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American homes are shrinking.

From 2017 to 2025, the size of the median home dropped an average 6% from 1,976 square feet to 1,852 square feet, according to research compiled by Level Frames, an online framing company.

Colorado’s homes are shrinking at the second-fastest rate in the U.S., behind only Hawaii.

Between 2017 and 2025, the median home size in Colorado decreased by 17%, from 2,528 to 2,088 square feet.

Despite this reduction, Colorado homes remain relatively large. With a typical size of 2,088 square feet in 2025, they are still nearly 12% bigger than the national average of 1,852 square feet.

Homes in the Denver-Aurora-Centennial metro area are nearly 26% smaller than in 2017. The average home size has decreased from 2,883 to 2,142 square feet, a loss of approximately 740 square feet —over a quarter of its original size.

Although the overall size of houses is decreasing, the number of homes with four or more bedrooms has increased by 17%. So, while houses are getting smaller, they are being divided into more rooms.

But Colorado homes remain spacious compared to those in Hawaii, where houses are about 20% smaller than they were in 2017
Between 2017 and 2025, the median home size in Hawaii dropped from 1,376 to 1,104 square feet.

Although the overall size of houses is decreasing, the number of homes with four or more bedrooms has increased by 17%. This trend shows that as houses shrink in size, homeowners are creating more rooms.

Here are some key factors influencing the shift in home design:

Rising costs: Smaller homes are becoming popular, with 38% of builders focusing on them to reduce sale prices as land and building material costs continue to climb.

New household needs: Extra rooms are used for home gyms or offices, as more Americans work from home and prioritize functional spaces.

Buyer preferences: Homes with multiple smaller bedrooms appeal to buyers for their versatility and potential resale value. Experts say converting living spaces into bedrooms can yield returns of 80% to 100%.

During the pandemic, many homeowners repurposed their dining rooms into offices, playrooms, or classrooms for their kids. And they kept them that way.

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According to Realtor.com research, only 25% of listed properties feature a dining room, but this may not reflect the actual number, since some realtors choose not to highlight those spaces.

The rise in single homebuyers—over a quarter of households in the U.S. now consist of a single person, a number that has tripled since 1940—also contributes to the decline in formal dining rooms.

Instead, buyers are now more interested in features such as show kitchens with large eat-in islands, mud rooms, and lavish laundry rooms.

The news and editorial staffs of The Denver Post had no role in this post’s preparation.

A small Cherry Creek office building fetched $4.7 million in its first sale since it was constructed two decades ago.

The 55 Adams St. building is 9,500 square feet, according to marketing materials, so the deal works out to about $491 a square foot.

The building on 0.29 acres, which includes a small parking lot, was purchased by OGRE LLC, an entity that lists a Greenwood Village office address corresponding to that of Westside Investment Partners.

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Westside founder Andy Klein declined to comment. The firm is a major real estate player locally. It recently closed its Park Hill Golf Course land swap deal with Denver and has bought numerous office buildings at deep discounts in recent years.

Phillip Lee, a JLL broker who represented the buyer alongside his father David Lee, said the buyer plans to keep the existing building.

The 55 Adams building was sold by Oklahoma City-based MidFirst Bank. It which acquired the property as part of its 2015 acquisition of Denver-based Steele Street Bank & Trust, which erected the building in 2006 after paying $945,000 for the land the previous year, records indicate.

MidFirst didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Jeff Caldwell of Pinnacle Real Estate, who represented the seller in conjunction with Lincoln Property Co.’s Scott Caldwell and Mark Dwyer., said MidFirst used the building minimally over the years, and it was sold empty. The property was originally listed for $5.2 million.

“Cherry Creek continues to be such a dynamic, active and positive market,” Caldwell said.

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A luxury penthouse in Cherry Creek owned by the estate of prominent venture capitalist George A. Wiegers sold this month for $350,000 above its list price.

The penthouse property at Laurel Cherry Creek, listed for $9.8 million on Sept. 15, went under contract after a bidding war on Sept. 18. The sale closed for $10.1 million on Oct. 8.

Wiegers, the founder and CEO of Wiegers Capital Partners and former chairman of Hart Energy, died on Nov. 24.

The penthouse is one of 71 condominiums in Laurel Cherry Creek at 155 Steele St. JNS Architecture + Interior Design, a Denver-based firm, designed the 12-story building, which was constructed in 2017.

Wiegers’ 4,761-square-foot penthouse included three bedrooms, four baths and terraces facing west, north, and east. The chef’s kitchen features professional-grade Wolf appliances, a walk-in pantry with a prep sink, and waterfall stone countertops.

