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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nextrade! who wrote (6775)	11/13/2002 8:53:09 PM
From: nextrade!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Apartments getting cheaper, easier to find By John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News November 13, 2002 rockymountainnews.com The average monthly rent for an apartment in Colorado outside of the Denver area fell from $781 to $767, the first drop since 1995, according to a statewide report released Tuesday. And the average vacancy rate rose to 8.3 percent in September, from 7.3 percent in February, when the last statewide survey was conducted. In the metro area, the average apartment vacancy rate was 9.4 percent in the third quarter, up from 9.3 percent in the second quarter, and the average third-quarter rental rate was $807.71, down from $810.35 in the second quarter. Both the Denver-area and statewide reports are prepared by Gordon Von Stroh, a professor at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. Some of the biggest changes in the state occurred in Aspen and Glenwood Springs. In Aspen, the September vacancy rate rose to a record 9.7 percent, more than double the record of 4.4 percent in September 2001. In Glenwood Springs, the vacancy rate rose to 10.1 percent from 1.5 percent a year earlier. "There has been some new affordable housing construction in Aspen and down valley," said Tom Hart, director of the state Division of Housing, which sponsored the report. "But I think a lot of it is tourism. That whole Roaring Fork Valley depends on tourism, and tourism and employment have been down," Hart said. "Glenwood Springs is just phenomenal. We've never seen vacancies that high there before." Von Stroh noted that it is always difficult to draw conclusions about the statewide market, which includes ski resorts such as Vail and Aspen, as well as areas such as Pueblo, Greeley and Alamosa. "But you can see the overall slowing of the economy being reflected in the apartment market in most parts of the state," Von Stroh said. "Even places with very low vacancy rates, such as Eagle Country, Montrose, Durango and Pueblo, they don't have the pent-up demand they had, say, two years ago," Von Stroh said. "If an apartment unit becomes available in Eagle County, for example, it will be filled, but you won't have 10 people standing in line to rent it," he said. Hart said he sees an overall slowing of the apartment market, which for most of the last decade was only becoming more expensive and tighter.