced appropriately because if it is priced high, it's most likely going to sit on the market for a while, and then you're going to end up doing a price reduction. And so that's a big difference with the sellers,” Abrams said.
“With the buyers, patience is the name of the game today, which is very different than the past,” he said.
“So with that kind of balance,” he added, “I think there's more conversations that are being had and any time both sides are communicating more, it's a more healthy market.”
John Zenk and his wife bought a home in 2022, when interest rates were still low but competition was high. He remembers the stress of it all.
“We actually saw a house two doors down, and we put an offer in, I think like $50,000 over asking, which would I think be maybe like 10 or 15% over asking. It went for over $100,000 over asking, which was just nuts,” he said. “I think we probably saw over two dozen houses and made, I don't know, at least seven offers or eight offers before we [got this one]. I think we overpaid for this one, but like you kind of had to in the market.”
Now, three years later, their family has expanded to two children and they are on the hunt for another house. This time around, Zenk said the search is less stressful.
“We’ve been on contract for about a week now and yeah, fingers crossed, everything goes well,” he said. “I think you have to realize what's in your control and what's not, and there are lots of things that are out of outside of your control.”
While realtors describe the market as more stable, there are still plenty of unknowns, like federal layoffs, tariffs and interest rates.
“I think right now that that is one of the biggest challenges, is affordability,” Abrams said. “While people have been saving up and wanting to buy a home, if you're a first-time home buyer, there are so many more macro events going on that that feels very unstable to them.”
