Denver Metro Tilts Toward Buyers in July
Denver Metro Tilts Toward Buyers in July: Foothills Takeaways
REcolorado's newest numbers confirm what Evergreen, Conifer, and Morrison sellers have felt on their own listings for weeks: buyers finally have room to breathe. The Denver metro housing market logged near decade-high inventory in June, a months-of-supply reading between 3.2 and 3.5 across most counties, and days on market that stretched noticeably longer than a year ago. None of that means the foothills are sliding into a buyer's market free-for-all. It means the negotiation has changed, the prep work matters more, and the sellers who adjust their pricing and their offer to buyers — rather than their asking price alone — are the ones closing deals in July. Key Takeaways - Denver metro months of supply hit 3.2 to 3.5, the highest summer reading since 2019, and REcolorado's June report shows detached home days on market climbing sharply month over month. - Evergreen-Conifer pricing has held up better than the metro average, up roughly 3.7% year to date even as days on market stretched from the 40s into the 50s and beyond. - Morrison is a thin, low-volume market where a handful of closings can swing the median 10% or more in either direction — read its numbers with that caveat in mind. - Rate buydowns and closing-cost credits are back on the negotiating table across the metro, and foothills sellers are using them to protect price instead of just cutting it. - Homes priced to the last 30 days of comparable sales, not to last spring's peak, are still going under contract quickly — even in a market REcolorado now calls balanced.
What REcolorado's June Numbers Actually Show About the Shift Toward Buyers
Start with the report everyone in the business is talking about this week. REcolorado's data, folded into the Denver Metro Association of Realtors' June market report released July 6, put detached home median price at $675,000, up a modest 1.5% from a year earlier, on 3,094 closed sales. Attached homes — condos and townhomes — posted a median of $391,750, down 2.06% year over year across 830 sales. Those two numbers alone tell you the split market we're in: single-family homes are still gaining a little ground, while the attached segment is absorbing most of the pressure. The number that matters more for sellers is time. Median days on market for detached homes rose 27.27% from May to June, landing at 14 days for homes that go under contract quickly, while attached homes climbed 17.24% to 34 days. Close-price-to-list-price ratios are still sitting near 99%, which tells you something important: homes that are priced correctly are still selling close to ask. The slowdown is happening to homes that aren't priced correctly, and there are more of those sitting on the market than there were a year ago. New listings and pending sales both peaked in April this year and pulled back through May and June — earlier than the usual seasonal pattern. Year-to-date new listings are down 5.55% across the 11-county area REcolorado tracks, which runs from Adams and Arapahoe through Douglas, Jefferson, Gilpin, Clear Creek, and Park counties. That's the geography that includes the foothills corridor Danny Skelly and Orson Hill Realty work every day. Inventory isn't spread evenly. Detached homes priced between $300,000 and $999,999 — which covers a huge share of foothills inventory — have less than three months of supply. Push above $2 million and supply climbs to 4.63 months. Under $300,000, it's 4.44 months. The middle of the market is still the tightest band; the extremes are where buyers have the most room.
Balanced Doesn't Mean Broken: Reading the Denver Metro Data Correctly
"Buyer's market" gets thrown around loosely, and it's worth being precise. A balanced market runs four to six months of supply. Denver metro is sitting at 3.2 to 3.5 months — higher than it's been at any summer point since 2019, but still short of the technical definition of a buyer's market. What that means in practice: buyers have more negotiating leverage than they've had in years, but sellers haven't lost control of pricing. They've lost the ability to price aggressively and expect a bidding war to bail them out. DMAR's own committee members are framing it the same way. Buyers are still willing to pay close to asking price — that 99% close-to-list ratio proves it — but they're demanding more for that money. The June report describes today's buyers as far more methodical inspectors than the ones bidding blind two years ago: checking mechanical age, water heater condition, and roof life expectancy well before they form an opinion on the kitchen or the finishes. Call it what it is: a turnkey premium. Homes in move-in condition are commanding a real advantage over homes that need work, and that gap is widening every month rates stay elevated. The luxury segment tells its own story. Sales of homes priced at $1 million or more are up 3.12% year to date compared to 2025, 10.11% above 2024, and 23.21% above 2023 — strong numbers by any measure. But even luxury properties are taking longer: median days on market for the segment rose 16.67% year over year to 14 days, and the average climbed 9.3% to 47 days. Even buyers with the most money are taking their time. That matters directly for Evergreen and Conifer, where a meaningful share of inventory sits in or near the luxury tier. None of this points to a crash. Prices are still positive year over year at the median. What's changed is the clock. Homes that would have gone under contract in a week two years ago are now taking two, three, sometimes five times as long — and the sellers who understand that shift going in are the ones who avoid the trap of chasing the market down with repeated price cuts.
