Zillow issued a report Monday that flagged the Denver area as having suffered the widest-spread losses in home sale price over the past year of any U.S. real estate market. But Colorado real estate agents are calling foul and are saying the devil is in the details.

The Seattle-based online real estate service released new research that shows over half of U.S. households had lost market value since 2024, the highest share of loss since 2012 at the peak of the Great Recession.

Denver, the report said, topped the list for the widest percentage of homes that suffered lost value year-over-year — 90.6%. That was against competing areas such as Austin at 89.5%, Sacramento, 87.5%, Phoenix, 86.9%, Dallas, 86.7%, San Antonio, 86.3%, San Francisco, 83%, and Tampa and Orlando, each 85.2%.

The combined percentage of homes showing losses across all markets over the past year, according to the report, was 53%.

Losses larger in other markets

Meanwhile, the average value lost since the market’s peak showed as having been substantially larger in markets other than Denver. Those ranged from 20.5% in Austin, 14.8% in San Francisco, 13.2% in Pittsburgh, 13.1% in San Antonio, 12% in Tampa, 11.1% in Detroit, and 11% in Dallas and Miami. Denver’s average decline, according to the report, was a more modest 9.7%.

Queried by The Denver Gazette, agents who follow the market here said the report is misleading, both in flagging Denver as having suffered an out-of-the-ordinary loss, as well as viewing the losses apart from the huge runups in price that most markets saw during the Covid pandemic.

“I just don’t read it as alarming,” said Coldwell Banker agent Amanda Snitker, chair of the Market Trends research committee for the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.

“For the last two or three years we’ve had flat pricing, and it’s not a surprise that we’re not seeing appreciation in the numbers,” she added.  “We have seen general prices flatten since the peak of 2022 through today, which is just a balancing of the market.”

“What consumers need to realize is what property values have done during the Covid pandemic and since Covid,” added Rike Palese, who heads Re/Max Professionals’ DTC office. He noted that gains in value over the interim significantly outweigh any recent losses.

Sellers most at risk

“Consumers haven’t lost equity,” Palese continued. “That’s only determined when you decide to sell. One day the stock market is up, the next day it’s down. Over the long term, the vast majority of owners are substantially ahead of where they were when they purchased.”

Palese added that buyers most at risk from any losses are those who purchased at the market’s peak in 2021 and 2022, and who now have to make a move. “They might be selling for less than they paid,” he said. “But the offset is that if they’re purchasing, they’re buying for less.”   

The text of the Zillow report went on to qualify any impact from the study. “The vast majority of homeowners have seen their home values rise substantially in the time they’ve owned them … and losses are rare; just over 4% of homes have lost value since they were last sold, a smaller share than before the pandemic,” the report said.

Treh Manhertz, Zillow’s senior economic researcher, noted that any direction had to be seen in light of the run-up in national prices during the pandemic.

“Home values surged over the past six years,” Manhertz said, “and the vast majority of homeowners still have significant equity. What we’re seeing now is a normalization, not a crash.”