Denver Housing Market: The Property Type You Buy Matters More Than the Block

Data as of July 2026

Most Denver coverage picks a side. One story says the market is falling, quoting the Case-Shiller index that ranks Denver the weakest of 20 US metros. Another says prices are edging up, quoting the local median. Both are right, and neither is the point. The interesting number in Denver is not the price. It is the gap between two property types that a single metro median averages into mush.

This page reads the Denver data the way a numbers-literate friend would: which half of this market you are actually shopping in, why the rent bust is what sets condo prices, and why the lowest property tax of any city we have studied does not make Denver cheap to carry.

Two scope notes before the numbers. First, “Denver” here means the 11-county DMAR metro (Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Douglas, Elbert, Gilpin, Jefferson, Park) unless a figure says otherwise. The City and County of Denver is a smaller, different scope, and it is where the tax mechanics live, so it is labeled every time it appears. Second, several sources publish different figures for good reasons, and we label the scope rather than averaging them: a Redfin Denver County median of $634,000 and a DMAR 11-county metro median of $616,000 are different geographies, not a conflict.

The market scorecard

Denver market scorecard, June 2026 market data; mortgage rate as of mid-July 2026

Median residential closing price

● unchanged over the stated period: $616,000

Denver metro (11-county DMAR), June 2026 , up about 1% year over year

Up about 1% year over year on the DMAR median, the third straight flat year, while the mix-controlled Case-Shiller read is down 2.2%. Flat prices are neither a gift nor a penalty.

Months of supply (blended, derived)

● up over the stated period: about 3.2 months

Denver metro (11-county DMAR), June 2026

About 3.2 months blended, inside the balanced band. The blend is 79% detached by volume, so it hides the segment that actually gives buyers room.

Median days in MLS

▲ up over the stated period, favors buyers: 18 days

Denver metro (11-county DMAR), June 2026

18 days blended, and rising. Attached homes now take 34 days against detached at 14, so a condo buyer has real time to negotiate.

30-year fixed mortgage rate

● unchanged over the stated period: about 6.6%

Colorado (statewide), mid-July 2026 , range-bound in the mid-to-upper 6% range through 2026

About 6.6% and range-bound in the mid-to-upper 6s all year. Nothing here is moving for or against you.

Months of supply, attached $750,000 to $999,999

▲ up over the stated period, favors buyers: 5.72 months

Denver metro (11-county DMAR), April 2026

Attached homes carry 4.78 to 5.72 months of supply against 2.1 for detached. That spread, not the metro average, is where a Denver buyer's leverage is.

Average apartment rent

▼ down over the stated period, favors buyers: $1,754 a month

Denver metro (AAMD), Q4 2025 , down 4.8% year over year

Apartment rent is down 4.8% to $1,754 with vacancy at a 16-year high. A cheap rental is a buyer's walk-away option, and it is what caps condo prices.

A colored triangle shows whether the change favors buyers: green favors buyers, red favors sellers. A gray dot marks a metric that is neutral for buyers (its direction is in the subtitle). Direction and color are descriptive of each metric's own stated period, not a forecast. Sources are listed in the source registry at the end of the page.

This is the family’s first neutral-heavy scorecard, and that is the honest read. Three cards are genuinely two-sided because the metro runs two markets at once. The two cards that do point somewhere, the condo-versus-detached supply spread and the falling apartment rent, are the two that a national article would miss, and both favor buyers. Green favors buyers, red favors sellers.

Is Denver a buyer’s or seller’s market right now?

Both, split by property type, and no single number can say it honestly. Detached homes run about 2.1 months of supply and sell in 14 days at roughly 99% of list, which is a mild seller’s market. Condos and townhomes carry 4.78 to 5.72 months of supply in the mid price bands and take 34 days, which is a buyer’s market. Above $1.5 million, attached inventory reaches more than 14 months, which is barely a market at all.

FinExplained Market Balance Score (beta)

Seller's market seller's on the blend, and that is the trap

Direction basis: The blended inputs (about 3.2 months of supply, 18 days on market, 99% sale-to-list, inventory down about 9%) are volume-weighted toward detached homes, which were 3,094 of the 3,924 June closings. Read on its own, the score describes the detached market and quietly ignores the attached one, where 4.78 to 5.72 months of supply, 34 days on market, and falling prices add up to a buyer's market. The single number is honest about what it measures and misleading about what it implies, which is exactly why this page publishes it with the property-type charts beside it rather than as a headline.

