The Colorado Western Slope Market
Colorado Western Slope real estate values continue to remain resilient despite dismal mortgage-rate trends. Consumers seem to be breaching the real estate log-jam as impressive changes in demand for real estate can be observed for the month of January. Home prices are up 6.4% year-over-year. Further, homes in Montrose experienced none of the typical price drops related to winter seasonality. Most significantly, the actual number of homes sold jumped 46% in January! Wisdom would argue that it’s not great to isolate or form projections with just one month of data, but these numbers are signaling that 2025 may be more active than 2024.
What’s Driving the Demand?
The pickup in demand for Western Colorado real estate may be due to consumer capitulation with mortgage rates hovering around 7% for the foreseeable future. Another can argue that consumers are finally being “forced” to move, and can no longer wait for mortgage rates to come down to previous lows. Therefore, job-relocations, death, divorces, marriages, upsizing, and downsizing are all natural occurrences that can only be delayed for so long. People may finally have to bite the 7% bullet and sell and or buy real estate. Hesitation surrounding the election year is also behind us, which may be driving Western Slope consumer decisions to make their housing goals a reality in 2025. Both the US stock market and real estate valuations are up, making a further argument that 2025 is the year to transact real estate.
The National Market
The national real estate market just recorded a 9.3% increase in home sales for December. This is a significant uptick and continued 3-month momentum upward. Although this recent trend is positive, overall home sales are the lowest since 1995. Paradoxically, prices are at an all time high, with the national median sales price at $404,400, up 6% from a year earlier.
Click Here to View Residential Sold – January
