The gap between looking and buying

By most measures, buyer interest is real this spring. Nationally, mortgage purchase applications are running about 12% ahead of the same period last year — a consistent trend that has held through the first ten weeks of 2026. Showing activity in Colorado is tracking above the pace of 2023, 2024, and 2025 at this point in the year. Buyers are getting off the couch. They're touring homes.

They're just not making offers.

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What the local data shows

A look at Denver metro MLS activity from the past seven days puts some numbers to that gap. There were 1,873 new listings and 1,531 homes that went pending — a reasonable ratio on the surface. But alongside those pendings, 289 listings expired without a deal, and another 285 came back on the market after falling out of contract. That's a meaningful volume of transactions that started and didn't finish.

The price reduction data may be the clearest signal of all. In the past seven days, 1,460 listings saw a price cut — nearly as many as the combined total of homes that went pending and closed. Sellers are adjusting, repeatedly and broadly, because the market isn't meeting them where they originally priced.

A small counterpoint worth noting: 114 listings saw price increases this week. Well-priced, well-conditioned homes are still generating competition. The market isn't uniformly soft — it's bifurcated, with a thinner comfortable middle than most sellers would like.

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The fuller picture

Longer-term Denver metro data fills in the rest of the story. The median number of showings before a home goes pending currently sits around 12 — roughly in line with the pre-pandemic historical norm. But average days in MLS has climbed to around 70, which is above where it spent most of the 2013–2019 period and the highest it's been since the early part of last decade. Homes aren't flying off the market after a weekend of showings. Those 12 showings are now spread across weeks.

Closed listing volume tells the same story from a different angle. Transaction counts are near their lowest levels since 2009 — not just below the frenzied pace of 2021 and 2022, but below the quieter years of 2023 and 2024 as well. Months of supply, currently around 2.5 to 3 months, has pulled back from a recent peak closer to 4 months — likely seasonal, though the broader trend since 2022 represents a genuine rebalancing after years of near-zero inventory.

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Why the hesitation

Rates are a significant part of the answer. As of today, the 30-year fixed is averaging 6.43% — the highest it's been since last summer, and nearly 50 basis points above where it briefly touched in late February. That three-week swing translates to roughly $150–160 more per month on a median-priced Denver home. For buyers already stretching on affordability, that's not a rounding error.

The late-February dip is instructive precisely because of what happened next. When rates briefly fell below 6%, purchase applications nationally surged to their strongest reading since 2022 — buyers responded immediately. Then rates climbed back, and the hesitation returned. The demand exists. What's missing is a rate environment stable enough for buyers to commit with confidence.

For sellers, this points toward one clear conclusion: pricing has to do more work than it did a few years ago. With buyers taking their time, inventory available, and days on market climbing, a home that starts at the wrong price will exhaust its natural showing pool before it finds its buyer. The 1,460 price cuts recorded this week suggest that lesson is still being learned across the metro.