Beta: this score has not yet been backtested against historical market data, and the bands may be recalibrated. Read it alongside the metrics below, not instead of them.

Input	Reading	Normalized (0-100)	Weight applied
Months of supply	3.2 months	64	30%
Days on market	18 days	85	20%
Sale-to-list ratio	99%	60	20%
Share of listings with a price cut	25.1%	58	15%
Year-over-year inventory change	-9%	61	15%

Months of supply: Denver metro (11-county DMAR), June 2026, DERIVED as 12,744 active listings divided by 3,924 closings (3,094 detached plus 830 attached). DMAR publishes supply by property type and price band, not as a clean blended figure. Sourcing a published blended figure is on our backlog.

Days on market: Denver metro (11-county DMAR), June 2026, median days in MLS. The blended 18 days splits into 14 for detached and 34 for attached.

Sale-to-list ratio: Denver metro (11-county DMAR), June 2026, close-price-to-list-price. Attached homes close lower, at about 98.48%.

Price-cut share: Colorado (statewide proxy), May 2026 (Redfin), confidence Medium. No Denver-city price-cut share is separately published; the proxy is disclosed rather than substituted silently.

Year-over-year inventory change: Denver metro (11-county DMAR), June 2026, down about 9%.

THE CAVEAT THAT MATTERS: this score is a single blended number for a metro that is running two different markets. It is volume-weighted, and detached homes were 79% of June closings, so it reads mostly as a detached-market score. The condo and townhome half of this market is materially more buyer-favorable than the band below suggests. Read the score with the property-type charts, never on its own.

How this score works

Each input is normalized onto a 0-100 scale where higher means more seller-favorable: months of supply maps 0 months to 100 and 9 or more to 0; days on market maps 0 days to 100 and 120 or more to 0; sale-to-list maps 90 percent to 0 and 105 percent to 100; price-cut share maps 0 percent to 100 and 60 percent or more to 0; year-over-year inventory change maps a 40 percent rise to 0 and a 40 percent fall to 100. The design weights are months of supply 30 percent, days on market 20 percent, sale-to-list 20 percent, price-cut share 15 percent, and inventory change 15 percent; when an input is unavailable its weight is redistributed proportionally. Bands: below 40 reads as a buyer's market, 40 to 60 balanced, above 60 a seller's market. We show the band rather than a decimal because the inputs do not support decimal precision. The score is in beta and has not yet been backtested against historical market conditions; read it alongside the underlying metrics, never instead of them.

Read that score carefully, because it is the trap this page is about. Our beta Market Balance Score lands Denver in the seller’s band, and it is arithmetically correct on its inputs. It is also volume-weighted, and detached homes were 3,094 of the 3,924 June closings, about 79%. So the blended score is mostly a detached-market score wearing a metro label. It is honest about what it measures and misleading about what it implies. We publish it with the property-type charts beside it, never as the headline, and we would rather show you the seam than paper over it.

What changed this month

This is the first edition of this dashboard, so the baseline is the story. The moves already visible in the sourced data:

• The 30-year fixed averaged about 6.6% in Colorado in mid-July 2026 (Bankrate 6.69% on July 14, Zillow 6.49% on July 10), range-bound in the mid-to-upper 6s all year.
• The metro median closing price was $616,000 in June 2026, up about 1% year over year, the third straight year of flat pricing, while the mix-controlled Case-Shiller read was down 2.2%.
• Detached medians rose 1.5% while attached medians fell 2.06%, the widest property-type split in the series so far.
• Apartment vacancy hit 7.6% at year-end 2025, a 16-year high, with average rent down 4.8% to $1,754 and landlord concessions at a 21-year record.

Future editions will track each of these against this baseline.

Why does the property type matter more than the neighborhood?

Because a detached home and an attached home on the same block are in opposite markets. In June 2026 the detached median was $675,000 and rising 1.5% year over year; the attached median was $391,750 and falling 2.06%. The blended metro median of $616,000 sits between them and describes neither.

