My Interview on CPR - Why Is Denver's Housing Market Still On Fire?

Below is my recent interview with Mike Lamp on Colorado Public Radio, click the link and the "Listen" button near the top for the audio version.

http://www.cpr.org/news/story/why-is-denvers-housing-market-still-on-fire-supply-and-demand

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Why Is Denver's Housing Market Still On Fire? Supply And Demand

It's spring. The days are longer. The daffodils are and cherry blossoms are blooming. And real estate agents are about to get a whole lot busier.

Spring is normally a busy home buying and selling season, but there's nothing normal about Denver's real estate market, which is still rocketing along. The question is, why? Charles Roberts is a long time metro area real estate agent, who has been tracking the latest trends. He spoke with CPR's Mike Lamp about a few of his ideas.

The inventory of existing homes for sale is at historic lows. What’s driving that?

It’s basically supply and demand. If you look at the charts, what you see is that we’re seven years past our downturn. We peaked, and then we were down for a couple of years, and for seven years our market has been coming back because we have a lot of people that want to live in the metro Denver area; it’s a very, very popular place to live. So the demand is going up, especially with young people. And supply is just not up, we have more building than we had during the downturn. But it is simply not keeping up.

Why is supply not keeping up with demand?  

What the builders would say is that it is relatively difficult to get loans, and they simply can’t build housing that anybody would consider affordable. So what you see is a lot of building going on, a lot of construction downtown. But that tends to be luxury building. So nobody is building $180,000 condos or $220,000 houses. It’s just unaffordable for the builders, they say, to do that. So they’re not doing it, and therefore that demand is not getting satisfied.

What is your advice for potential buyers then?

Well, if they’re looking at the lower end, it may be to move out of the city, it may be to get a two bedroom instead of a three bedroom, it may be to get a fixer upper, it may be to wait a little longer and put more money down. The people who are suffering are the folks who are renting with rents having also gone up for seven years in a row. Fortunately interest rates are still relatively low. But I don’t have a lot of really good advice because I don’t expect this market to peak anytime soon.

People are stuck in their homes because they can’t find a place to buy. Is the same true for people who want to sell?

Three or four years ago we were a little bit confused as an industry. We said people should just sell their homes because they have lots of equity and move into another home and we thought a whole bunch of supply would come on the market. What we found was that we were wrong. Someone with a $350,000 home couldn’t find anything to move up to, and the same thing in other price brackets. To be honest it’s hard to figure out how that’s going to end.

Is there a danger that there’s going to be another housing bubble?

Yes. Will the market turn at some point? I’ve got to believe it will. Will it be next month or eight years? I don’t know, and I wish I did. If you push me I’m going to tell you I think it’s going to be years out, at least three to five years, only because we can’t see anything changing the dynamic of the market right now.

Are you finding clients who are priced out of living in Denver?

We actually have seen that. And that’s very tough. And so one of the questions would be, would people simply stop moving to Denver? Will, some people be priced out, and have to move out of state? Yes, but the experts, who I do believe, because they are very good at what they do, think that our population will continue to grow for the foreseeable future which makes me continue to be bullish for our real estate market. Unfortunately it’s very very tough for people at the margin, whose rents are going up 10 percent a year and who are having a hard time finding a home.

Our very special Denver real estate market... as told by the media!

These are very special times in the metro Denver real estate market. Home prices are up, rents are up, inventories of homes both for sale and rent are low and our future outlook continues to look great. We talk about some aspect of real estate every month in this Newsletter but sometimes I think it can be hard to realize just how terrific our real estate market is without taking a step back and looking at the big picture. A great way to do this is to check out the recent press headlines and review the real estate news about our local market. In a word, it is amazing!

Denver back at No. 1 for home-resale price gains

“After trailing San Francisco for year-over-year home-resale price gains in July, Denver tied with the California city for the top spot among 20 major U.S. metro areas. For six of the last eight months, metro Denver saw the biggest one-year gains out of 20 major U.S. markets in the price of detached single-family homes, according to monthly data from the closely-followed report series from S&P Dow Jones Indices and CoreLogic. Other than Denver and San Francisco, no other metro area out of the 20 tracked in the Case-Shiller report series scored double-digit percentage year-over-year price gains. Denver's Case-Shiller home price index reached an all-time high of 172.82, topping July's reading of 171.31. An index reading of 172.82 means that local home resale prices averaged 72.82 percent higher than they were in the benchmark month of January 2000, according to the Case-Shiller report series, based on non-seasonally-adjusted data.”

