A 2024 Retrospective

Another year in the books!  2024 was a year full of changes, challenges, and success for me.  In early 2024, after dissolving my prior team, I moved to Compass and launched my new brand, Denver Foothills Property.  And, despite it being a difficult year for many agents and brokerages, I had my best year ever with over 25 closed transactions and nearly $18,000,000 in volume.  That’s a testament to many loyal clients, my great team, the folks at Compass, and a lot of creative thinking.  There’s lots of great things coming in 2025, as we become the Denver Foothills Property Group, add agents, and continue our growth trajectory, no matter what the market does (though I am optimistic about the real estate market in 2025). 

I’m approaching this coming year with the same mindset as 2024 – ignore the noise about the success or challenges other agents or brokerages might be experiencing, keep our noses to the grindstone, serve our clients with the best advice we can, zealously protect their interests, have some fun, and growth will come.  I will encourage my clients to approach the real estate market the same way – ignore the noise, seek out opportunities, use real estate to address specific needs, relax, and enjoy the high likelihood of long-term growth that real estate offers.

But, before we look forward, we need to look back at the national real estate market in 2024, a year that was defined by interest rate policy and offered both a return to normalcy and a sense of stagnation. 

First and foremost, the fed began reducing its benchmark rate in the summer after raising rates 11 times since March 2022 in an attempt to curb inflation, with rates peaking in October 2023 (high, though still moderate by historical standards).  By the end of the year, the fed had cut its benchmark rate three times, but mortgage rates didn’t follow as you might expect and we finished the year in about the same place as we started, with 30-year rates in the mid to high sixes. 

As a result, we saw a lot of buyers and sellers remain on the sidelines, waiting for a more favorable interest rate environment.  This resulted in the lowest nationwide sales volume in years and a slight increase in days on market.

However, and perhaps counterintuitively, prices continued to rise, at approximately 5% year-over-year. 

This was a simple result of supply and demand.  People still want homes as millennials and Gen Z age into prime house buying age.  But, we don’t have enough of them as boomers continue to age in place and new construction fails to keep pace with demand.  Consequently, new listings coming on market remained low and demand for homes remained high, even in the face of unattractive mortgage rates.  In fact, many experts estimate this year that we have a shortage of somewhere between four and seven million homes nationwide, as building codes, regulations, and zoning laws continue to make new construction difficult while economic factors like inflation and skilled labor shortages make the economics of building unattractive at current prices for all but the largest builders.  And while many politicians paid lip service in 2024 to increasing home supply and housing affordability, effective policy in this area still remains a pipe dream.

Did the local Denver and foothills market follow these national trends?  What does 2025 hold for the real estate market?  Stay tuned for my thoughts on both.