DENVER – Anyone who’s tried to buy a home in Denver recently knows just how competitive of a process that can be.
A new report from LendingTree says only the California Bay Area beats Denver in terms of competition among homebuyers.
While a major factor in Denver’s fiercely competitive market is its lack of homes for sale – the city hit a new record low number of active listings in December – LendingTree’s analysis looked more closely at attributes of homebuyers themselves.
Three things that make a homebuyer more competitive, according to LendingTree, are obtaining a loan before shopping for a home, putting a lot of money down and having a high credit score.
Denver came in first among U.S. cities in terms of pre-purchase loan shopping, with a whopping 65 percent of homebuyers obtaining a mortgage ahead of time. The average down payment in Denver is 16 percent and 56 percent of homebuyers have credit scores above 680, according to LendingTree.
MORE: Real estate bidding wars: These Denver homes sold for the most over asking price in 2017
Denver is the only city in the top five that is not in California and in fact, all of the top 10 most competitive markets are in the West (and Hawaii).
Here’s LendingTree’s top 10:
1. San Francisco, CA
2. San Jose, CA
3. Denver, CO
4. San Diego, CA
5. Ventura, CA
6. Los Angeles, CA
7. Seattle, WA
8. Honolulu, HI
9. Portland, OR
10. Sacramento, CA
Colorado Springs also made the list of most competitive markets, coming in at number 29.
In terms of lowest competition, you’ll want to head east. Youngstown, Ohio; McAllen, Texas and Scranton, Pennsylvania are the three cities where you’ll have the easiest time buying a home.
To read the full report, log on to lendingtree.com.