Supply says the same thing louder. Detached homes carry about 2.1 months of inventory, below the low edge of the conventional 3-to-6-month balanced band. Attached homes carry 4.78 months in the $500,000 to $749,999 band and 5.72 months from $750,000 to $999,999, inside the band and pushing past it. Every attached band above $1 million holds at least 5.5 months, and the $1.5 million to $1.99 million band reached more than 14 months, which is effectively frozen.

So the first question a Denver buyer should answer is not which neighborhood. It is which of these two markets you are shopping in, because that decides whether you are competing or negotiating.

Why are Denver condos falling while houses rise?

The popular answer is the downtown luxury glut. That is real, and it is secondary. The luxury attached segment above $1 million is genuinely oversupplied, but the volume of pain is in the entry and mid condo market, and the cause there is the carrying cost, not the skyline.

Three forces stack on a Denver condo:

• HOA dues. The median condo fee is about $420 a month (roughly $5,040 a year), up 29% since 2019. Denver metro dues commonly run $300 to $600 or more, and luxury high-rises exceed $1,000.
• Master-policy insurance. Some Colorado HOA master policies rose 200% to 500% in recent years, and it lands on owners as higher dues and special assessments. This is the hail story arriving inside the condo story: the same storms that doubled homeowners premiums are repricing condo association bills.
• Financing friction. Some buildings are now non-warrantable (thin reserves, litigation, insurance gaps), which limits mortgage options and drags the value of every unit in the building.

There is a paradox worth naming. Colorado’s construction-defect litigation economics (CDARA in 2001, partly reformed by HB 17-1279 in 2017 and again by HB25-1272) cut for-sale condo construction from about 20% of new-housing starts to roughly 3%. Denver has a condo supply shortage and a condo price decline at the same time. That only makes sense once you look at what condo demand ran to instead, which is renting.

What does the rent bust have to do with condo prices?

Everything, and this is the mechanism most Denver coverage misses. Developers delivered about 20,000 apartments in 2024 alone, on top of roughly 125,000 over a decade, close to a third of the metro’s apartment stock. Vacancy hit 7.6% at year-end 2025, the highest in 16 years, with more than 34,000 units sitting empty. Average apartment rent fell to $1,754, down 4.8% year over year, and landlord concessions reached 9.5% of gross rent (about $169 a month), a 21-year record. Zillow ranked Denver number one in the country, with 68% of rentals offering a concession.

Now put yourself in the shoes of the buyer who decides Denver’s condo prices. Call her the dual shopper. On Saturday she tours a $391,750 condo. On Sunday she tours an apartment at $1,754 a month with two months free. She is not choosing between condos. She is choosing between owning and renting, and right now the rental is winning. That is the ceiling on what any Denver condo can fetch, and it is why the condo market can be undersupplied and still falling.

The catch, and renters should hear this clearly: the pipeline that created this is closing. Completions fell about 34% in 2025 and the under-construction pipeline now sits more than 40% below its long-term average. The renter’s market is a supply event, and the supply is ending.

What does a new buyer actually pay in property tax?

About 0.54% of what you pay for the house, which is the lowest rate of the five cities we have studied. On a $600,000 Denver home that is roughly $3,236 a year.

That figure is derived, not quoted, because Colorado does not publish a single rate you can just read off. Here is the arithmetic, and you can check it. Colorado applies two different residential assessment rates to the same house: 7.05% for the school portion and 6.25% for the local-government portion (tax year 2025, set by HB24B-1001, which superseded the rates originally written into SB24-233). Denver’s mill levy is about 79.602 mills total, split into 52.274 school mills and 27.328 non-school mills. So:

• School: 7.05% assessed value, taxed at 52.274 mills, gives 0.3685% of market value.
• Local: 6.25% assessed value, taxed at 27.328 mills, gives 0.1708% of market value.
• Together: about 0.54% of market value.

You will see lower published numbers (SmartAsset and Ownwell both put Denver County near 0.48%). Those are medians across existing owners, computed under the older lower-rate-with-exemption regime and on assessed values that are years old. They understate what you will pay at today’s purchase price under the 2025 rules. We use the new-buyer figure because you are a buyer.