Wiegers purchased the penthouse for $6.7 million in June 2019 using 155 Steele St LLC. Josh Behr with LIV Sotheby’s International Realty represented the seller.

Mckinze Casey with LIV Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyer, Hoops Trust, which lists an address in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The fast sale over list price comes in contrast to September’s statistics from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors, which show buyers continue to favor detached homes. In September, sales of attached homes in the Denver metro area dropped 17% year over year.

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The median days on market rose to 32 days, up 540% from 5 days in 2021. Sales volume of attached homes in the $1 million-plus category was down almost 25% year over year.

Casey attributed the penthouse’s swift sale to its prime location in Cherry Creek.

“This penthouse had everything today’s luxury buyers are looking for–unobstructed, protected views, and life-changing amenities, all within Cherry Creek, where Denver’s best shopping, dining, and lifestyle experiences come together in one elegant neighborhood,” she said.

“Representing the buyer, it was clear from the start that today’s market favors buildings offering true value from a service and lifestyle perspective–and there’s simply no building in Denver that delivers that better than The Laurel.”

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In the tug of war between sellers and buyers, metro Denver’s housing market remains competitive, but sellers are definitely feeling the rope burn their hands and their feet skid as they try and fail to stay firm on price.

Nearly a third of Denver area home sellers, 31.1%, lowered their listing price in September, the highest share of any major metro in the country and nearly double the U.S. average of 16.7%, according to a study earlier this month from Seattle brokerage firm Redfin. The average discount sellers offered was 3.3%.

“Denver is shifting to a buyer’s market for much of the same reason most of the country is — there is now more inventory available as sellers slowly become unlocked. At the same time, demand is declining with affordability still strained and buyers feeling jittery about the economy,” Chen Zhao, who heads up Redfin’s economics team, said in an email.

After Austin, Denver has experienced the second-largest swing toward a buyer’s market over the past year among large metro areas, another Redfin study found. Sellers outnumbered buyers by about 10% a year ago, close to a balanced market. Now that gap is 55.7% with 15,812 sellers active for every 10,158 buyers last month, or two buyers active for every three sellers.

That’s higher than the U.S. ratio of 36.7% in favor of sellers, but Denver hasn’t reached the ranks of the most extreme buyer’s markets yet. In Austin, sellers outnumber buyers by 130%. Fort Lauderdale, north of Miami, is second on the list at 118.5%, followed by West Palm Beach, to the north, at 133%, followed by Miami at 112.2%.

Cities that people left during the pandemic have found a new popularity as the economy weakens, Zhao said. Newark and New Brunswick, N.J.; Nassau County, N.Y.; Montgomery, Pa., and Cleveland currently have the strongest seller markets, per Redfin’s analysis.

Another sign that sellers are losing their grip comes in the rising share of contracts canceled before closing. Finding a willing buyer isn’t enough anymore. About 15% of home purchase contracts nationally were terminated last month. In Denver, that rate was 17.1%, up from 16.3% a year earlier, according to Redfin.

Tampa led the country with one in five contracts canceled. Orlando, Atlanta, and San Antonio and Fort Worth, Texas, also had higher rates of buyers dropping out. Most cancellations, about seven in 10, happen during inspections, when buyers make repair requests of sellers for problems they find, according to Redfin.

“Buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals are confronting a hard reality that has been months in the making, and September made it clear: it is not a great time to sell a home,” said Cooper Thayer, a Denver County Realtor, in comments on the September market provided by Colorado Association of Realtors.

On the flip side, buyers are seeing the most favorable conditions in years, with more options to choose from, more time to review prospects and more room to negotiate terms and price.

“When selling gets tougher, buying gets better, and today’s market gives buyers more leverage and choice, even with higher rates,” Thayer said. “After a long seller-dominated run in Colorado, the shift is healthy and a welcome change for homebuyers.”

One of the most important things sellers need to get right in a buyer’s market is their initial listing price. Despite an abundance of resources to help with that, many sellers put themselves in a predicament from the start.

“It is more important now than it has been in the past couple of years to get it priced right straight out of the gate. Because you can hurt yourself by (a listing) becoming stale,” said Matt Purdy, a Redfin agent active in northern Colorado.

Buyers look at the equation in terms of what the monthly payment is and what they can afford. Sellers look at it in terms of what they paid and what the maximum price they can obtain is.

For most households, a home represents their biggest investment and most important source of wealth. The inclination is to try and obtain top dollar, even if that means ignoring the signs that the market is softening, Purdy said. Some agents will tell a seller what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear in terms of a workable list price.

“Many are thinking about yesterday’s market when they price instead of where the market is headed,” Zhao said. Testing the market by pricing high is becoming a losing and time-wasting strategy.

