My mom used to say, “Now Louie, you can look at the hole, or the doughnut.” We will continue in this virus plague and economic damage for many months ahead, but Colorado has a red-hot housing market. How can that be?
The end of the Great Recession and distressed sales of homes in 2013 revealed a long-developing housing shortage along the Front Range west of I-25. It’s not so much a housing shortage as exhaustion of land for subdivision. COVID-19 may slow migration to Colorado, as relocation in general is slowing. And COVID-19 has cost jobs. But the housing shortage is so deep and broad across markets that we’re right back to competing offers as a common occurrence.
The purchasing power which still overwhelms our minimal for-sale inventory? Information technology jobs. Colorado’s best economist, Rich Wobbekind at CU notes the increasing difficulty of defining an IT job, as more and more ordinary job
functions have become IT-dependent. CU’s annual Leeds report identifies Colorado as a top-five state in IT employment and education. In March, IT employers and workers seamlessly shifted to remote work, revenue and incomes intact. Time
shuttered at home may boost demand for a better place.
Housing weakness shows only in a modest slide in rents in some metro areas. Our worst-hurt fellow citizens have the most virus-vulnerable jobs, the lowest incomes, and the least resources to wait this out. Retail, hospitality, resort, and
restaurant jobs—all indoors and requiring close contact—will struggle to recover at all while COVID-19 is loose.
Our overall economic recovery has stabilized, still with risks but at a sustainable level. Even in a time like this, somebody gets to be lucky—and it’s us.