And here is the Colorado mechanic that matters most: buying does not reset your assessed value. Colorado reassesses every odd-numbered year using comparable sales as of a June 30 appraisal date, with an 18-month sales study period. There is no acquisition-value cap like California’s Proposition 13, and there is no reset-at-purchase like Florida’s. Your purchase price is not the trigger; the reassessment calendar is. That makes Colorado the fourth genuinely different tax machine in this series, after Texas’s statutory-with-homestead rate, Florida’s basis that resets when you buy, Arizona’s capped Limited Property Value, and Illinois’s classification-plus-equalizer.

One warning that cuts against the usual instinct. New suburban metro districts (Green Valley Ranch, Sterling Ranch, Painted Prairie) layer extra district mills on top and can push the total toward 1.0% to 1.1%, roughly double the city-core rate. In Denver, the suburbs are not automatically the cheaper carry. Check the actual mills on the actual address before you fall for a new build. The property tax calculator shows what a different rate does to a monthly payment.

Does the low tax rate make Denver cheap to own?

No, because hail takes it back. Colorado homeowners premiums rose 100.8% from 2020 to 2025, the largest increase of any state, ahead of Iowa (96.0%) and Minnesota (88.2%), and Colorado led the country again in 2025 alone at plus 18.3%. Insurify puts the Colorado average at $4,164 a year for 2026 and LendingTree at $4,310, so we model $4,164 and label it what it is: a Colorado statewide figure, not a Denver-only one. No clean Denver-metro premium exists in the sourced material, and we would rather say so than invent one.

Hail is the whole story. It accounts for 26% to 54% of a Colorado premium depending on the county and roughly half along the Front Range; the Division of Insurance found that in Denver, wildfire is only about 1% of premium and hail is essentially the rest. A single hailstorm on May 30, 2024 caused nearly $2 billion in damage in a matter of hours.

Read that chart again, because it inverts the usual advice. In Denver the hail bill is bigger than the tax bill. Two practical consequences: budget insurance as a line that is still moving, not a fixed cost, and check whether your roof coverage is Actual Cash Value (depreciated) rather than replacement cost, because carriers have been quietly shifting it. Colorado’s SB26-155, signed in June 2026, funds hail-resistant retrofits through a 0.5% insurer fee starting in 2027, which is a multi-year play and not relief on this year’s premium.

What does the monthly payment actually look like?

For the worked example we use the DMAR metro median of $616,000 (June 2026) at 20% down and the 6.6% Colorado average. Principal and interest run about $3,147 a month. Add property tax at the derived 0.54% new-buyer rate (about $277) and homeowners insurance at the $4,164 statewide figure (about $347). That is roughly $3,772 a month of principal, interest, taxes, and insurance, before upkeep and before any HOA dues.

Notice the shape of that payment. The loan is 83% of it. Denver is not a market where escrow eats you alive the way Chicago or Austin is; it is a market where the price does. Every figure here is computed by our tested calculator engine from the stated assumptions. Run your own numbers in the mortgage calculator.

Rates are also the quiet weight on this market. The same $616,000 home at 20% down cost about $2,078 a month in principal and interest at a 3% pandemic-era rate. At 6.6% it costs about $3,147, a difference of roughly $1,070 a month on the identical house. That is the whole reason move-up demand froze and prices have been flat for three years: owners holding sub-4% mortgages will not trade them away.

What income do you need to buy in Denver?

About $161,636 a year for the median-priced example with 20% down, by our math: the gross income at which the $3,772 monthly PITI equals 28% of income, the front-end half of the 28/36 rule. Denver County’s median household income is about $94,700 (ACS 2020-2024), so the gap is roughly $66,936 a year.

That gap is the honest reason Denver’s prices went flat and stayed flat. The median household cannot buy the median home on the standard rule, and no amount of property-tax advantage fixes a price-to-income ratio of about 6.5x. Test your own income, debts, and down payment in the home affordability calculator and the how much can I borrow calculator, and check your ratios with the DTI calculator.

