Which Denver ZIP Codes Have Seen the Biggest Home Price Drops Since 2023
DMAR data and county assessor records show the correction isn't happening evenly across the city. Here's where prices fell, why, and whether those drops are an opportunity or a reason to be careful.
DMAR data and county assessor records show the correction isn’t happening evenly across the city. Here’s where prices fell, why, and whether those drops are an opportunity or a reason to be careful.
Denver’s housing market has been working through a correction since mortgage rates broke the fever dream of 2021–2022. The decline is uneven enough across the city that ZIP code matters more right now than the headline citywide figure. The citywide average masks everything: double-digit percentage declines in some inner-ring high-price ZIP codes, continued modest appreciation in several west and northeast Denver neighborhoods. If you’re buying, selling, or simply carrying a home you purchased at 2022 prices, the citywide number is nearly useless. The ZIP code is the story.
How We Measured This, and Why the Method Matters
The figures throughout this piece draw primarily from DMAR monthly statistical reports and their ZIP-level appendix data, cross-referenced against Redfin Data Center median sale price series and Zillow’s Home Value Index for metro Denver. For year-over-year comparisons, we use full-calendar-year 2023 medians against the most recent comparable 12-month trailing period through early 2025 to minimize seasonal distortion. Denver’s spring surge reliably inflates Q2 numbers, and comparing a March peak to a November trough tells you nothing useful.
One methodological decision matters more than any other: single-family detached homes and condominiums are tracked separately throughout. In downtown Denver’s 80202 and the denser parts of 80206 and 80209, attached product makes up a substantial share of transactions. Lumping everything into a blended median would understate how far condo prices have actually fallen — and obscure the fact that in several ZIP codes, single-family values have held while the condo segment has cratered. Where data for a given ZIP is thin on one product type, that’s noted.
County assessor records provide a secondary cross-check. Denver County’s assessed values update on a two-year cycle and lag the market. The 2023 reassessment reflected 2022 peak conditions. The 2025 cycle will be the first full reset to post-peak pricing, with real implications for carrying costs — more on that below.
The ZIP Codes Where Prices Have Pulled Back the Most
These five neighborhoods absorbed the steepest premium during the frenzy and have given back the most ground since. Figures reflect DMAR ZIP-level appendix data and Redfin median sale price series. For updated monthly figures, consult the DMAR monthly statistical reports directly at dmar.org.
80202 — Downtown Denver (Condos)
The downtown condo market has seen the sharpest correction in the city, and it’s not hard to understand once you look at the cost structure. HOA fees in 80202 buildings run $400 to $900 per month depending on building age and amenities. Stack that on top of a rate-adjusted mortgage payment and the buyer pool compresses fast. Investor-owned units have returned to market in volume, and the young professional demand that once drove this segment has quietly softened. Remote and hybrid work arrangements eliminated the downtown address premium for a lot of people. Why pay a surcharge for a LoDo zip code when you’re logging in from your kitchen in Arvada?
Short-term rental and urban-pad investors who bought here in 2021 have found both strategies considerably less viable than they appeared then. Their exit inventory is adding to supply overhang, and there’s no obvious buyer wave forming to absorb it quickly.
80206 — Cherry Creek and Congress Park
The luxury and near-luxury tier here runs into brutal affordability math. A $700,000 home at 7 percent carries roughly $4,200 per month in principal, interest, taxes, and insurance. That eliminates a large portion of otherwise qualified buyers — not because those buyers don’t exist, but because many already own something and can’t move without triggering their own rate-lock problem. They’re sitting on a 3 percent mortgage they’ll never see again.
Sellers keep testing aspirational list prices. You can’t entirely blame them — these are good homes in a neighborhood that earns its reputation. But price reductions have become common, and days on market have lengthened considerably from 2021–2022, when offers arrived before the sign hit the lawn.
80209 — Washington Park and Platt Park
Remote workers paid over asking in this ZIP aggressively enough in 2021–2022 that it’s now one of the most exposed to rate-shock demand compression. The neighborhood’s appeal hasn’t gone anywhere — park access, mature tree canopy, South Pearl Street retail. Properties on the tightest blocks near the park still occasionally draw competition. But the typical transaction has shifted. Price reductions before the first weekend showings have become routine. Seller concessions on closing costs or rate buydowns are no longer unusual requests; they’re practically expected.
80205 — Cole and Five Points
Five Points and Cole drew significant investor and owner-occupant attention from 2020 through 2022. Relative affordability and proximity to RiNo made them the obvious next-tier purchase — buyers priced out of LoHi went looking east and found it here. Some of the softness now reflects the broader RiNo-adjacent investment thesis cooling off. The neighborhood premiums that speculation built in are partly unwinding. Transit access and walkability haven’t changed, which is worth keeping in mind when the price-drop headlines make the corridor sound radioactive.
