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Comment by xirdstl | Hacker News Reader

That must be specific to your market. That's not what I'm seeing in the Denver area, speaking as someone who has been casually looking for a house for over a year.

As soon as interest rates started rising, conditions went from what you describe, to, in a lot of cases, houses sitting weeks or months on the market. They go through, sometimes, multiple prices drops before going under contract.

I'm speaking specifically of homes that are in the range of those I'm considering purchasing, so maybe it doesn't apply to the overall market. For me, though, it is now much more of a buyer's market than it was a year ago.

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I observed that happening for about a 6-8 week period in Oct-Nov-Dec 2022, then the party returned like it was 2021 all over again.

That's good to know. I'm hoping those conditions don't come back here for awhile.

Getting into spring, I could see more people start looking again, with some pent-up demand not met from last year.

January 15th the slowdown was over in my market and now it's back to red hot.

That's because people are still not shedding the mentality of hoping to get top dollar. The market is going back in the buyer's direction. You need to be looking at recent comparable sales and pricing at or below surrounding current inventory if you want to move it quick. The mania did a number on people's perception of how the housing market should work. It will pick back up just as soon as the Fed officially backs off on rate increases, or even makes a slight cut, likely soon here.

I'm near you in Boulder area and I am seeing the same thing, huge drop in interest on houses in the market, last year places would get under contract within a week, now its houses sitting on the market for weeks and even months. I talked to our realtor(we are planning on moving again for a work related job) and she said average days on the market has doubled from last year in the Boulder metro area.

I'm in Boulder, too, and you can't ignore the "housing stock" problem here. There are a lot of crap houses in boulder that really need to be demolished. A late 90s house on my street sold in 1 day over asking, while an '87 house with a mid aughts renovation has been sitting fort 6 months. They were priced very differently relative to quality. I think what's happening here is not that the market has cooled overall, but is reflecting the vast annoyance that is boulder's building department, mixed with bad housing stock.

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