Metro Denver home and condo sales fell sharply in January and properties as a group traded hands for prices slightly below those received a year earlier, according to an update Friday from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.

Buyers closed on 2,041 homes and condos last month, a drop off from the 2,884 sold in December and the 3,072 sold in January 2021. The last time metro Denver saw such a weak start to a year was in 2012 when 2,193 homes and condos were sold.

January’s sales volume, a measure of the number of homes sold times price, was down 31.7% this year, the weakest showing since January 2016, which will put pressure on the commissions that agents and brokerages can earn.

But pending sales, a measure of future demand, rose sharply last month. Mortgage rates stabilized enough to bring buyers back into the market and generate more competitive bidding situations, said Libby Levinson-Katz, head of the DMAR Market Trends Committee which put together the report.

“While homes are not flying off the market within a weekend, buyers are still in the market. They have wrapped their heads around higher interest rates, have factored in rate buydowns into their purchase costs and are simply taking their time to find the right home,” Levinson-Katz said in comments accompanying the report.

The median price of a single-family home sold in metro Denver last month was $595,000, which is down 0.83% from December and 0.68% from a year ago. The median price of a condo sold was $397,000 down 2.9% from December and 0.75% from a year earlier. Essentially, the median sold price for both condos and single-family homes is back to where it was a year ago.

Sellers put 2,858 new listings on the market last month, which is 62.2% more than they did in December, but 18% fewer than they did a year earlier. The pace of new listings is also way under the 4,231 at the start of 2021 and the more than 4,800 listings landing in January 2020 and 2019. A slower market has not put sellers in a panic mode.

There were 4,120 listings available for sale at the end of January, down 13.4% from December. That’s larger than the 2.86% drop normally seen between the two months. Over the year, the inventory of properties available for sale is up an eye-popping 248%, but that gain comes off record-low levels.

January 2022 ended with only 1,477 properties available for sale. The historical average for January, in records going back to 1985, is 12,429 listings. Last month’s inventory was a third of that historical average, so the market is still tight.

But listings are definitely taking longer to sell. Single-family homes took 49 days on average to find a buyer, and condos and townhomes took 38 days to get under contract. That contrasts with 19 days and 22 days in January 2022 and under a week during the peak spring selling season.

Still, homes in January were floating on the market for just a little bit longer than they were in January 2019 and 2018. The rapid turnover in homes during the pandemic just makes the longer times now needed to achieve a sale seem extreme.