Three in ten listings now leave the market without selling

If you read anything about housing in June, you probably read that sellers are giving up. Homes pulled off the market at the fastest pace since the pandemic started. Atlanta losing better than one listing in ten. Frustrated owners walking away rather than cutting their price.

That story was real, and it was already out of date when it ran. It measured April. Two things have happened since, and both of them look different here.

Inside the numbers

Four Julys, side by side

I pulled every listing in our seven counties that left the market during the first 29 days of July, going back four years, and sorted them into two piles: the ones that closed, and the ones whose listing agreement ran out without a sale.

July 1–29 each year. Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties.

Three years of steady erosion, and then it stopped. The move from last July to this one is six-tenths of a point, which is another way of saying nothing changed.

Look at what drove the earlier decline, though. Closings slipped about 9% across the four years. Expirations rose 164%. Our sold share fell mostly because more listings were failing, not because fewer were selling.

So the honest read is that our market found a floor rather than a recovery. Sellers aren't quitting at a faster rate than last summer. They're quitting at a rate that would have looked alarming three summers ago, and that rate is holding.

Macro & market forces

What sellers here are doing instead

Redfin tracks this nationally and their June numbers tell the other half. Metro Denver's delisting share came in at 6.0%, which was exactly the middle of the 49 largest metros they measured. Perfectly ordinary.

Their relisting number is where we stand out. A relisting is a home that came off the market and went back on within the year. Denver ranked fourth in the country at 3.2%, behind San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco. Boston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles all trailed us.

That share has climbed every year since 2023, and it climbed while our delisting rate flattened. Sellers here aren't leaving the market at higher rates. They're returning to it at higher rates.

Which creates something worth knowing if you're shopping. When a home is withdrawn and comes back, its days-on-market counter starts over. The listing you're looking at today may show two weeks. The house may have been trying for eight months.

Rate watch

Where rates landed this week

Rates bottomed near 6.5% in late June and have climbed most of July, touching 6.85% last Thursday, the highest reading in more than a year. They've eased slightly since. The Fed held steady at its meeting this week, which leaves the near-term direction to oil prices and the monthly inflation reports.

For a buyer, the difference between late June's 6.5% and today's 6.77% works out to about $96 a month on a $600,000 purchase with 10% down.