Cash to close is the other gate, and Denver’s is refreshingly plain: Colorado’s documentary fee is 0.01% ($0.01 per $100), which is negligible, and there is no local transfer tax, so nothing exotic hides in your closing statement the way Chicago’s 0.75% buyer transfer tax does.

Below 20% down, add PMI on top of these payments. The sources for this page do not publish a Denver PMI average, so we leave it unquantified rather than guess. There is one Denver-specific piece of leverage worth knowing: 62.9% of Q2 2026 closings included a seller concession, at a median of $10,000, and more than $81 million went back to buyers that way. In Denver the concession, not the price cut, is the negotiation currency, so ask for one. Itemize your own line items in the buyer closing cost calculator.

Is it cheaper to rent or buy in Denver right now?

On the monthly number, renting wins by a wide margin, and we have to be precise about why, because the easy version of this comparison is wrong.

Here is the honest reading. A $1,754 apartment and a $616,000 metro-median home (which is 79% detached by closing volume) are not the same product, so the roughly $2,531 monthly gap is the size of the step up from renting an apartment to owning a median house. It is not a clean rent-versus-buy verdict, and anyone quoting it as one is mixing metrics. For the like-for-like comparison, our engine-computed Denver rent vs buy playbook prices a $635,000 home against a $2,890 comparable single-family rent instead, which is the apples-to-apples version of the question.

Where the comparison does bite cleanly is the condo. An attached home is the closest thing to an apartment that you can own, and the falling rent is exactly what makes that trade unattractive today. Add median HOA dues of $420 a month to ownership, and the dual shopper’s math gets worse, not better. That is the mechanism capping condo prices, stated as arithmetic. Run your own inputs in the rent vs buy calculator, which loads an editable Denver preset.

Owning does build equity that renting does not, and rents will not stay this soft forever with the pipeline down 40%. Both of those cut the other way, which is why this is a tradeoff and not a verdict.

Which Denver submarkets fit your budget?

The pattern that runs through the whole page repeats at the neighborhood level: detached areas are strong, condo-dominated areas are the ones resetting.

How healthy is the Denver economy behind this market?

Solid on jobs, genuinely weakening on demand. Metro unemployment has run near or below the national rate, and the employer base is deep: aerospace and defense (Lockheed Martin with more than 11,000 local employees, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Space, Ball), tech (Amazon, Microsoft, Google), and a large professional-services and fintech base. Colorado tallied 5,612 layoffs in 2025, up from 5,362 in 2024, and the City of Denver laid off 171 workers in August 2025 while closing a budget gap of about $250 million over two years.

The demand side is the number to watch. Colorado recorded negative net domestic migration for the first time since 2004: 12,100 more residents left than arrived in the year ending June 2025. International arrivals (+15,356) kept total net migration barely positive. Metro Denver’s net migration is down 69.6% versus 2015. And the outflow is concentrated exactly where the weak product is: Denver and Arapahoe counties together bled about 18,000 domestic migrants and the city itself shrank about 0.1%, while exurban Weld, Douglas and Elbert grew. People are leaving the condo core for the detached suburbs, which is the demand shift that shows up in every chart on this page.

What should buyers do with this market?

A framework, not marching orders: this is an educational read of the data, not personalized advice.

• Decide which market you are in before you decide where. If you want detached, you are competing: about 2.1 months of supply, 14 days on market, and roughly 99% of list. If you want attached, you are negotiating, with 4.78 to 5.72 months of supply and 34 days on market.
• Ask for a concession, not a discount. 62.9% of Q2 2026 closings carried one, at a median $10,000. Denver sellers are more willing to buy down your rate or pay your closing than to cut the sticker.
• If you are buying a condo, do the carrying-cost diligence before the inspection: the reserve study, the last three years of dues, any pending special assessment, the master-policy renewal, and whether the building is warrantable. A $420 median can hide a five-figure special.
• Budget the insurance line as a moving number, not a fixed one, and get the roof-coverage answer in writing.

What should sellers do?

• Detached under $1 million in good condition still sells in about two weeks at roughly 99% of list. Price to the last 90 days of comps and it clears.
• Condo and attached sellers are in a buyer’s market and should price to comps, not aspiration. At 5-plus months of supply, an aspirational price does not wait out the market; it becomes the stale listing everyone negotiates against.
• Expect to fund a concession. Budget the median $10,000 into your net before you list, and run it in the seller net proceeds calculator.

