The Colorado Springs-area housing market has started off the new year the way it ended the old one: higher prices, increasing numbers of home sales and a historically tight supply of properties available for purchase.

A Pikes Peak Association of Realtors market trends report released this week shows the median price of single-family and patio homes that were sold in January increased to $445,000, a 15.6% gain over the same month last year.

January’s median price — the midpoint of all prices — fell short of the record high of $450,000, which was set last year. Still, it continued a streak of year-over-year, double-digit percentage increases in prices that began in July 2020 and extended through all of 2021, Realtors Association records show.

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Home sales also continued to rise last month. January’s total of 1,058 sales climbed 9% on a year-over-year basis, according to the association’s report. Last month was the first time home sales topped 1,000 for any January over the last 30 years, based on historical data maintained by The Gazette.

Homes that were sold in January were snatched up quickly, spending an average of 15 days on the market before selling, the Realtors Association report shows. That’s down from an average of 17 days during the same month a year ago.

“I don’t see it slowing down right now,” Rick Van Wieren, a real estate agent with Re/Max Properties in Colorado Springs, said of the housing market. “We expected it to slow down, but we’re not seeing that.”

A shortage of Springs-area homes for sale, however, remains a major concern for the local housing industry.

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Just 551 homes were listed for sale at the end of January, the Realtors Association report showed. That’s equivalent to about a half month’s supply, based on recent buying and selling trends.

On the one hand, that supply figure is up almost 20% compared with January 2021.

But that increase is somewhat misleading; it’s being compared against a miniscule 460 homes that were listed for sale in the same month a year ago, which was the lowest monthly total on record over the last 30 years, Gazette data show.

In non-Great Recession years, January listings routinely topped 2,000 and 3,000.

“It’s not really a material change,” Van Wieren said of January’s year-over-year increase in supply.

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The Springs-area demand for housing, which is similar to what’s taking place in many cities, has been driven, in large part, by rock-bottom mortgage rates.

On Thursday, mortgages averaged 3.55% nationally for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. While rates have ticked up of late, real estate agents have said they still consider them historically low and extremely attractive to buyers.

In the Colorado Springs area, agents also have pointed to an attractive quality of life, solid job growth and a healthy economy as helping to drive demand, despite the market uncertainty that was created two years ago by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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That demand, however, has come in the wake of shortage of homes for sale. The combination of those supply-and-demand factors has propelled home prices in the Springs and elsewhere, real estate agents have said.

The monthly Pikes Peak Association of Realtors market trends report compiles data on home sales handled by its member agents and doesn’t include homes sold by individuals. Most home sales in the report took place in El Paso County, with the rest in Teller and a handful of Front Range counties.