Where Are the Buyers?

National headlines are reporting that the ratio of sellers to buyers has hit an all-time high. More inventory than ever, fewer offers, longer days on market. What does that actually look like in Colorado Springs?

We can't count buyers directly - they don't register anywhere until they make an offer. But we can measure buyer activity against seller supply using three metrics we track daily.

Absorption Rate: The Demand Signal

The simplest measure of buyer-to-seller dynamics: what percentage of available listings sell each month? When absorption is above 50%, buyers outnumber sellers. Below 25%, sellers are competing for a shrinking pool of qualified buyers.

Read this chart and you can see the full arc of the last decade:

• 2016-2019: Absorption hovering around 40-60%. A healthy seller-lean market. Roughly half the listings sold each month.
• 2020-2021: Absorption spikes above 100%. More homes sold each month than were available - meaning listings went under contract within days. Bidding wars, waived inspections, the whole experience.
• 2022 rate shock: Absorption crashes from 86% in April to 33% by October. Six months to flip a market.
• 2023-present: Absorption ranges from 17% to 32%. The lowest sustained readings in our dataset.

The October 2025 reading of 17.0% - one in six listings selling per month - was the lowest we've recorded, with 5,535 active listings on the market. The national headline about sellers outnumbering buyers? That's real here.

The Real-Time Snapshot

Absorption rate uses last month's closings. For a more current read, we can look at what's happening right now in the pipeline:

The Pending Ratio of 31.8% means roughly one in three listings already has a buyer. For context, during the 2021 frenzy this was likely above 50%. In a truly dead market it would be under 15%.

So where does that leave us? The buyers are here - 1,861 of them with signed contracts right now, plus 1,151 who closed in the last 30 days. That's over 3,000 successful buyer transactions against 3,987 active listings. Not a ghost town.

But look at the Demand Ratio: 0.76. For every listing on the market, only 0.76 buyers are actively transacting. Below 1.0 means sellers are competing for buyers, not the other way around. During 2021, this ratio was well above 1.0.

What Changed

This isn't a mystery. We've covered it in detail in our M2 transmission analysis - the buyer pool is constrained by affordability.

Two things jump out from this chart:

1. The supply surge. Active listings went from 1,396 in January 2021 to 5,826 in July 2025. More than 4x. Sellers showed up - they just showed up into a market where buyers couldn't afford to match them.
2. Sales volume is stable but capped. Monthly closings have held in the 700-1,300 range since 2023. Buyers exist and are transacting, but at a rate limited by qualification ceilings. Payment-to-income is running 40-45% - near the DTI wall.

The gap between the red bars (supply) and the green bars (demand) is the visual answer to "where are the buyers?" They're there. There just aren't enough of them at current prices and rates to absorb the inventory.

What Does a Healthy Balance Look Like?

There's no universal standard, but here's how the metrics read across market conditions based on our local data:

Right now we're sitting at 29% absorption, 31.8% pending ratio, 3.5 MoS. That's balanced territory - the lower end of it. Sellers aren't being crushed, but they're not in the driver's seat either. Proper pricing and preparation are the difference between the listings that sell and the ones that expire.

The Practical Takeaway

The buyers are real - 3,000+ transactions in the last 30 days between closings and pending contracts. But they are selective and rate-constrained. They can be. With 3,987 active listings, they have options they haven't had since 2018.

For sellers, this means the listing has to earn the buyer. Price it right, present it well, and 31.8% of listings are finding a match. Overprice it and you're competing with 3,900 other options for a finite pool of qualified buyers.

For buyers, it means negotiating leverage exists that hasn't existed in years. CPOLP is running 97.9% - meaning the average closed sale is 2% below original list price. Seller concessions are common. The market is workable if the monthly payment fits.

That last part is the key constraint. Affordability - not demand - is the bottleneck. The buyers are here. They just need the math to work.

Data: elevateMLS active, pending, under contract, and closed transactions. Absorption rate = monthly closings / active listings. Pending ratio = (pending + under contract) / (pending + under contract + active). Updated daily.