Drive past 185 Steele Street in Cherry Creek North this month and you won't see a finished building. You'll see a construction fence, a crane, and a crew still pouring the foundation for an underground garage. The Waldorf Astoria Residences Denver Cherry Creek broke ground on November 19, 2025, already 65 percent presold before a shovel touched the dirt. This summer, it's still sitting in the slowest, least photogenic phase of construction: excavation and foundation work.
None of that has slowed sales. As of early August 2026, more than 70 percent of the building's 37 units are presold, according to Denver Gazette reporting on the current market, on a project with prices that started at $1.2 million and won't be finished until 2028.
The same month that project hit that milestone, the Denver Metro Association of Realtors released its July 2026 Market Trends Report showing the region's overall median home price fell 1.54 percent from June, to $605,000. It was the first across-the-board price dip the metro had seen since early spring. So the month Denver's median price finally cracked was also one of the strongest luxury sales streaks the metro has logged since 2022.
That's not a contradiction to untangle. It's two markets that have never behaved the same way, pulling harder apart than usual, for reasons that have almost nothing to do with each other's headlines and everything to do with who's buying, how they're financing, and a legal environment from over a decade ago that still shapes what gets built today.
The Number Everyone Is Reading the Same Way
The July DMAR numbers, on their face, read like a market losing steam. The metro median closed at $605,000, down 1.54 percent from June but still up 2.95 percent from July 2025. Detached homes carried a higher median of $660,000. Attached homes, condos and townhomes, sat at $380,000. Homes took a median of 21 days to sell, up from 18 in June, though still faster than the 24-day median from a year earlier. Sellers netted about 99 percent of asking price, down half a point from June.
Zoom out to the full year and the picture looks steadier: 24,958 homes had sold through July, down about 2 percent from the same period in 2025, with a year-to-date median of $600,000, nearly identical to last year. Amanda Snitker, who chairs DMAR's Market Trends Committee, summed up the mood plainly: "Buyers are moving more slowly, and sellers are adjusting to longer timelines."
That's the story most readers will get from a portal search. It's accurate. It's also only describing one half of the room.
The Segment That Didn't Get the Memo
Through July, Denver's $1 million-plus segment had racked up 3,569 closed sales for a combined $5.83 billion in volume, the strongest luxury showing the metro has had since 2022. Those properties spent a median of just 17 days on the market before selling. Luxury attached homes, condos and townhomes in that price tier, saw sales climb 26.09 percent from June and 81.25 percent year over year, with total sales volume up 108.3 percent and a median price per square foot of $572.
Snitker's read on that buyer behavior: "Buyers appear to be waiting for the right home, not necessarily holding out for a discount." At the top of the market, that patience is showing up as presales on a building that doesn't exist yet.
The Waldorf Astoria project is a clean example of why. Developer PMG secured $107.5 million in construction financing from Maxim Capital Group, with Dawn Raymond of Kentwood Real Estate leading sales. The finished building will include a Peacock Alley-inspired lounge, a rooftop pool, a wellness center, and a ground-floor restaurant, Colorado's first taste of the Waldorf Astoria brand. It's expected to complete in 2028. Buyers writing seven-figure contracts on units that are eighteen months from framing aren't behaving like buyers reacting to mortgage rates month to month. They're behaving like buyers who decided years ago that this specific address, this specific brand, and this specific scarcity were worth locking in early.
Why the Same Boom Doesn't Reach a $380,000 Condo
Here's the part that doesn't make it into most market recaps. The reason a boutique tower in Cherry Creek can presell before it's out of the ground isn't just brand appeal. It's that almost nothing like it has been built anywhere in the state for years. A 2023 Common Sense Institute report found the number of active condo developers in Colorado fell 84 percent over fifteen years, from 146 in 2007 to just 23 in 2022, and traced the drop largely to insurance costs on condo projects running as much as 233 percent higher than on single-family construction, a gap tied to the state's construction-defect litigation exposure. Builders responded by building apartments instead of condos for owner-occupants, which is exactly the kind of choice that leaves almost no new mid-market supply competing with an ultra-luxury debut like Waldorf Astoria.
