The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) just released their Third Quarter House Price Index (HPI) data. As you can see in the chart below, Boulder, Denver and Colorado remain off their 2016 peaks in annual price appreciation yet remained clustered in the positive appreciation area right around 10% annual appreciation, not too shabby. This might drop further as the latest quarterly readings were clustered around 1% appreciation for the Third Quarter of 2018. Interestingly, Boulder County had been lagging Denver and the rest of Colorado for the past year or so and has accelerated back to match their appreciation rates.
While Boulder, Denver and Colorado have all sunk in the rankings for short term appreciation, the long term appreciation for these areas remains some of the best in the country.
1 Quarter | 1 Year | 5 Year | Since 1991 | |
Boulder | .84% – 181st | 9.88% – 41st | 61.54% – 19th | 415.25% – 1st |
Denver | 1.29% – 152nd | 9.97% – 37th | 66.63% – 11th | 373.34% – 2nd |
Ft. Collins | 2.67% – 48th | 8.64% – 59th | 60.41% – 21st | 341.12% – 6th |
Greeley | 4.35% – 10th | 10.53% – 27th | 70.92% – 4th | 293.11% – 13th |
Colorado | 1.7% – 11th | 9.16% – 5th | 58.76% – 2nd | 366.03% – 2nd |
The FHFA HPI index is a very lagging indicator, we won’t see Fourth Quarter 2018 data until February 26th, 2019. That data release will be very telling, was our Fourth Quarter as slow as it felt to some? Will we not be worried by then as the spring market frenzy cranks back up? All good questions that we’ll answer next year!
I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season.