This month, the National Association of Realtors reported that home prices climbed in 80% of the country's metro areas last quarter. The West was the only region that didn't follow. Prices there fell 0.8%.
Denver technically sits in that region. But if you've been watching Denver home prices specifically, you know local prices actually kept climbing here, up about 2.5% over the past year. That gap between the regional headline and what's happening on your own street is worth understanding, especially if you're deciding whether to sell.
Here's what the national numbers actually show. The median price for an existing single-family home hit $434,900 in the second quarter, up 1.5% from a year ago. That's better than the 0.5% growth seen in the first quarter of the year, and it means more of the country is heating up rather than cooling down. The Northeast led the way at 3.8% growth, followed by the Midwest at 3.6%. The South grew a more modest 1.0%. Then there's the West, the one region that lost ground.
The West region in this report covers a huge stretch of the country, from California to Washington to Colorado. States like California and Oregon have some of the most expensive markets in the nation, and when those expensive markets cool even slightly, they can pull the whole region's average down. Denver, sitting inland with a different set of buyers and a different price range, doesn't always move the same direction as the coast. That's exactly what happened this quarter. The region as a whole slipped, but Denver home prices kept edging up.
This matters because it's easy to read a headline like "Western home prices fall" and assume your own home lost value. It didn't, at least not based on the data we're seeing locally. National and regional reports are built from averages across hundreds of cities, and they can hide what's actually happening two blocks from your front door. If you want to know what your home is really worth, a regional statistic isn't going to tell you. A look at recent sales in your specific neighborhood will.
There's a second piece of this report worth knowing if you're a buyer. Even with prices rising nationally, monthly mortgage payments on a typical home reached $2,199, up $219 from the prior quarter. That sounds discouraging, but income has been growing faster than prices in most places, so the average share of income going toward a mortgage payment actually dropped to 23.8%, down from 25.5% a year ago. Prices are up, but for a lot of buyers, affordability is quietly getting a little easier, not harder.
So where does that leave a Denver homeowner? Ignore the regional headline and look at your own numbers. Denver home prices have held up better than the broader West this quarter, inventory is near decade highs, and buyers have more room to negotiate than they did a few years ago. That's a very different picture than "the West is falling," even though both statements are technically true at the same time.
If you're curious what any of this means for your specific address, I'm happy to pull the real numbers for your block instead of a regional average.
Socials