Why the Foothills Feel the Shift Differently Than Aurora or Centennial
Metro-wide statistics flatten a lot of local texture, and nowhere is that more true than in the mountain corridor. Suburbs like Aurora, Centennial, and parts of Highlands Ranch have tipped into genuinely buyer-favored territory in the $700,000 to $900,000 range, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors' most recent analysis — longer timelines, more aggressive negotiation, and price cuts that stick. That's not quite the story in Evergreen, Conifer, and Morrison. The foothills operate on a different supply curve. Mountain and foothills inventory has always been smaller and slower to turn over than flat-land suburban tracts, because there's simply less buildable land, more septic and well considerations, and a smaller pool of move-up buyers cycling through. That structural scarcity is exactly why Evergreen-Conifer pricing has held up noticeably better than the metro median even while days on market followed the same upward trend as everywhere else. There's also a buyer-profile difference. Foothills buyers tend to be more deliberate by nature — they're weighing commute distance, wildfire mitigation, well and septic maintenance, and a genuinely different lifestyle trade-off than a suburban move. That population was never going to move at suburban speed, even in 2021. So when days on market stretch from 40 to 55 or 60, it reads as a bigger shock on a chart than it feels for a seller who's used to a more patient buyer pool to begin with. That doesn't mean foothills sellers are immune to the metro-wide shift. It means the shift shows up as slower absorption with steadier pricing, rather than the price erosion showing up in some suburban submarkets. Understanding that distinction is the difference between a seller who panics after three weeks without an offer and one who reads the data and stays the course with a smart pricing and marketing plan.
Evergreen and Conifer: The Foothills' Bellwether Submarket
If you want a single number that captures where the foothills stand right now, it's this: Evergreen-Conifer's median single-family price is up roughly 3.7% year to date, even as the region absorbed the same rate pressure and inventory growth as the rest of the metro. That's a meaningfully better outcome than the metro-wide detached median's 1.5% year-over-year gain, and it's happened during a stretch when days on market climbed sharply. Look at the trajectory through the back half of last year and it tells a clear story. In October, new single-family listings in Evergreen rose 4% year over year to 684, while closed sales dipped 2% to 607. Median price ticked up 2% to $697,000, and average days on market climbed from 40 to just over 50. Evergreen and Conifer sales specifically were up 20% that month, driven by higher-end activity — a sign that motivated, well-qualified buyers were still very much in the market, just moving at a different pace. By November, days on market in Evergreen-Conifer had jumped from 48 a year earlier to 80. That's not a small move. But closings stayed remarkably consistent: 48 in September, 58 in October, 56 in November — a pattern regional agents describe as buyers working to finalize purchases before the holidays, which happens every year regardless of rate environment. The takeaway sellers should sit with: volume held up even as the timeline stretched. Buyers didn't disappear. They took longer to decide. Coming into 2026, more recent data shows the adjustment continuing. Over the three months ending in April, Evergreen's median sale price came in around $850,000, down about 7% from the same period a year prior, with homes selling after 16 days on market compared to 10 days the year before. By July, asking prices in Evergreen sat near $1.02 million — down modestly month over month and year over year — with a median days-on-market figure of 49, essentially flat compared to July of last year. Meanwhile, in the most recent 30-day window, the median sale price actually ran higher, near $1,025,000, up 5.7% year over year, even as the share of homes selling above list price fell sharply and more than a third of active listings had taken at least one price reduction. Read those numbers together rather than in isolation and the picture is consistent: Evergreen and Conifer are absorbing more inventory and taking longer to close deals, but price support has been unusually resilient for a market moving through this much change. That's the argument for staying disciplined on pricing rather than panicking into a discount.