Denver Business Journal

10/27/15

Denver County home sellers make out big in Q3

“Home sellers in Denver County made out big in the third quarter, where sellers sold for an average of a 41.5 percent gain over what they originally paid. That's according to research conducted by California housing data company RealtyTrac, which placed Denver County at No. 6 in the country for highest percentage sales gains. In September, RealtyTrac said Denver home sales were on pace to set a 10-year record, and median selling prices in Denver set an all-time high this summer.”

Denver Post

11/5/15

 

 

Condos appreciating more than single-family homes in Denver

“Condos in Denver have appreciated nearly 20 percent over the past year, which is nearly four times the national average and well above the single-family home appreciation rate in Denver. According to Seattle online real estate company Zillow, single-family homes in Denver have appreciated 15.9 percent over the past year, while condos have appreciated 19.7 percent. The yearly 15.9 percent increase in Denver single-family home appreciation was the biggest jump in the country while the 19.7 percent annual increase in condo appreciation was the second-biggest jump in the country, trailing only the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which recorded a 20.1 percent annual increase in condo appreciation.”

Denver Business Journal

10/27/15

 

 

 

How does Denver rate among nation’s best places to own a home?

“Where's the best place in the country to own a home? Right here in Denver, according to a new report. Porch.com and Redfin created the new list, based on a survey of about 10,000 U.S. homeowners in 67 markets, and using criteria including: healthy living, commute, climate, educational opportunity, economic opportunity, resident satisfaction, walkability, security and safety, real estate confidence, and tax fairness. Denver did the best, ranking No. 1 in the country, in the categories of health living and climate, and coming in No. 2 in resident satisfaction.”

Denver Business Journal

11/9/15

 

A small Colorado city is rated 2nd best in U.S

“There's a city in metro Denver where housing costs are affordable, home-ownership rates are high, cost-of-living is comfortable, education and health care are sound and quality of life ranks high. And that place is Littleton — the second-best small city in the U.S., according to a new WalletHub study.”

Denver Business Journal

11/3/15

 

 

Metro Denver city named one of 5 best places to live

“It wasn't but a few days ago that a new study named Littleton the second best small city in the country. And that place is Littleton — the second-best small city in the U.S., according to a new WalletHub study. Centennial is the No. 4 best place to live in America, according to a new 24/7 Wall St. report that uses data from 550 U.S. cities with populations of 65,000 or more to determine the best.”

Denver Business Journal

11/6/15

 

 

Denver real estate market growth is fourth highest in U.S, says new report

“The Denver area residential real estate market experienced the fourth-highest increase in a new housing report. The Freddie Mac Multi-Indicator Market Index (MiMI) uses four indicators to track an area's residential real estate growth, including home purchase applications, payment-to-income ratios (changes in home purchasing power based on house prices, mortgage rates and household income), proportion of on-time mortgage payments in each market, and the local employment picture.”

Denver Business Journal

10/26/15

 

 

Landlords will love this: Denver is 4th-best city in US for owning rental property

“With its rapidly increasing property values, low vacancy rates and good long-term job prospects, Denver is the fourth-best market in the country to own rental housing real estate. Denver ranked high in categories such as vacancy rates (4.3 percent), property appreciation (11.61 percent), and job growth (2.94 percent). "Denver is once again one of the best housing markets in the country to own rental properties in, leaving All Property Management puzzled as to why it doesn't receive more national recognition as a real estate powerhouse," the company said in the second-quarter report.”

Denver Business Journal

10/28/15

 

 

Denver is No. 2 in the U.S. for real estate investment

“If you're looking to make money investing in residential real estate, look no further than Denver. That's because Denver's ranked No. 2 in the nation when it comes providing the best returns on residential real estate investment, according to a new study by online real estate company BiggerPockets. Residential real estate prices increased a staggering 13.4 percent year over year across the Denver metro region," BiggerPockets said in its report. It's been well documented in the Denver Business Journal that Denver's residential real estate prices this year have increased greater than any other market in the country.”

Bigger Pockets

10/15/15

 

 

Foreclosures: Colorado bucks national trend, sees big drop in filings

“If you are looking to buy a home in Colorado, the housing market had another squeeze in the third quarter with a drop in the number of foreclosures. That's according to RealtyTrac's latest Foreclosure Market Report for the state. Colorado, which ranks No. 37 among the states for foreclosures, had a 17 percent decrease in the number of foreclosure filings from the second quarter of 2015 and is down 15 percent from the same time last year.”