Colorado lawmakers passed the most significant reform to that litigation framework in years in 2025, giving builders who opt in more legal protection in exchange for third-party inspections during construction. It's a real shift, but not a fast one. State law still gives homeowners up to six years after a project's substantial completion to file a defect claim, so it will be years before anyone knows how the new rules play out, and any resulting wave of new mid-market condo construction is further out still.
That scarcity cuts one way at $1.2 million and the opposite way at $380,000. The condos and townhomes that make up Denver's attached-home median are disproportionately older buildings built before that long freeze, now carrying insurance and reserve costs that have climbed as those buildings age. There's no wave of new $350,000 condo construction to compete on price or amenities. There's just older stock, getting more expensive to maintain, with buyers doing the math on what that maintenance actually costs every month.
The HOA Math That's Quietly Disqualifying Buyers
That math has a name, and Denver-area analyst Cooper Thayer has put a number on it. Speaking to Colorado Association of Realtors members in reporting from January 2026, Thayer explained that every $100 increase in a monthly HOA fee "reduces how much monthly payment the borrower can carry while still staying within debt-to-income limits." At $500 a month, he calculated the impact on a buyer's total borrowing power at around $83,400.
That's not an abstract example. In reporting from late July 2026, a two-bedroom, two-bath condo in Englewood, part of the wider metro DMAR tracks, sold for $460,000 carrying annual HOA fees of $5,713, or roughly $476 a month. A buyer qualifying for that unit is doing math that looks nothing like the math on a Cherry Creek presale, because the HOA line item is quietly eating tens of thousands of dollars of purchasing power before the mortgage rate even enters the conversation.
That's the mechanism behind the attached-home median sitting at $380,000 with days on market running closer to 40, well past the metro's overall 21-day median. It isn't that buyers stopped wanting condos. It's that the DTI math on an aging building with a rising HOA bill increasingly doesn't clear, no matter how reasonable the sticker price looks on a listing.
Same Metro, Different Clocks
| Whole metro (July 2026) | Attached / entry segment | $1M+ luxury segment (YTD through July) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $605,000 median | $380,000 median | $5.83B total volume across 3,569 sales |
| Days on market | 21 days | Closer to 40 days | 17 days median |
| What's driving it | Buyers moving deliberately, per DMAR | Rising HOA dues cutting into DTI capacity | Cash-ready buyers locking in scarce new supply |
What This Means If You're Comparing Denver to Somewhere Else
If you're weighing Denver against another metro, or budgeting a move here from out of state, the median price you saw on a portal is an average of two buyers who don't share a single incentive. Before drawing a conclusion from that number, it's worth asking three things about the specific property or price range you're actually looking at:
- Is this listing competing against new construction, or is it aging stock likely carrying rising HOA and reserve costs?
- If it's attached housing, what do the current HOA dues do to your qualifying income once a lender runs the debt-to-income math?
- Is the seller pricing based on last year's appreciation, or on the condition premium buyers are now paying for, which rewards updated mechanical systems and recent maintenance over square footage alone?
For someone relocating for a job or shopping a second home in the mountains, the practical takeaway is the same either way. Denver's median price is a real number, but it's not a single market's number. Reading it as one thing, rather than two markets moving at different speeds for different reasons, is the fastest way to misjudge what your specific budget will actually buy here.
FAQ
Is Denver's housing market crashing? No. Active listings reached 13,115 in July 2026, still well below the 20,000-plus this market carried routinely between 2008 and 2012, according to DMAR chair Amanda Snitker. Inventory is building from a genuinely tight market, not spilling over into an oversupplied one.
Does the luxury boom mean it's a good time to sell an entry-level condo? Not automatically. DMAR's Market Trends Committee has described a widening gap between move-in-ready properties and those with deferred maintenance, a difference buyers are now pricing in closely at every showing. An attached home with recent updates and clean HOA financials is in a very different position than one without either.
If you're weighing what your specific budget actually buys in Denver's metro, or how a mountain second home stacks up against a downtown condo, Arlene Burgess can walk through the numbers that apply to your situation. Let's Connect — Schedule a Consultation.
