More than half of Metro Denver's listings are asking less than they did on day one

There are 14,471 homes listed for sale this morning across the seven counties we follow. Roughly 7,668 of them are asking less than they did the day they came to market. That works out to 53 percent, and the true figure runs higher, because the MLS field we can count only flags a listing whose most recent change was the price cut. A home that reduced in June and then came back on the market in August is still priced below where it started, and it doesn't show up in that 7,668.

So a little more than half of what's for sale in Metro Denver has already come down in price at least once. Seven months ago, that share was closer to four in ten.

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County Detail

Where the share has moved since February

In late February we looked at the same measure across four core counties. Every one of them has climbed by double digits since, and the spread between them has narrowed rather than widened.

Part of that increase is the calendar. February inventory is young, full of homes that had been listed for a few weeks. September inventory is carrying everything that went on the market in spring and didn't sell. Listings accumulate reductions the longer they sit, so some of the move from 40 to 53 percent reflects the age of the pool rather than a change in how sellers are behaving. The rest of it is sellers meeting the market.

Boulder County is the exception at 45 percent, nine points below the counties clustered in the mid-50s. That gap is large enough on 1,575 listings to be real, and we don't yet have an explanation for it worth putting in print.

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Mortgage Rates

Why the cutting hasn't stopped

Mortgage News Daily put the 30-year fixed at 7.19 percent today, up from 7.07 percent last Thursday. On August's median close price of $594,495 with 10 percent down, that week's move raised the principal and interest payment by about $43 a month, from roughly $3,585 to $3,628.

Put that next to a price reduction. To hand a buyer back $43 a month at today's rate, a seller would need to cut about $7,000. The rate moved that much in seven days.

That's the mechanism behind the 53 percent. Sellers aren't only competing against the house down the street. They're competing against a monthly payment that keeps moving away from the buyer, which is why one cut leads to another.

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What It Means

The first price is the one with leverage

When 53 percent of the homes for sale have already reduced, a price cut no longer sets a listing apart. It's what the majority of the competition has done. In February a reduction moved a home into a more competitive minority. Today it moves a home into the middle of the pack.

None of that makes the sellers who have cut wrong. Most of them were responding to real feedback from a market that has gotten harder every month this year. What it does mean is that the launch price carries more weight than it used to, because it's the only price set before the market has formed an opinion about the house. The homes that are selling in 27 days are the ones that were priced close to right in the first week.

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Sources: REcolorado active listing data, seven counties (Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson), September 17, 2026; DMAR Market Trends Report, August 2026; Mortgage News Daily, September 17, 2026.