80211 — LoHi and Sunnyside
LoHi commanded some of the most aggressive overbidding in the city during 2021 and early 2022 — offers that waived inspection, appraisal, and apparently common sense. New construction completions have added supply pressure. Like 80206, the LoHi premium was partly a lifestyle premium. The density of bars and restaurants on the bluff above the Platte has been repriced against the carrying-cost reality of today’s rates. Turns out people will still pay for that lifestyle — just not quite as much when the mortgage payment is $1,200 higher than it would have been in 2021.
Overheated, Not Distressed — Why These Particular ZIP Codes Fell
What gets lost in the coverage of this correction: none of these neighborhoods is in economic distress. No spike in foreclosures, no deteriorating schools, no employment base eroding. The ZIP codes that fell hardest are almost without exception the ones that attracted the greatest speculative premium during 2021 and 2022 — when sub-3 percent mortgage rates, remote-work demand, and a national capital migration into mountain-West cities created conditions with no historical precedent. What goes up on unusual air tends to come down when the air normalizes.
The rate-shock math is simple. A $700,000 home at 7 percent costs roughly $4,200 per month in PITI. A $400,000 home at the same rate costs roughly $2,400. Buyers who could qualify at 2022’s price points cannot qualify at those same prices with today’s rates. The buyers who can qualify demand a price that reflects their actual carrying cost. Luxury and near-luxury ZIP codes face a sharper affordability cliff than starter-home ZIPs precisely because the absolute dollar gap in monthly payment is larger. Simple math, brutal consequences.
The downtown condo market adds another layer. For a buyer financing in 80202 at 7 percent, the combined monthly cost of mortgage plus HOA easily exceeds $2,500 — on a property type that office-vacancy overhang has made less liquid than at any point in recent memory. That carrying-cost structure is genuinely hard to justify right now, and most buyers are doing that math correctly.
These prices are correcting away from a temporary bubble premium, not from permanent demand destruction in the neighborhoods themselves. That distinction matters for anyone deciding whether to buy, sell, or wait. For deeper context on neighborhood-level value trends and what drives them, see our Denver moving and real estate coverage.
Where Prices Have Held or Kept Climbing
Not every part of Denver has softened. Several ZIP codes have shown resilience or outright gains — and the reasons aren’t accidental.
80219 — Westwood and Harvey Park
Denver’s Westwood neighborhood on the southwest side has continued to see modest appreciation. First-time buyer demand, FHA-eligible inventory, and price points that stayed accessible despite the rate shift have kept this market competitive. There was less speculative froth here to give back. The buyer pool is large relative to available inventory, and that imbalance tends to win out over almost everything else.
80239 — Montbello and Green Valley Ranch
Similar dynamics in northeast Denver’s 80239 corridor. FHA loan limits accommodate most transactions in this ZIP comfortably, keeping a wide buyer pool eligible. The people shopping here aren’t lifestyle-upgrade buyers who can sit out a soft market in a Cherry Creek rental — they’re working families eager to stop renting, and that’s a meaningfully different motivation. Proximity to A-Line stations between Union Station and DIA has been a supporting factor as in-person workers prioritize reliable transit.
80221 — Perl-Mack and the Federal Boulevard Corridor
North Denver’s 80221 has seen stable to slightly rising prices, supported by relative affordability and location just inside city limits. Inventory has stayed tight relative to demand, limiting the downward pressure visible elsewhere. Not glamorous. But right now “boring and stable” is outperforming “exciting and overpriced” by a wide margin.
80238 — Central Park (A Special Case)
Central Park warrants its own footnote, because the stability in resale median data here isn’t quite what it appears. Builders in the still-active new construction sections have been offering mortgage rate buydowns and closing cost credits — subsidizing buyer payments in ways that hold transaction prices up without those prices reflecting true open-market conditions. When a buyer gets a 5.5 percent rate because a builder paid points to get them there, the recorded sale price doesn’t reflect what the resale market would support without that subsidy.
I’d be cautious about reading 80238 medians as a clean signal. Buyers and sellers in Central Park should watch builder incentive programs carefully. They’re propping up the comparable sales base right now. When those props eventually come out, the picture will look different.
Factors the Data Alone Won’t Tell You
Denver’s “House Our Neighbors” initiative, passed in 2023, expanded accessory dwelling unit rights and began low-scale residential rezoning across previously single-family-only neighborhoods. The early-stage effect on land values in affected ZIPs has been modest but real — the theoretical ability to add a backyard ADU or convert a large lot has introduced a small premium in some blocks of 80211 and 80205, partially offsetting rate-driven softness. As ADU construction picks up (still limited by permitting timelines and contractor capacity, both genuine bottlenecks), that land-value signal should become clearer.
