Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 2:21pm MST

Denver again led metro area in home resales in 2009, but sales declined

Denver Business Journal

Denver County continued to have more sales than other metro-area counties of existing single-family homes in 2009, according to data from Metrolist Inc. The county had 7,482 closed sales of such homes last year, down from 9,399 the prior year.

Existing sales, also called resales, are those of homes that have sold at least once before.

The largest number of homes sold in Denver County — 2,581 — were in the affordable, $100,000-$200,000 price range often attractive to first-time buyers, followed by 1,580 home sold in the $200,000-$300,000 “move-up” range.

Independent Littleton broker and Metrolist analyst Gary Bauer broke down the data by county. Metrolist is metro Denver’s Multiple Listing Service (MLS), providing home-sale data to residential real estate brokers and agents.

“First-time homebuyer closings, via tax-credit assistance, took over the market for the majority of the year,” Bauer said in his report. “First-time homebuyer transactions are estimated to be 40-plus percent of all [home sale] closings.”

The federal government’s first-time homebuyer credit provides as much as $8,000 to such buyers. The credit was renewed in November of last year through April 30, 2010, for home sales that will close in June.

The least number of homes sold in the county last year — 114 — were in the $1 million-plus category.

But even with that relatively low number of high-end home sales compared to overall sales, Denver County had the highest number of $1 million plus home sales, according to Metrolist data. Boulder County was a close second with 111 sales in that price range.

Other home sales, by county, with 2009 and 2008 sales totals given:

• Arapahoe — 5,969 (2009)/7,327 (2008). Most homes last year — 2,255 — sold in the $100,000-$200,000 price range.

• Adams — 5,795/7,590. Most ’09 sales — 2,873 — were in the $100,000-$200,000 category.

• Jefferson — 5,277/6,144. Most houses — 2,107 — sold in the $200,000-$300,000 range last year.

• Douglas — 4,039/4,939. Most homes — 1,574 — sold in the $200,000-$300,000 category in ’09.

• Boulder — 2,975/4,272. Most houses — 1,096 — sold last year were in the $300,000-$500,000 price range.

• Broomfield — 854/1,058. Most homes — 312 — sold in ’09 were in the $200,000-$300,000 range, but 306 homes sold were in the $300,000-$500,000 range.

• Elbert — 314/376. Most homes sold last year — 111 — were in the $300,000-$500,000 range.

According to Metrolist, metro Denver’s seven counties plus Elbert County had a total of 32,705 closed existing single-family home sales last year, down 20 percent from 41,105 such sales in 2008. The largest number of those sales were in the $100,000-$200,000 price range.

Last year, 44,546 single-family homes were put under contract for sale, down 12 percent from 50,517 in ’08.

Total volume of single-family home sales marketwide was $8.7 billion last year, down $1.5 billion year over year.

Denver County also had the highest number of closed sales for condominiums in ’09, at 2,528, followed by Arapahoe County with 2,261 condo sales. Most of those sales in both areas — 899 for Denver County and 1,028 for Arapahoe County — were in the $100,000-$200,000 price range.

— Paula Moore