Denver Business Journal

10/15/15

 

 

Denver apartment, single-family home rents keep rising in September

“It's quite clear that rents in Denver have risen greatly in the past year, but by how much? Let's just say that Denver's in the top 10 in the country no matter who you ask and no matter what you're renting. Over at Altisource Portfolio Solutions S.A., its data released on Monday indicate that in the third quarter that ended at the end of September, the rents for single-family homes in the Denver Metropolitan Statistical Area rose 14.6 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. Denver's 14.6 percent rise for single-family house rents was the eighth-biggest jump in the country.”

Denver Business Journal

10/19/15

 

 

Single-family home rents hit new high in metro Denver

“Apartment rents in metro Denver might be on a tear, but single-family homes rents are rising even faster, according to a report from Real Property Management Colorado and RentRange. The average monthly rent on a single-family home with three bedrooms in metro Denver reached $1,998, a 13.9 percent increase from the third quarter of 2014 and up 6.7 percent from the second quarter.”

Denver Post

10/7/15

 

 

Denver is sixth-hottest US commercial real estate market: Report

“Denver is the nation's sixth-hottest commercial real estate market, according to a new report. Colorado was cited in the latest report for making important infrastructure improvements: "Public financing is a tough sell. Yet it can be done, as Colorado has demonstrated in passing bond referendums repeatedly." The report continued: ‘Denver has taken advantage of a location and a culture that are attractive to a qualified workforce and exposure to growing technology industries. ... The overall outlook of good to excellent is led by a strong perception of investor demand, the strength of the local economy, and capital availability.’”

Denver Business Journal

10/8/15

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Open Letter Response to the Denver Post - Denver's in the Danger Zone?

        The Denver Post published an article on Dec. 9th called “Denver housing market enters danger zone, economists say” suggesting the housing market in Denver has peaked and is heading for a downturn and many of you asked what our reaction to this is. Some of your clients are worried and hesitating to buy and you’re looking for a reaction. Here are two quick thoughts:

1.      It’s important to remember that the job of the Denver Post is to sell newspaper advertising which means they have a large incentive to write intriguing copy which may or may not make any sense at all. Our job is to give our clients thoughtful, professional advice. They are two very different things. Anyone who makes a decision to buy or not buy a home based on an article in the newspaper needs lots and lots of help better understanding the real estate market, something we’re very good at.

2.      Nobody can perfectly predict the real estate market. Nobody! Not the Fed, not the big banks, not Wall St., and certainly not the Denver Post. And we can’t either. All we can do is assemble the copious and relevant data and try to make some sense of it in order to advise our clients. Choosing a single metric as the Post has done and trying to predict a downturn is at best misleading, at worst downright scandalous.

Will we have a correction “in the months and years ahead” as the Post speculates? Sure. Someday the market will peak and start to settle down. But I don’t think it will happen for a number of years for several reasons, such as:

1.     Even with the increase in metro Denver home prices the Housing Affordability Index is still well above the rate it was during the last upturn in the market between 2002 - 2006. The HAI is the median price of a home compared to the median income, taking into account the prevailing mortgage rate. So, given that homes are still relatively affordable given median (and, by the way, increasing) wages and low interest rates, we haven’t entered bubble territory.

2.     The number of transactions relative to the population of metro Denver is just about at the 25-year average. At the peak of the bubble in 2006 the number of deals was about 20 percent percent above the historical average. When we see the number of closed transactions well above our historical average that’s an indication to me of an overheated market, as it was in 2006. We’re nowhere close to that.

3.      As we led up to the last bubble in 2006, many of the deals were closed with low or no documentation ("liar loans” or “no doc loans"). Today, mortgage underwriting standards are the toughest they’ve been in decades. This prevents unqualified buyers from purchasing property, which mitigates the chance of the market overheating (fewer buyers means fewer purchases means less chance of the market frothing into bubble territory like it did in the past).

4.      Because of reasonable home affordability it’s still cheaper to buy than rent in our market, especially at the lower end. This would not be true in a bubble. For housing price affordability to return to the average level that we saw in the years between 2002 and 2006 either home prices would have to increase an additional 20 percent or interest rates would need to reach 6 percent. Neither is going to happen any time soon.

5.      The imbalance between buyers and sellers we’ve seen recently in our housing market is due to a lack of inventory, not illogical/unrealistic/unsustainable demand from buyers. This imbalance is a logical correction from the past downturn years when we had too FEW buyers in the market. This is how markets are supposed to work, moving in cycles and always regressing to the mean over time.