The Turnkey Premium: Why Condition Is Outweighing Curb Appeal
Every foothills listing agent has felt this shift over the past two quarters, and the data backs it up. Buyers with financing options are being far more selective about mechanical systems, roofs, septic and well condition, and general move-in readiness than they were even eighteen months ago. DMAR's committee has put a name to it — the turnkey premium — and it's reshaping how both sides need to think about value heading into the rest of the summer. For foothills sellers specifically, this cuts two ways. On one hand, well-maintained mountain properties with newer furnaces, updated septic systems, and recent roof work are commanding faster sales and cleaner negotiations than comparable homes that need obvious work. On the other, homes that carry deferred maintenance — an aging well pump, an original 1990s furnace, a roof nearing the end of its life — are the ones absorbing the longest days on market and the most aggressive buyer requests during inspection. The fix isn't always a full renovation. A pre-listing inspection identifies the two or three items that are actually costing you buyers, rather than guessing. Fixing a $1,200 water heater issue before listing avoids a $4,000 negotiated credit and a week of renegotiation after inspection. Spend strategically before you list, not reactively after an offer falls apart. This also changes how sellers should talk to their agent about pricing strategy. A property competing against three similarly priced, recently updated homes needs either a price adjustment or a credit that acknowledges the condition gap — ignoring it just means a longer runway on the market and a buyer pool that's already comparing your listing unfavorably before they've scheduled a showing.
Days on Market in the Foothills: What the Trend Line Is Telling Sellers
Days on market is the single most useful number for a foothills seller trying to read this market correctly, because it moves faster and more visibly than price. Across Evergreen and Conifer, the trend has been steadily upward for over a year: average days on market around 40 in early fall of last year, climbing past 50 by October, and stretching to 80 in Evergreen-Conifer specifically by November. Current 2026 figures for the ZIP code covering Evergreen show a median of 28 to 49 days depending on the data window and season, roughly double what sellers saw during the tightest years of the pandemic-era market. The instinct when a listing sits past 30 days is to cut the price. Sometimes that's right. But the more useful question is whether the home is competing well against what else is active in the same price band right now — not against what sold six months ago. A foothills home priced against last spring's comps is priced against a market that no longer exists. Buyers touring in July are cross-shopping against everything currently on the market, and if three other similar homes have come on since your listing went live, your competitive position has changed even if nothing about your house has. There's a second signal worth watching alongside days on market: the share of active listings taking a price reduction. In Evergreen's most recent 30-day snapshot, nearly 39% of active listings had cut price at least once — up sharply from the same period a year earlier. That's not a reason to panic. It's a reason to price right the first time, because the data shows buyers are increasingly skeptical of homes that have already dropped once, wondering what they'll need to offer to get the second cut. Active inventory in Evergreen has grown too — total active listings were up more than 22% year over year in the most recent count, with new listings up nearly 36% in the trailing 30 days. More competition on the shelf means your listing has to work harder in photography, pricing, and first-two-week marketing than it did even a year ago.