That mismatch in pricing is resulting in listings spending more days on the market. It now takes 56 days on average, nearly two months, for a listing to sell in metro Denver, compared to 44 days a year ago and only 14 days in September 2021, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors.

Some sellers, especially those who bought recently, are overpricing to avoid taking a loss. Metro Denver home and condo prices have bounced around in a narrow range since 2022, rising only $10,000 to a median price of $585,000, according to Homes.com.

For anyone who purchased after 2022, their home may not have appreciated enough to cover the transaction costs of a sale. In some areas, and with some home types, like condos, sellers may be facing a loss. The temptation to overprice is stronger.

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The Denver area neighborhoods seeing the biggest increase in listings in September include Lower Downtown, the Central Business District, Hampden, Cherry Creek, Candelas and north Broomfield, according to Homes.com, a listing portal.

Another tip from agents to prevent an offer from falling through is that sellers should obtain a pre-inspection that identifies major issues before listing. They should fix any problems identified to avoid surprises and delays, with special attention paid to the roof, plumbing and drainage.

And sellers need to prepare to negotiate concessions like price credits and repairs rather than be offended by them.

Purdy notes that he is seeing more investors start to unload rental properties because of stricter state rules on landlords, higher capital and operating costs and the ability to earn comparable returns in risk-free investments. Those additional listings will provide even more competition for sellers in the months ahead.

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Peter Culshaw is building out what he thinks is the future of the Denver Tech Center in his own backyard.

“We live five miles west of here. I can drive to Cherry Creek, but it’s a half an hour drive, and we don’t really want to go down there and mess with the parking. And the idea is to bring Cherry Creek sizzle to the Tech Center, available for folks living and working here,” Culshaw said.

The executive with Shea Properties leads its Colorado operations out of an office building at 8351 E. Belleview Ave. that was fashioned from a former 24 Hour Fitness.

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Just west of its office, Shea broke ground this summer on a redevelopment of the 13-acre Marina Square retail site. The firm demolished the roughly 45-year-old, 94,000-square-foot shopping center and is building 481 apartments and space for 10 retailers across 32,000 square feet, public records show.

But Shea is also eyeing a major project just east of its office building, at 8401 E. Belleview Ave.

Earlier this month, the company submitted plans to Denver that proposed tearing down the existing U.S. Bank branch on 4 acres. In its place, it called for erecting a 239-unit apartment complex and two retail buildings spanning 7,000 square feet along the street.

Culshaw declined to discuss the plans for the US Bank site, which the bank owns. He also declined to discuss the future retail tenants at Marina Square, although he said he hopes they’ll be open by this time next year. The apartment component of the project will take longer to complete, he added.

US Bank, which has 56 branches in the metro, also declined to comment, but Marina Square plans show space for a new retail bank branch – likely for the Minneapolis-based bank.

“What I can tell you … what we’re doing is going to be really high image, high-end stuff,” he said, adding the Marina Square redevelopment will cost north of $200 million.

A few future Marina Square tenants have been disclosed. Salad chain Sweetgreen, which has four Colorado locations, plans to open, according to a listing brochure for the project from local brokerage David, Hicks & Lampert. Solidcore, a fitness studio with three Denver locations, has also committed.

Both have existing spots in other prominent Denver neighborhoods: LoHi, RiNo, Berkeley and of course, Cherry Creek.

Shea bought the Marina Square property for $16.8 million in 2003, according to public records.

“There was kind of a big name retailer called Montaldo’s, which was a very high-end ladies clothing store. There was Marina Landing, which was a hip restaurant,” Culshaw said.

“And then over time, the tenants went away and different things. COVID hit and all of them went out of business so we decided to demolish, and that’s kind of when we started really focusing on the brainchild for the current development.”

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Landlords anxious to fill their empty apartments have sweetened incentives to levels unmatched in the past 15 years, with some newer buildings offering up to three months of free rent, according to the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.

The average concession is more in the three-to-four-week range, and free rent deals are being offered on properties of all age ranges, except for the most popular buildings in the most popular locations. Concessions are pushing down “effective” rents to the point that older properties with fewer amenities are having a hard time keeping their tenants from upgrading.

“This is impacting the entire market. You’re seeing basically what I would call a move-up effect, or a ladder effect, where the newer properties are offering significant concessions and that’s bringing their effective rents down,” said Scott Rathbun, president of Apartment Insights, which prepares a quarterly report for the AAMD.

Rathbun said tenants are leaving older apartments to occupy shiny new units and paying similar or only slightly higher rents. With about half of the apartments turning over in a given year, tenants are finding it worthwhile to shop the offers.

