What's the market like?

In the Denver real estate market we have seen steady growth of a mere 3-5% over the last 2 years. Can't make a fortune but steady is good. Normally I can get someone out of a home after they have owned it for 2 years with no damage to their wallets. After that it is all on the plus side. The south end of town (Highlands Ranch, Littleton, Englewood, Centennial, Cherry Hills, etc) Seem to be faring better than the north and central. The article in the Rocky Mountain News certainly confirms some of this while there are differing opinions there too: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/business/article/0,1299,DRMN_4_4171585,00.html

A personal reflection is that once Katrina hit we saw a 9-11 like atmosphere fall on the town as a whole. We just saw people going home watching the news and not looking at homes. They were grieving over New Orleans just as we did for the victims of 9-11. A year ago I was telling folks 90-120 days to sell. This year I started saying 60-90 yet I have 3 properties giving me the top end of that statistic and throwing my personal stats in the bucket! Weird thing is the high end & low end move fast. Mid market is lagging.

Activity seems to have changed a little, as ours is up from 4 weeks ago, but I still am sensing an early lull this year. We normally slow down at Thanksgiving through the Super Bowl. I think allot of folks have the gas price blues and do not want to commute as much as we have in the past. Our light rail project is a year from completion so we have to wait for that to fully come on line. However, the wise ones will move now! It is a great negotiating strategy to buy when the Sellers are desperate to get the deal done before winter!