What should renters do?

• Use the leverage now, because it is dated. Vacancy at 7.6% and concessions at 9.5% of gross rent are as good as it has been in 16 years, and the pipeline is more than 40% below its long-term average.
• Negotiate the renewal, do not accept it. In a market where 68% of listings carry a concession, your landlord would rather match than re-lease into 7.6% vacancy.
• If you are a dual shopper weighing a condo, run the honest version of the math in the rent vs buy calculator rather than comparing an apartment rent to a house payment.

What should current homeowners do?

• Know that buying did not reset your assessment, and the biennial reassessment (June 30 appraisal date, odd-numbered years) is what moves your bill. Mark the appeal window.
• Refinance math is marginal at about 6.6% unless you bought near the rate peak. Find your break-even in the refinance calculator.
• Insurance, not tax, is your rising line. Shop it annually, ask what happened to your roof coverage, and watch the SB26-155 retrofit program as it stands up in 2027.

What should investors consider?

• Single-family rentals are the better-positioned side: vacancy runs closer to 4% against 7.6% for apartments, and the coming supply drought favors patient holders. Run cap rate and cash flow in the rental property ROI calculator and stress the insurance line.
• Multifamily is where the oversupply pain sits, and effective rents are lower than asking rents once you net out a 9.5% concession.
• A condo bought as a rental today is being underwritten against falling rents. That can work at the right basis, and the buyer’s-market supply is what gives you that basis, but do not underwrite rent growth that the pipeline says is one to two years away.

Three scenarios for the next 12 months

No single price forecast here, stated as fact or otherwise. Instead, three scenarios with the signals that would confirm or break each one.

The split holds (the base tilt). Detached stays tight and attached stays loose. Confirmation: detached supply below 3 months, attached supply above 4.5, and the concession share staying near 63%. This is the continuation of today’s market and it is what the migration data supports.

The rent floor arrives. The pipeline drought (down more than 40%) bites, vacancy falls back from 7.6%, and rents stabilize. Confirmation: AAMD vacancy declining for two consecutive quarters and the concession rate falling from 9.5%. This would lift the condo floor, because the dual shopper’s rental option gets worse. Watch this one: it is the most likely thing to change the story.

Rates break below 6%. Move-up demand unfreezes, sellers with sub-4% mortgages finally list, and the three-year stalemate ends. Confirmation: a sustained sub-6% 30-year fixed and new listings turning positive against the current down 5.55%. This would firm detached prices and thaw the condo stalemate at the same time.

The risk case, framed as pending rather than fact: another billion-dollar hail season would push premiums and condo master policies higher, deepening exactly the attached weakness this page describes.

What to watch next month

• The detached-versus-attached median split against the $675,000 and $391,750 June baselines. That spread is the story.
• Attached months of supply against the 4.78 and 5.72 readings, and detached against 2.1.
• AAMD vacancy against 7.6% and the concession rate against 9.5%, the leading indicators for whether the renter’s market is ending.
• The Colorado insurance trajectory, and any hail event, the single biggest cost risk here.
• Net migration, which is the demand engine underneath all of it.

Run your own numbers

Every dollar figure on this page came from our tested calculator engine at stated assumptions, and each of these tools lets you swap in your own: rent vs buy (with an editable Denver preset), mortgage, home affordability, how much can I borrow, buyer closing costs, seller net proceeds, refinance, DTI, property tax, and rental property ROI. For the deeper Denver wealth comparison, read the Denver rent vs buy playbook and the ten-city rent vs buy comparison. Compare Denver with our Austin housing market study, Tampa housing market study, Phoenix housing market study, and Chicago housing market study, and for how metro costs shape long-term plans, the FIRE number by metro study.

Frequently asked questions

Is Denver a buyer’s or seller’s market in 2026?

Both, split by property type. Detached homes under $1 million run about 2.1 months of supply and sell at roughly 99% of list in 14 days, a mild seller’s market. Condos and attached homes carry 4.78 to 5.72 months of supply and take 34 days, which is a clear buyer’s market.