6.      Rising mortgage rates will help to temper the possibility of a bubble as well. So the positive side of a rise in mortgage rates is that it will reduce the number of buyers and therefore reduce the chance the market will rise out of control and end up collapsing in a bubble.

Here are a few metrics I watch closely to look for signs of a weakening housing market:

- Housing inventory. When the inventory of homes for sale rises, supply will begin to balance with demand and slow the price increases. We’re still at record-low inventory so I don’t expect to return to a balanced market for several more years.

- Number of homes sales. If we see a spike in homes sales (most likely due to increased inventory of homes coming on the market) we can expect a slowdown in the housing market to follow just as we saw after our home sales spiked in 2006. At this time, we are right at the 30-year average of homes sales/year/capita which tells me the market is not overheated.

- The economy. Metro Denver has a booming economy which is contributing to our strong housing market. If the economy begins to falter that will affect housing. I see no sign of that happening anytime soon.

- Interest rates. Low interest rates have contributed to relatively high home affordability, continuing to help the housing market. If interest rates spike that will decrease affordability. But no one can predict interest rates and trying to do so is simply a waste of time.

          For these and many other reasons I believe our market will continue to be strong for the foreseeable future, but of course it can't grow indefinitely. Since the inventory of homes for sale is still extremely low I think the demand will still exceed the supply for the next 3-4 years and prices will continue to rise for at least the next few years. No bubble on the horizon yet. Stay tuned!

How many properties do you need to retire?

I meet a lot of investors who say that their primary reason for investing in real estate is to build passive income so they can retire someday. But when asked what income they need or how many properties they need to retire, most investors don’t have a clearly defined goal. After seeing this pattern in a number of investors, we set out to answer the question “How many properties do you need to retire?” I think you’ll find the answer, and surprising! Let’s start by looking at today’s market. We hear a lot of investors saying things like: “I can’t find a deal” “There are no properties on the market” “Everything is over-priced” “There’s no way an investor can make money in this market.”

We pulled out some recent transactions that we’ve closed for investors and analyzed them to see if they were good deals. To make this applicable to the average investor, we looked for deals that came straight from the MLS - no wholesalers, no door knocking, no direct mail campaigns, nothing fancy; just a regular property that was listed on the MLS for anyone to purchase. This home was a 3 bed/2 bath/1 car garage, 1250 sq ft. that we closed on for a client of ours in May of 2015. The property was found on the MLS. It had been on the market for 30 days before our client put in under contract. Price = $169,000 Property needed $3,000 in repairs Taxes = $886 per year Insurance = $900 per year Rent is $1,550 per month Investor put 20% down on a 15 year fixed rate loan at 4.125% Knowing all of these numbers we plugged the info in to our property analyzer spreadsheet and here’s what we found out. Total cost to purchase the property, closing costs, repairs = $42,047 Monthly cash-flow after accounting for expenses, vacancies, mortgage payments = $215 per month Cash-on-Cash Rate of Return = 6% Cap Rate = 8.7%

Now I know the first thing that a lot of investors will do is look at this and say: “$215 a month cash-flow??? I wouldn’t get out of bed for $215 a month!!!” But it’s important to look at the details. This investor opted for a 15 year loan, so instead of doing a traditional 30 year loan and generating “instant gratification” cash-flow of $568 per month, our investor looked at the long-term and determined that principal reduction and owning the property free and clear was more important than making an extra money right now. There’s no right or wrong answer, it’s whatever you decide as an investor. I think we can all agree that a 6% cash-on-cash return isn’t that great, but an 8.7% Cap Rate is solid for a decent property in a nice area in many markets, so let’s look at our analysis to see where this property goes in the long-term. Again using our cash-flow analyzer we took the analysis out to year 16 using the following assumptions: 5% annual rent increase 6% annual appreciation (80 year average for the entire U.S.) Expenses increasing at 3% annually Vacancy factor of 3% annually We feel that these estimates are pretty standard for most markets over the long-term but with the cash-flow analyzer you can adjust these variables yourself to come up with your own scenarios. What did we find in year 16? The principal balance on the loan is no $0 since the investor selected a 15 year term. You own it free and clear! Net cash-flow on the property is now $26,428 per year or $2,202 per month. Property value is now $288,000 and there are no liens on the property.