Apartment owners are hesitant to drop actual rents and view incentives as a way to attract tenants while they wait for an oversupplied market to turn around. Those offers can be fine-tuned or taken off the table when it comes time to renew a lease.

But so much new supply has hit the market that stated rents have moved lower in three of the past four quarters, with the average rent down 5% over the past year to $1,816 a month. Rents are now at their lowest levels since the first quarter of 2022, according to the AAMD’s Vacancy & Rent Report released Tuesday.

Beyond that, concessions now represent 5.8% of the stated rate, the highest level seen since 2010, when a severe housing downturn was weighing on the market. Rental concessions averaged $107 in the third quarter, bringing the average effective rent to $1,709 a month.

Compared to two years ago, when the effective rent was $1,874, a typical renter is saving $165 less per month or nearly $2,000 a year.

One-bedroom units, looking at effective rents, are now competitive with affordable rents targeting tenants making 60% of the area median income (AMI), not counting the additional break on utilities that affordable developments provide, Rathbun said. Two-bedroom effective rents are averaging at around 65% to 67% of AMI.

But the more generous incentives could prove a limited-time offer. The apartment vacancy rate fell from 6.4% in the second quarter to 6.3% in the third and is down from what, barring a recession, may end up being a peak of 6.9% reached in the fourth quarter of 2024.

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Last year, developers added 20,000 new apartments in metro Denver, about double the average pace seen in recent years. Just under 15,000 have been added in the past 12 months. But higher borrowing costs, lower returns and heavier regulations have significantly shrunk the pipeline of projects.

“The number of new apartments under construction continues to decrease from its peak in mid-2023,” Rathbun said. “This should lead to fewer units available in the coming quarters and continue this downward trajectory in vacancies.”

Boulder and Broomfield, which are combined in the report, continue to claim the lowest vacancy rate at 5.1%, while Arapahoe County has the highest at 7.0%. The biggest rent declines are coming in properties built in the 2020s and in the 1970s.

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The Denver Post has not paid more than $2 million in rent to the city as the newspaper attempts to buy out its long-term lease of the 11-story building it once called home.

That figure includes three $650,000-a-month rent payments that have not been paid since August, plus tens of thousands of dollars in late fees, according to city documents.

While the mostly vacant building still bears The Post’s name, the newspaper hasn’t operated out of the space at 101 W. Colfax Ave. in seven years. The last of parent company MediaNews Group’s employees moved to offices at the paper’s Adams County printing facility in 2020.

The city of Denver bought the building in 2024 and assumed The Post’s lease.

DP Media Network LLC, the newspaper’s legal name, has offered to buy out its lease with the city and hopes to reach a mutually beneficial arrangement, the company said in a statement.

“We stopped occupying this space while the building was under private ownership long before the city purchased it, so there was never any impression we would be using the space when the city made the decision to purchase the building,” said Marshall Anstandig, general counsel for The Post’s parent company, MediaNews Group.

The lapse in rent payments, first reported by CBS Colorado, comes as Denver battles a budget crisis that has led to layoffs, a hiring freeze and service cuts. The crisis is due to an estimated revenue shortfall of $200 million in 2026.

In an emailed statement, a spokesman for Mayor Mike Johnston said the city is working with The Post to resolve the issue, and added that officials “intend to recover every penny.”

“Denver pays its debts on time and DP Media Network should do the same,” spokesman Jon Ewing said.

Laura Swartz, a spokeswoman for Denver’s finance department, said the city pursued the property specifically because of the lease lasting through 2029, which made the deal financially feasible. A majority of the City Council approved the deal with that understanding as well.

Councilwoman Flor Alvidrez was one of four members to vote against the deal.

“I didn’t vote for this purchase because I knew Denver couldn’t afford it without guaranteed income,” she said. “Now that DP Media has stopped paying rent, our residents are left carrying the burden.”

The roughly 306,000-square-foot building opened in 2006 as the base of operations for both The Post and the Rocky Mountain News, which closed in 2009 — though neither newspaper ever owned it.

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The Post, whose parent company MediaNews Group is owned by Alden Global Capital, moved its operations out of the downtown building in a cost-saving move between 2016 and 2018. The remaining corporate employees moved out in early 2020.

In 2024, the City Council approved the city’s purchase of the building from owner American Properties for $88.5 million, with plans to convert it into a courthouse.

The Post has about four years remaining on the master lease of the building, and also subleases space to other entities — including the city of Denver.

Today, as downtown Denver’s office towers and commercial spaces still struggle to recover from the pandemic, the building is largely empty. The city vacated several floors it had subleased from The Post when that agreement ended in February, according to the newspaper. It still subleases other parts of the building, as does Enova International.

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