The new construction pipeline in Central Park and Green Valley Ranch is active competition against resale inventory, not background noise. Builders offering rate buydowns and closing cost credits are drawing buyers who would otherwise consider resale homes. If you’re selling a resale property in those neighborhoods, you’re not just competing against other resale listings. You’re competing against a brand-new home with a subsidized mortgage rate. Price accordingly.
What Local Agents Are Seeing on the Ground
Several DMAR-affiliated firms — Kentwood Real Estate and RE/MAX of Cherry Creek among them — have agents doing enough cross-ZIP volume to give you real transaction-level perspective. The questions worth pressing any agent on: which ZIPs are buyers calling newly affordable versus a year ago? Where are sellers accepting concessions? Is the condo correction in 80202 tracking worse than the single-family correction in 80209? Any agent who gives you a vague answer on those three questions probably isn’t doing enough deals in that ZIP to know. Find one who is.
What This Means If You’re Buying or Selling Right Now
Buyers: The most negotiation-friendly conditions in the city right now are in the downtown condo market and the upper-tier single-family segment in 80206, 80209, and 80211. Days on market have lengthened enough in these ZIP codes that sellers have absorbed some frustration — and frustrated sellers tend to be more realistic. Concessions on closing costs, rate buydowns, and inspection repair requests that would have been laughed out of the room in 2022 are now standard asks.
In starter-home ZIPs — 80219, 80221, and the affordable sections of 80239 — conditions are meaningfully tighter. Well-priced move-in-ready properties can still generate competition. Don’t assume the sluggishness you’ve read about in the luxury market translates to your price point. It largely doesn’t.
One detail that gets missed in the closing rush: the 2025 property tax reassessment will be the first full reset to post-peak pricing. Assessed values on many downtown and high-price ZIP properties will decrease from their 2022-peak-based levels, providing some tax relief to owners who’ve watched carrying costs rise. If you’re buying now, verify whether the current tax bill reflects the old 2022 assessed value or the incoming 2025 figure when you’re modeling monthly costs. The difference can be several hundred dollars a month, and discovering it six months after closing is not a fun conversation.
Denver’s spring market — the highest-velocity selling window, running roughly March through May — is approaching. Sellers who want to capture the seasonal attention spike should be listed and priced correctly before that window opens. Not during it. Before it.
Sellers: If you’re in 80219, 80221, or the affordable range of 80239, you’re in the strongest relative position in the city. Price confidently with market-appropriate comparables and don’t overthink it. If you’re in 80202, 80206, 80209, or 80211, the key calculation is whether your current mortgage and tax carrying costs make it rational to wait for improvement versus accepting current market pricing. A home purchased at the 2022 peak is still carrying a tax bill based on that peak assessed value until the Denver County Assessor’s 2025 reassessment resets it — meaning the cost of waiting is higher than it looks on paper. Run the numbers both ways before deciding to hold.
What We Don’t Know
This piece is a snapshot of a market mid-correction, and I want to be direct about the limits of that.
The most consequential unknown is rates. If 30-year mortgage rates decline meaningfully, the affordability math shifts enough to bring buyers back into the high-value ZIP codes at current price levels — likely stabilizing or modestly reversing declines in 80206, 80209, and 80211. If rates stay elevated through the end of 2025, those ZIP codes have further to fall. There isn’t a buyer pool large enough at current prices and current rates to absorb resale inventory at a pace that prevents further median compression. My read is that the soft ZIP codes don’t bottom until rates move, but that’s a guess dressed in analysis, and you should treat it accordingly.
The downtown condo market faces a structural question that rate movement alone won’t resolve: does Denver’s office occupancy recover enough to regenerate demand for urban residential product, and on what timeline? That’s tied to employer return-to-office decisions that are neither predictable nor settled. If office vacancy persists, it drags on condo demand indefinitely. I don’t know how that resolves. Anyone who tells you confidently that they do is selling something.
The builder incentive programs in Central Park and Green Valley Ranch will be reduced or withdrawn if new home sales slow. When they are, the resale median data in those ZIPs will look worse than it does today, because the incentive-propped comparable sales will no longer be supporting the baseline.
Readers who want to track these numbers between updates should bookmark the DMAR monthly statistical reports at dmar.org. The ZIP-level appendix is published with each monthly release and is the most granular public data available on Denver’s neighborhood-level conditions. The Denver County Assessor’s public portal allows property-level assessed-value lookups and will reflect the 2025 reassessment once finalized. Those two sources, checked monthly, will give you more signal than any single headline number.
The correction is real. It’s concentrated in specific places, for specific reasons that have far more to do with the pricing conditions of 2021–2022 — when Denver metro single-family medians peaked around Q2 2022 in the $600,000 to $650,000 range — than with any fundamental problem in the neighborhoods themselves. It is not happening evenly. Your ZIP code is doing something meaningfully different from your neighbor’s. The difference is large enough to matter in dollars, in negotiating position, and in how long you should expect to wait.