What is the median home price in Denver?

The 11-county DMAR metro median residential closing price was $616,000 in June 2026, up about 1% year over year. Split by property type, detached homes ran $675,000 and attached condos and townhomes $391,750. Redfin’s Denver County median is a different, smaller scope at $634,000.

Are Denver home prices falling?

It depends on which measure, and both are correct. By repeat sales, yes: Case-Shiller had Denver down 2.2% year over year in February 2026, the weakest of 20 US metros. By median closing price, no: the metro was roughly flat to slightly up. A repeat-sales index controls for the mix of what sold; a median does not.

Why are Denver rents dropping?

Overbuilding. Developers delivered about 20,000 apartments in 2024 alone, pushing vacancy to a 16-year high of 7.6% with more than 34,000 units empty. Average apartment rent fell 4.8% to $1,754, and landlord concessions hit 9.5% of gross rent, a 21-year record.

What does a new buyer pay in Denver property tax?

About 0.54% of market value, roughly $3,236 a year on a $600,000 home. That is derived from Colorado’s own mechanics: a 7.05% school assessment rate on 52.274 mills plus a 6.25% local rate on 27.328 mills. It is the lowest rate of the five cities we have studied.

Does buying reset my property taxes in Denver?

No. Colorado reassesses every odd-numbered year using comparable sales as of a June 30 appraisal date, on an 18-month study period. Your purchase does not reset the value, and there is no acquisition-value cap like California’s Proposition 13. The reassessment calendar drives your bill, not your closing date.

Why is homeowners insurance so expensive in Denver?

Hail. Colorado premiums rose 100.8% from 2020 to 2025, the largest increase of any state, and hail is roughly half of a Front Range premium (wildfire is only about 1% in Denver). One hailstorm in May 2024 caused nearly $2 billion in damage in hours. The Colorado average now runs about $4,164 to $4,310 a year.

Are condos a good buy in Denver right now?

Condos carry the metro’s best buyer leverage and lowest entry prices, so the negotiating position is real. But budget the full carrying cost: $300 to $600-plus in monthly HOA dues, master-policy insurance pass-throughs, and special-assessment risk. Confirm the building is warrantable, or your financing options narrow sharply.

What are mortgage rates in Denver?

About 6.5% to 6.7% for a 30-year fixed in Colorado in mid-July 2026 (Bankrate 6.69%, Zillow 6.49%); we model 6.6%. Fifteen-year loans ran roughly 5.9% to 6.2%. Rates have been range-bound in the mid-to-upper 6s all year, which is why the market has been stuck.

Is Denver losing population?

The city shrank about 0.1% in the year to July 2025, and Colorado posted its first negative net domestic migration since 2004, with 12,100 more residents leaving than arriving. Growth continues in exurban Weld, Douglas and Elbert counties, so the metro is redistributing more than it is emptying.

Which Denver areas are strongest and weakest?

Detached areas are strongest: Washington Park, Golden, Lakewood, and Castle Rock. Condo-heavy central areas are weakest: LoDo and downtown (the luxury-oversupply epicenter) and Capitol Hill. These neighborhood figures come from brokerage sources and are lower confidence than the metro series.

Should I rent or buy in Denver in 2026?

Monthly, renting is cheaper, especially against a condo, because rents have fallen while ownership costs have not. Buying makes more sense for a detached buyer with a three-plus-year horizon who can capture a concession. Run the like-for-like math in our Denver rent vs buy playbook rather than comparing an apartment to a house.

Methodology

Where the numbers come from. Every market figure on this page is transcribed from a named source with its geography, period, and confidence level in the source registry below, and is never presented without its period. Where sources differ (a DMAR 11-county metro median, a Redfin Denver County median, a repeat-sales index, an apartment average versus a city listing median), we show them and label the scope rather than averaging them.

Why the metro, and where the city appears. This page is metro-first: the DMAR 11-county footprint is the scope in which the property-type divergence is actually measured. The City and County of Denver appears where the tax mechanics live, because mill levies are city and county specific. Colorado statewide figures appear for insurance and for the price-cut share, and both are labeled as statewide, because no Denver-specific source exists for them.

