It's Not the Amount of Homes — It's the Velocity of Sales

You've heard it from agents, from headlines, from your neighbor who just listed: "There just aren't enough homes for sale."

It sounds logical. It feels right. And in 2020–2021, it was absolutely true — the Pikes Peak region hit historic lows in available inventory. But today? The data tells a completely different story.

We analyzed 30 years of MLS data — every month from 1996 through early 2026 — and the numbers are unambiguous: inventory is back to normal. The problem is that homes aren't selling.

The Inventory Is Fine

Let's start with the headline number. The 30-year average for active listings in the Pikes Peak MLS is 3,989. As of early 2025, we're sitting at roughly 5,000 active listings — that's 25% above the three-decade average.

The "not enough homes" narrative was born in 2020–2021 when active listings cratered to 1,736 — less than half of normal. That was a genuine supply crisis driven by COVID relocation demand, record-low rates, and homeowners refusing to sell into uncertainty. But inventory has been climbing steadily for four straight years and is now above where it was for most of the 2000s.

What Actually Collapsed: Sales Velocity

Here's the chart they don't show you. While inventory has recovered to normal, monthly sales have not:

Monthly sales peaked at 1,736 in 2021 — one sale for every active listing, every single month. That was unsustainable madness. But the correction has been severe: sales have dropped to roughly 1,100/month, a level we haven't seen since the 2008–2010 crash when the median home was $185K, not $467K.

Think about that: we're selling homes at crash-era velocity, but at more than double the price.

Velocity: The Metric That Matters

The most revealing metric isn't active listings or monthly sales in isolation — it's sales velocity: the percentage of active inventory that sells each month. It captures both supply and demand in a single number.

In a healthy market (1996–2005), about 22% of active inventory sold each month. During the frenzy, that number hit an absurd 100% in 2021 — literally every listed home was being absorbed. Today we're at 22%, which looks normal... until you realize that inventory is above average while sales are well below. The math works out to "normal velocity" only because both halves are broken in opposite directions.

Months of Supply: The Full Picture

Months of Supply (active listings divided by monthly sales) is the standard way to classify a market. Here's what 30 years looks like:

The current 4.5 months of supply is right at the 30-year median of 4.4 — textbook balanced. But "balanced" can mean two very different things:

• Healthy balanced (like 2004–2005): 4,100 active listings, 1,000+ sales/month. Homes are available AND they're selling briskly.
• Stagnant balanced (like now): 5,000 active listings, ~1,100 sales/month. More homes are available but far fewer people are buying. Properties sit longer, price reductions pile up, and the market feels stuck — even though the MoS number looks fine.

Same months of supply. Completely different market experience.

Why Sales Velocity Collapsed

The culprit isn't mysterious. It's math:

Mortgage rates nearly doubled from 3% to 6.7%. Meanwhile, the median home price jumped from $314K (2019) to $467K (2025). The combined effect: monthly payments roughly doubled for the same home. That's not a supply problem — it's a demand problem. Buyers who could comfortably afford a home in 2019 are now priced out or choosing to wait.

The proof is in the data: inventory is above normal, but sales are running 28% below the 2015–2019 average. If the problem were supply, you'd see the opposite — low inventory and strong sales.

What the "Not Enough Homes" Narrative Gets Wrong

Agents who repeat the "shortage" line aren't necessarily wrong about their experience. Fewer sales means fewer commissions, fewer signs in yards, fewer comps to pull. The market feels scarce when you're struggling to close deals. But the scarcity isn't in listings — it's in willing and able buyers.

The narrative also creates bad outcomes:

• Sellers overprice because they think scarcity protects them. It doesn't when 67% of buyers are demanding concessions and average DOM is 55 days.
• Buyers panic and rush decisions, not realizing they have more leverage than any time since 2014.
• Policy conversations focus on building more homes when the bottleneck is actually affordability and rate-locked existing homeowners.

What This Means Right Now

For sellers:

• You are not in a supply-constrained market. You're competing with 5,000 other listings for a limited pool of buyers.
• Price reductions, concessions, and longer days on market are the norm — plan for them, don't be surprised by them.
• The strongest pricing strategy today is realistic from day one. Overpricing in a velocity-challenged market is the fastest path to sitting.

For buyers:

• You have more selection and more negotiating power than at any point in the last decade.
• Two-thirds of sellers are offering concessions averaging $11,000+. Use them for rate buydowns.
• Don't let urgency rhetoric pressure you into a bad deal. The data says patience pays.

For agents:

• Stop telling clients there aren't enough homes. The data doesn't support it and it undermines your credibility with anyone who checks.
• The honest conversation: "There are plenty of homes available, but fewer buyers can afford them right now. Here's how we position yours to sell anyway."
• Focus on pricing strategy and concession planning, not artificial scarcity narratives.

Methodology: 30 years of monthly data from the Pikes Peak Association of REALTORS MLS (January 1996 through December 2025). Active listings = CountActive, monthly sales = closed transactions. Months of Supply = Active / Sales. Velocity = Sales / Active × 100. All figures are monthly averages when expressed annually.