Morrison: A Small Market Where Every Data Point Swings Hard
Morrison deserves its own conversation, because it behaves differently than Evergreen and Conifer in one important way: volume. Morrison sees a fraction of the closings that Evergreen does in any given month, which means percentage swings that look dramatic on paper often reflect a handful of transactions rather than a genuine market shift. Recent reporting shows median sale prices in Morrison ranging from the high $500,000s to the mid $800,000s depending on the exact window and data source — a spread that has more to do with which specific homes closed in a given month than with any real repricing of the market. Redfin's three-month window ending in March put the median at $840,000, up 2.8% year over year, with homes selling in about 17 days — a pace Redfin still classifies as "somewhat competitive." Movoto's June snapshot showed asking prices near $832,000, roughly flat month over month, with a median of 61 days on market. The more telling number comes from absorption data: as of mid-June, Morrison carried roughly 18 months of inventory across all segments — a figure that, taken at face value, looks like conditions favor buyers by a wide margin. In a market this thin, though, that number can shift dramatically with two or three new listings or a single active buyer taking a home off the shelf. Treat Morrison inventory statistics as directional, not gospel, and lean on recent comparable sales rather than trailing 12-month averages when you're setting a price. What hasn't changed in Morrison is the fundamental appeal: proximity to Denver, foothills access, and a small, tightly held inventory of homes that don't come to market often. Sellers here still benefit from real scarcity value, even in a metro-wide environment that's tilted toward buyers. The strategy that works is patient, comp-driven pricing paired with marketing that reaches the specific, motivated buyer pool actively searching this corridor — not a strategy built around chasing metro-wide averages that don't reflect Morrison's actual transaction volume.
Pricing to the Trend, Not the Peak: A Foothills Seller's Framework
The single biggest lever a foothills seller controls right now is the initial list price, and the sellers winning in July are pricing to the last 30 days of closed and pending data rather than to what the market looked like in April or last spring. Here's the framework working right now for foothills listings: - Study the last 30 days of closed sales in your specific submarket, not a trailing 12-month average that blends a much hotter spring market with the current pace. - Know your active competition, not just your solds. Buyers touring your listing are cross-shopping everything else on the market in your price band and radius right now. - Weigh condition against price. If two comparable homes are priced similarly but one has updated mechanicals and yours doesn't, either your price or your concession offer needs to account for that gap. - Build in a marketing plan for the first two weeks, since a strong debut still generates the most traffic and the best offers, even in a slower market. - Decide your concession posture before you list — whether you're open to a rate buydown, a closing-cost credit, or neither — so you're not negotiating decisions under pressure once an offer comes in. Pricing too high and planning to "test the market" is the costliest mistake in this environment. A home that lists 5% to 8% above realistic value tends to sit for 45 to 75 days, cuts price, and often closes below where it would have sold if it had been priced correctly from day one. Buyers watching a listing age assume something's wrong with the property, even when nothing is. The first two weeks of a listing generate the most attention it will ever get — price it to capture that window, not to leave room to negotiate down from an inflated number.
How Denver Metro Conditions Compare to Foothills Submarkets
Market Indicator Denver Metro / Foothills Reading Months of supply 3.2–3.5 metro-wide; highest summer reading since 2019 Detached median price $675,000 metro (+1.5% YoY); Evergreen-Conifer +3.7% YTD Close-price-to-list ratio ~99% metro-wide when priced correctly Days on market trend +27% May to June metro-wide; Evergreen-Conifer moved from ~48 to ~80 days YoY in Q4 New listings Down 5.55% YTD metro-wide; up double digits YoY in Evergreen recently Mortgage rate environment Mid-6% range, per Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey Luxury segment ($1M+) +3.12% YTD sales metro-wide; foothills carries a meaningful luxury share Seller posture Concessions and buydowns increasingly standard rather than exceptional
Creative Concessions Foothills Sellers Are Using to Close Deals
The single biggest shift in negotiating strategy this year isn't the price — it's what sellers are offering instead of a price cut. Rate buydowns and closing-cost credits have moved from rare accommodations to standard negotiating tools across the Denver metro, foothills included, and the math behind them explains why. A straight price reduction delivers surprisingly little monthly relief. On a $600,000 home at a 6.5% rate, a $10,000 price cut saves a buyer roughly $60 a month.