What we computed ourselves. Monthly payments, PITI, income needed, cash to close, the escrow split, and the rent-versus-own gap are computed by the FinExplained calculator engine (decimal-precise, tested) from the stated assumptions: a $616,000 example home, a 6.6% 30-year fixed, the derived 0.54% new-buyer effective property tax rate, $4,164 annual insurance (Colorado statewide), and 1% annual upkeep. The condo variant layers the $420 median HOA dues on top of PITI as a labeled line. PMI below 20% down is disclosed and excluded. Golden tests pin each published figure, so a silent change would fail our build.

The 0.54% tax rate is derived, and shown as arithmetic. Colorado publishes no single effective rate, so we compute it from primary mechanics (the HB24B-1001 assessment rates and Denver’s mill levy) and show the working above. Published median rates near 0.48% describe existing owners under an older regime, and we say so rather than quoting the friendlier number.

The rent comparison is not like-for-like, and we say so on the chart. The $1,754 rent is a metro apartment average and the $616,000 home is a metro median that is 79% detached by closing volume. The gap between them is the step up from an apartment to a median house, not a rent-versus-buy verdict. The Denver rent vs buy playbook runs the comparable-rent version.

The Market Balance Score is in beta, and Denver is the case where a single number is least adequate. Its formula, weights, normalization anchors, and this month’s inputs are fully disclosed on the card above. Denver carries all five inputs, so no weight renormalization applies; the price-cut input is a Colorado statewide proxy and is labeled, and the months-of-supply input is derived (active listings divided by closings) because DMAR publishes supply by band and property type rather than as a blended figure. The score lands in the seller’s band because it is volume-weighted toward detached homes, which were 79% of June closings. It is arithmetically correct and structurally misleading on its own, which is why it renders beside the property-type charts and never as a headline.

Charts. Every chart states its geography and period and carries a text description. The cross-city tax chart derives each bar from that city’s engine tax rate, not a literal. Where a source supplies no sourced series (a long-run price line), the chart is omitted rather than fabricated.

Source registry

Every figure used on this page, with value, geography, period, source, and confidence:

Assumptions and limitations

• The worked examples assume a $616,000 home, 20% down unless stated, a 30-year fixed at 6.6%, the derived 0.54% new-buyer effective property tax rate, $4,164 annual insurance, and 1% annual upkeep. Change any input and the outputs move; the linked calculators exist for exactly that.
• The 0.54% tax rate is derived from Colorado’s published assessment rates and Denver’s mill levy, not read off a published table. Your assessment, your district’s mills, and any appeal decide where you actually land, and a new metro district can push the total toward 1.0% to 1.1%.
• The $4,164 insurance premium is a COLORADO STATEWIDE average (Insurify, 2026), not a Denver-specific figure. LendingTree independently reads $4,310. No clean Denver-metro-only premium exists in our sources.
• The rent comparison uses the AAMD metro apartment average ($1,754). It is not the same product as the $616,000 metro-median home, and the page says so wherever the gap appears.
• The condo variant uses a $420 monthly HOA median, which is a NATIONAL median used as a Denver proxy because it sits inside the sourced $300 to $600-plus Denver range. Special assessments and above-average buildings run higher.
• Months of supply for the Balance Score is derived (12,744 active listings divided by 3,924 June closings) because DMAR publishes supply by band and property type, not as a blended figure.
• The price-cut and above-list shares are Colorado statewide proxies (Redfin); no Denver-city figures are separately published.
• Submarket figures come from single-brokerage sources, are labeled low confidence, and mix year-over-year with five-year appreciation. Treat them as direction, not precision.
• Everything here is educational analysis of market data, not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice, and not a recommendation to buy, sell, or rent any property.

Data freshness

This edition carries June 2026 market data with mid-July 2026 Colorado mortgage rates, was published July 14, 2026, and refreshes monthly: the next update is planned for mid-August 2026, after the July data lands in the DMAR market trends report. A notable rate move below 6%, a Colorado insurance filing or major hail event, or a shift in the attached-versus-detached supply spread trigger an off-cycle update. Corrections follow our corrections policy and are logged in the changelog.