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I remember the way my real estate agent presented the house on South Lafayette Street. It’s a great little place on a pocket park, she said, but there are already at least 20 offers, more than half of them cash. Do you still want to see it?
I did, because that’s what the Denver real estate market in the pandemic summer of 2020 required one to do. You had to act a little crazy to be able to negotiate the insanity. I didn’t have $700,000 in cash—not even close. But I had to keep up with the market if I wanted to escape the 730-square-foot apartment that was making me feel so darn lonely. I couldn’t let 40 existing offers or the prevalence of as-is purchases or the historically low inventory or the fact that I had to double-mask and wear latex gloves to go inside a home discourage me. But I probably should have. “It was a bad time to be a buyer,” says Britt Armstrong, a broker associate with the Tom Gross Team at Kentwood Real Estate and my real estate agent back then. “The pace was frenetic.”
It was also unhealthy. “There was a tsunami of emotional buying,” Armstrong says. “Bolstered by easy money and the freedom of remote work, people who’d had golden handcuffs removed them and were given golden wings. With three percent interest rates, people could move anywhere—and lots of them moved to Colorado.” With an influx of monied buyers from places like New York, the market in Denver proper—as well as in the suburbs and in many mountain towns—descended into utter mayhem.
Now it all feels like a fever dream, and the current market is more like a nightmare—for buyers, sellers, and those who made snap decisions five years ago. “There’s PTSD from Denver’s pandemic market,” Armstrong says. “I keep trying to tell people it’s not the same as four years ago, but we’re still dealing with the emotions from that time.” Today’s market—at least as of mid-January—would be more of a buyer’s market, with lots of slow-moving inventory, save for high interest rates that mean many will have to settle for smaller, less appealing houses with more expensive mortgages. Sellers aren’t happy either. “The days of 10 cash offers on the first day are gone,” Armstrong says. “Many houses are sitting for 60 or 90 days.”
And, Armstrong says, she’s seeing regret among those who left their hometowns and family during the pandemic for a Colorado adventure. “A house is just four walls and a roof,” she says. “Relationships and lifestyle make a difference. Many didn’t find their dream here and are now going back home.”
I didn’t find a home that summer. Instead, I waited until November 2020, when I happened across a townhouse in Rosedale. I’d wanted a single-family dwelling, but sharing a wall was a small price to pay for, well, paying asking price. I’m still here four years later—and will be until interest rates fall far enough to gift me a pair of golden wings.
By the Numbers
63%: Projected percentage of prepandemic boardings RTD got back to in 2024. Officials with Greater Denver Transit, a public transit advocacy group, have said that the reductions combined with the unreliability that has plagued the system in recent years could lead to further degradation of ridership numbers. “As of the end of 2023, RTD is very far behind its peer agencies in other metro areas,” says James Flattum, co-founder of Greater Denver Transit. “Austin is back to 78 percent of pre-pandemic ridership, Dallas is at 72, and Houston is at 76.” For its part, RTD says boardings have steadily increased year-over-year since 2021, and in January, the transit system increased frequencies
on 15 bus routes and two light rail lines.
~65 million: Passengers projected to have used RTD services in 2024. During the depths of the pandemic in 2021, only 49 million people braved the regional public transit system that serves eight counties.