The "Smart Money" is on the Denver market

Haven’t I been telling you that the Denver market was ready to turn around? The Wall Street Journal’s Smart Money magazine has confirmed it. In their November issue, they published their list of cities most likely to rebound. And guess which city was in the top seven? You guessed it. Our very own Denver.

According to the article:

Denver’s overall outlook is sunnier than for most western cities because neither inventory nor prices spiraled out of control during the boom. Dinged by a telecom bust earlier in the decade that cost the city 5 percent of its jobs, the local economy wasn’t primed for irrational exuberance. Now with six months’ worth of homes in inventory—the level most experts judge to be roughly in balance—the city offers considerable upside.

So why do we find this so hard to believe? The media tends to focus on national averages, which are dragged down by the hardest hit markets – Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami, etc. These are the markets where prices spiraled out of control during the boom. If the four hardest-hit states – California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida – are taken out of the mix, the statistical picture for real estate looks much better.