DENVER (KDVR) — The Mountain West, consisting of Colorado and it’s Rocky Mountain neighbors, was once the nation’s most sought-after housing market. But it is no longer the hottest spot on the country’s block – in large part due to it being prohibitively expensive.
Realtor.com‘s most recent report on the nation’s 20 hottest markets doesn’t include the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood metro area anymore. Nor does it include other cities bordering the Rocky Mountains that have seen the same surge of highly paid residents as Denver, such as Salt Lake City, Boise or Bozeman.
Realtor.com measures a market’s hotness by a variety of factors including the number of people who view each house, the length of time it takes to sell and the change in the number of days it takes to sell compared to last year.
This year, every one of the nation’s 20 hottest markets is in the Midwest or the Northeast. From 2020 through 2021, over half the nation’s hottest markets were in the West.
In a hyperinflationary economy, buyers are looking for cheaper homes now that western properties have risen to unprecedented highs. Rochester, New York; Manchester, New Hampshire; Hartford, Connecticut and Columbus, Ohio now claim the nation’s hottest spots for real estate.
The Denver metro’s median sales price in March 2023 was $600,000 for a single-family home – not the highest on record but still out of boundaries for any household not in the nation’s 20% highest income bracket.
On average, the median sales price of a home in the hottest 20 markets is $383,591 – 56% less than a Denver area home.
A Denver area home is more expensive than every market on Realtor.com’s 20 hottest markets list except Boston, where homes sell for $824,000. Homes in any of the hottest markets cost up to three times less than a Denver home.