Denver Listings Just Hit a 13-Month High and Buyers Walked

13,179. That is how many active listings sat on the metro Denver market the week ending September 19, 2026. The most since August of last year, when the count peaked at 13,196 on August 9. So we are basically back to a 13-month high.

And here is the part people miss. The homes are piling up while the buyers are leaving the building.

That number comes from a Denver brokerage's weekly market update, pulling from REcolorado data. Listings were up 0.8% week over week and roughly 1.3 to 1.4% year over year. Not a flood. But a steady climb that is not slowing down.

Now flip it over and look at the buyer side, because that is where the story gets real.

The buyers are not showing up

That same week, there were 12,368 showings across metro Denver. Sounds fine until you do the math. That is only a 1.9% bounce coming out of Labor Day, which is the time of year tours usually jump. And it left showings 14.8% below the same week last year.

So supply up, demand down. When you divide the two you get showings per listing, and that fell to 0.95 tours per home. A year ago it was 1.14. That is a 16.3% drop. Every house is getting fewer eyeballs than it did last fall, and there are more houses competing for them.

a Denver brokerage tracks something they call the Demand Pressure Gap, which is basically their way of measuring whether buyers or sellers have the upper hand. It has now been negative for 11 straight weeks. Eleven. And it is sitting at its weakest reading since April of 2025.

And before anyone says this is just old stale listings hanging around, no. New listings that week came in at 1,466, up 3.8% year over year on a calendar-aligned basis. So this is partly fresh supply walking in the door. The inventory build is real, not a mirage.

Rates are the villain here

Look, you cannot tell this story without the mortgage number, and the mortgage number is ugly.

30-year rates hit roughly 7.20% in mid-September. Highest in nearly 20 months. The 10-year Treasury yield, which is the thing that actually drags mortgage rates around, closed above 5% for the first time since 2007. Think about that. 2007.

Depending on where you look the Colorado numbers bounce around a little. As of October 1, Rate Direct pegged the state's conventional purchase benchmark at 6.980%, and that is with a squeaky-clean 780 FICO and 80% loan to value. NerdWallet had Colorado's average 30-year fixed at 7.32% APR as of September 28. Either way, you are shopping for a house near 7%, and that is why the showing numbers look the way they do.

So what does this mean for you

Here is the thing. If you are a buyer who has been sitting on the sidelines grinding your teeth, this is your window.

a national listing site's September report, published September 30, ranked Denver second among the 50 largest U.S. metros for price reductions at 32.1%. Only Salt Lake City was higher at 33.6%. So nearly a third of the active listings in this metro have already cut their price. That is a seller blinking. That is leverage sitting right in front of you.

Nationally that same report showed active listings up 5.4% year over year, the fastest annual gain in six months, with new listings actually slipping 0.7%. Denver is riding that same wave. Inventory is drifting back toward pre-pandemic levels, which is wild to say after the last five years.

And the prices themselves? Not crashing. DMAR's August data showed 13,080 active listings, a median close price of $594,495, basically flat year over year, with median days in the MLS at 27. So sellers are not slashing values across the board. They are just having to be reasonable for the first time in a long time, and the ones who priced like it is still 2022 are the ones eating the 32.1% price cut number.

The condo problem is its own animal

If you want to see where the real pain is, go look at attached product.

DMAR's August numbers put the condo and townhome median at $370,000, sitting 45 median days in the MLS. Compare that to detached homes at a $649,500 median close and just 24 days. So attached stuff takes almost twice as long to move.

And it is not hard to figure out why. Master-policy insurance premiums for Denver multifamily buildings jumped 20% to 40% year over year in 2026. That flows straight into HOA dues. So a buyer looking at a condo is not just doing math on the rate and the price. They are staring at an HOA number that keeps climbing every renewal, and a lot of them are just walking.

Hayley and I have watched this market do a lot of things. This is not a crash. It is a handoff. Power is sliding from the seller's side of the table to the buyer's side, slowly, week by week, 11 weeks running.

If you are buying, ask for the repairs. Ask for the rate buydown. Ask for the price cut. A third of these sellers have already shown you they will move. Just do not buy a condo without reading the HOA budget line by line. That is where the surprises live right now.