 On an original investment of $42,047 we are returning $26,000+ per year on an asset that is now worth 10 times our initial cash investment. That is a strong cash-on-cash return (greater than 60% annually). We’d say that this is a fantastic deal and the best part…. we didn’t do anything special to find this property. It was on the MLS for the taking, nothing tricky, nothing fancy, just a regular house with regular tenants. Back to our original question… How many of theses properties do we need to retire? The answer to that depends on how much money you need on a monthly basis of course. If you only need $2,200 per month then you might only need 1 property. But if you need $5,000, $7,000, $10,000 or more to retire comfortably, then you’ll need to have more than 1 property. Let’s say that you need an income of $80,000 per year or $6,600 per month, you would need to have 3 properties just like this one and at the end of your 15 year term; you would have your cash-flows setup and you would be ready to retire and relax.

Video: In-Depth Denver Real Estate Market Trends, 3Q 2015

Here is a detailed look at Denver market trends. If you are wondering about a bubble in our market or if it is too late to buy, Lon welsh and I have answers to your questions. Go fullscreen to see slides better. From our 3Q company meeting.

How to work in a strong seller’s market!

I’m frequently asked where the real estate market is headed and when we will get back to some kind of equilibrium. The truth is it’s extremely difficult to accurately predict the future but here’s what I know: Right now we are experiencing one of the strongest seller’s markets in our history and we’re a full six and a half years into this market recovery. The reason is simple: we have much more demand for homes (buyers) than we have supply of homes (sellers). What’s fascinating to watch is the dynamic build on itself. It looks something like this: 1. Buyers make offers on homes and continue to lose out to higher offers. 2. Buyers get increasingly frustrated and begin to get more aggressive with their offers. 3. The momentum builds on itself until we see what is occurring today, with multiple offers on a property the norm rather than the exception. 4. The multiple offer dynamic almost always bids prices higher than the original asking price. 5. The buyers that lose the bid learn from the experience and become more aggressive on their next offer. 6. Then back to Step 1, until the buyer bids high enough on a property to finally get an offer accepted. The result of course is the tremendously strong seller’s market we have experienced for the past several years. And this seller’s market is not going to change any time soon, at least not until we get back to some kind of balance in the market between buyers and sellers. I don’t see that happening for at least several more years. In the meantime, if you’ve thought about selling your home, now might be a great time to find out what the market is like in your neighborhood and see what your home is worth. It’s almost certainly worth more than it was just a few years ago. Drop me a line and I’ll put together a professional Competitive Market Analysis on your home so you have the data to make the right decision. Another question my potential sellers often ask is if they sell today, can they find a replacement home in time to move? In a market like ours this is a very good question. Fortunately, there are a number of things savvy sellers can do to take advantage of the seller’s market and put themselves in a good position when looking for their replacement home. Here are a few: 1. First and foremost, work with an experienced agent to write a strong, professional offer on the home you want to buy. In a dramatically competitive market like we have now, weak, poorly written, unprofessional, and bad offers just aren’t taken seriously. There is both an art and a science to writing a strong offer. Call me and I’ll explain more about how to write an offer that has a great chance of getting accepted. 2. Add a contingency clause to your contract to buy another home. The clause would say that you will close on the home you are purchasing once your own home sells. The problem with this is that it somewhat weakens your offer as many sellers don’t want to accept a contingency when they can sell quickly to the next buyer. But occasionally we do run across a seller that is in no hurry and is happy to wait for the buyer’s home to sell. 3. Lease the home you just sold from the buyer for a period of time while you are looking for your new home (this is called a lease back). Some buyers do not want or are not able to move into their new home immediately and this permits them to earn rent from you for the period of time you are shopping for your next purchase, a win-win situation. 4. Look into a new construction purchase. Builders are building as fast as they can in this market to keep up with demand and there may be inventory of completed or soon-to-be-completed homes that could suit you. 5. Arrange to stay with family or move into short-term rental housing until you find your next home. While not a perfect solution I believe it’s far better to inconvenience yourself for a short period of time than to settle for anything less than your dream home!

Awesome rent vs. buy tool!

Trulia built a great tool to help you determine whether it makes more financial sense for you to buy a home or rent. Check it out at http://www.trulia.com/rent_vs_buy. All you have to do is answer a few simple questions and the system tells you whether it makes more financial sense over the next seven years to rent a unit or purchase. As you see from the graphic you move the slide bar on the five questions back and forth to represent your situation and the model will tell you how much you will save by either renting or buying. Trulia put a huge amount of thought and research into this tool so I think it’s worth a couple minutes of your time to see what you can learn – you’ll really like it.