The urban core cooled fastest, and its suburbs held steady

Two cities show what happens at the far ends of the pandemic housing boom. Austin ran hotter than almost anywhere in the country and is now sitting at 6.0 months of supply, a genuine buyer's market still working off its 2022 peak. Chicago mostly sat out the frenzy and is holding around 2.6 months of supply, tight enough that sellers still have the edge. The bigger the boom, the bigger the correction.

That relationship shows up in a number most buyers and sellers never see: absorption rate, which measures how much of the current inventory actually sold in the past month — closed sales divided by active listings. Above 20% points to a seller's market. Below 15%, buyers gain the edge. It's the same information as "months of supply," just read from the other direction: a 30% absorption rate and roughly 3.3 months of supply describe the same market.

Metro Denver lands between Austin and Chicago's extremes. Across the seven-county metro, absorption sits at 30.1% right now, or about 3.3 months of supply. For comparison, Metro Denver ran at roughly 48% absorption back in 2019, before the pandemic touched anything, and spiked past 150% at the 2021 peak, when there were barely enough active listings to cover three weeks of sales. The boom was real here, and so is the correction, just not as extreme in either direction as Austin.

Zoom in past the metro-wide number, and the correction isn't spread evenly. Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Douglas, and Jefferson are all absorbing 30% to 36% of inventory a month — a firm seller's market, not far removed from 2019. Denver County alone is running at 23.8%, or about 4.2 months of supply.

Denver County is cooling the most. That's the same pattern playing out between Austin and Chicago, just at a smaller scale, inside a single metro area. For buyers hunting for room to negotiate, that matters enormously. For sellers wondering why they have less negotiating power, the answer is: it depends which part of the metro area you're selling in.

Rate Watch

Mortgage rates just had their worst two-day stretch in months. The 30-year fixed rate jumped to 6.85% on July 23, up from 6.77% the day before, and both moves came in well above the average daily change. That puts rates at their highest level since June 2025, according to Mortgage News Daily. Rates like this keep the lock-in effect firmly in place — owners with a rate under 4% have little reason to sell and buy again at today's cost of borrowing. That effect likely runs stronger in the suburbs, where more buyers closed during the low-rate boom years, than in Denver County, where more of the market has already turned over.