Grand Junction, Colorado's real estate market may be on thin ice, but Denver's real estate market is not heading for a correction. This is the bottom line from a report estimating the degree to which various real estate markets are overvalued or undervalued as of the first quarter of 2006, prepared by mortgage servicing company National City, and consultancy Global Insight.
Most of the metropolitan areas studied in Colorado are only slightly inflated, which means that the likelihood of a downward correct in real estate prices here is very low. The Pueblo, Colorado market is 3.0% overvalued. Denver's market is 5.9% overvalued. The Colorado Springs, Colorado market is 6.4% overvalued. The Boulder, Colorado real estate market is 15.6% overvalued. The Greeley, Colorado market is 20.8% overvalued. And, the Grand Junction, Colorado market is 27.89% overvalued. By comparison, the most overvalued real estate market in the country, Naples, Florida, is 102.5% overvalued, and much of California's real estate market is grossly overvalued.
Grand Junction's growing house prices are likely a result of another oil industry boom.
The exuberance in the Greeley market is likely a product of its development into a bedroom community, not only for people in nearby Fort Collins, for also for people who work as far away as Boulder and Denver, as the drive until you can afford it trend continues.
Denver is showing the aftereffects of a sustained period of sluggish housing price growth after trends towards inflated prices a few years ago, and the impact of an exceptionally high rate of foreclosure that has been experienced in Denver on its real estate market, which has a remarkably high number of properties for sale at the moment.
The only sustained correction of real estate values in Colorado in the last twenty years took place in Denver from the first quarter of 1985 to the first quarter of 1989, during which real estate prices dropped 12%. Immediately prior to that correction, the Denver real estate market was overvalued by 18% according to the report's methodology. No market not at least 14% overvalued has experiences a sustained (two year or more) correction of at least 10% of value in the past two decades anywhere in the nation, and a majority of corrections in the past two decades have been preceeded by an overvaluation of, at least, 30%.
This is good news for the Denver economy. An overvalued real estate market tends to be a leading indicator of economic trouble on the horizon. Foreclosures tend to be a lagging indicator that flow from economic hard times already in place for some time. Thus, the real estate market is unlikely to slump out of control, and this stability may provide a foundation for an economic recovery in the Denver metropolitan area.
Grand Junction, in contrast, is in a very fragile condition. If the oil boom motivated by currently sky high oil prices falls apart, if for example, tensions ease in the Middle East, it could see another smaller verions of Black Monday: "May 2, 1982. The day Exxon shut down its $5 billion Colony Oil Shale project.", which devistated Grand Junction's economy and took a couple of decades for it to really recover from economically. Oil shale is back now.
"Shell thinks the whole thing is economic at a crude price of $30.", so with oil prices North of $70 a barrel right now, the boom will continue, but the entire project hangs in the balance on that commodity price. A drop in oil prices could cancel the project again, and while Grand Junction would be quite as devistated now as it was then, because it is diversified its economy in the meantime, it would certainly take a heavy hit if that happened.
Hat Tip to Daily Kos diarist bonddad.
3 comments:
You make some interesting points, particularly where the Grand Junction market is concerned. I am interested to know where your data (overvaluation numbers)come from.
Grand Junction Police State
How the police are working the law unlawfully in Grand Junction Colorado
I have been seeing a change in how the police use the law against we the tax paying citizens. The police 24/7 think about law breaking people and how the best way to get them. This thought is embedded in their thinking thus way of life.
They are as man is an island whose thoughts just bounce back and forth in their police mind format. So when you get two or more of them together they share their new ideas on how to trap a criminal. They discuss over point where they lose their judgment. The have their shop talks.
So an everyday law-abiding citizen happens to be at her own resident having a beer sitting on the front grass on a warm day. The resident may have been pondering about the goals ahead in life and how to achieve the goals just only days before fall school begins. The resident falls asleep and dreams of this. The resident wakes up from the sleep goes in her house to finish the nap and the dreams she has.
A policeman named Dixon rap a taps on the door. The young lady resident’s brother answers the open door and assures the policeman that his sister is simply asleep and should not be disturbed. The police make it a point and insist on entering the property to talk to the young lady who is napping and walks in the home with out any authority from the residents of the home. The police disturb the sleeping young lady resident student and demands answer to his question. The sleeping young lady resident student awakes in shock to maybe this is only a dream. She awakes to the demands that he leave the property in a rude manor. The police called the fire department to assist. The young lady resident student demands the policeman to leave the property again. The police restrain the young lady and carry her to jail where they stripper her down naked and make her lay there on a mat for that rest of the day and night with out food.
The policeman writes in his report some of his learned shared ideas from "shop talk" how to make this a crime for the young lady resident student . So he simply writes that he was allowed in the home.
The next day Grand Junction police officer Dixon would have a day off and the young lady’s life is in shambles.
http://grandjunctionhometech.com/index.php?n=109&id=109
Interesting...I always like to revisit old posts that make sweeping preditions....GJ on thin ice? Didn't pan out, but I would guess that Wash Park would have a bit of a biased perspective...here's prediction from 2008...who knows? http://www.housingpredictor.com:80/colorado.html
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