“We thought it was pretty incredible,” Ben says. “Until we started looking around to see if there was anything else we could move into.”

They wanted something with a bigger yard, but they got outbid or lost to cash offers on every potential place. Learning the lessons of the last housing crisis, Marjie says they’re trying to live within their means and not buy a home they can’t afford.

“And the market is telling us if you want to compete, you have to like shed some of that,” says Marjie. “And we’re not willing to do that.”

Marjie admits they’re lucky as they’ve built a mountain of equity, but still, they are stuck in this starter home.

“Yeah, we work hard for what we have and what we want and what we want our life to be, and it’s just a dream that we can’t attain,” she says.

Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, says potential sellers are afraid of selling, and not being able to find another house at all.

“If they sell their home, can they buy the next home, how competitive is it?” Yun says. “They will do well as a home seller, but they are very concerned as a buyer, and hence they’re staying in their home for a longer period.”

The urge to stand pat on your current house and remodel is bigger than that though. Bill McBride, a housing economist who writes the blog Calculated Risk, says many people just don’t care to move.

“You’re around your friends and all the things you know, it just makes sense,” McBride says. “For those homes to come on the market, we still have a long time to wait.”

Denver has a record low number of homes for sale, adjusted for population growth. It’s a combination of factors: there’s a lack of new home construction. Investor landlords are unwilling to give up on big rental income, so they’re not putting homes for sale. Add on top of that homeowners like Marjie and Ben Vic who are staying put.

The lack of normal supply is also driving values up, pricing many buyers out of the market. Single family home sales prices average $526,150 in the Denver area so far in 2018, up more than 10 percent, according to data from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.

McBride says that’s bad news for families shut out of the housing market, but it’s not a problem on the scale of the housing recession of a decade ago.

“This one is much less obvious, somebody stuck renting, it’s not the end of the world for them,” McBride says. “It’s not a family tragedy. But long term there could be an impact from that.”

Especially in lost wealth from housing appreciation.

The dream is increasingly unobtainable for many Coloradans shut out of the housing market altogether. The homeownership rate in the Denver area has fallen dramatically since the recession. Just more than half of families now own.