Denver Region July Home Sales

Denver-area home sales dropped in July to the lowest level for that month in at least a dozen years. A total of 3,405 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in July across the eight-county Denver-Aurora metro area. That was down 30.2 percent from June and down 28.8 percent from a year earlier, according to MDA DataQuick of San Diego. The firm tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records.

July sales were 43.8 percent below average for the month and were the lowest for any July since at least 1998, when DataQuick's complete Denver-area statistics begin.

The median price paid for all new and resale houses and condos combined in July was $228,450, up 5 percent from June and up 7.5 percent from $212,500 in July 2009.

July's median was 7.7 percent lower than the Denver area's peak $247,569 median in June 2006. The overall median has risen on a year-over-year basis for 10 straight months.

An alternative price gauge showed a small drop from June and changed little compared with a year ago. Buyers paid a median $146 a square foot for resale single-family detached houses in July, down from $148 in June and up 0.4 percent from a year earlier.

Absentee buyers, a group that includes investors, accounted for 21.6 percent of July home sales, while buyers who appeared to have used cash represented 23.8 percent of sales. First-time buyers and others using government-insured FHA loans accounted for 40.7 percent of sales, down from 48.3 percent in June and 48.5 percent a year earlier.

In neighboring Boulder County, July sales totaled 408, down 28.8 percent from June and down 18.4 percent from a year earlier. The median price paid for all homes sold in July was $316,000, down 1.4 percent from June and up 7.1 percent from a year earlier.

The Denver metro area statistics in this report and in the table below reflect sales in Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson and Park counties.

Denver-Aurora, CO MSA*

Number of sales	Jul-09	Jul-10	% Chng
Resale houses	3531	2450	-30.60%
Resale condos	839	598	-28.70%
New homes	412	357	-13.30%
All homes	4,782	3,405	-28.80%

Median sale price	Jul-09	Jul-10	% Chng
Resale houses	$223,900	$235,000	5.00%
Resale condos	$133,250	$139,000	4.30%
New homes	$279,645	$316,020	13.00%
All homes	$212,500	$228,450	7.50%