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DENVER – The weather is starting to get warmer and so is metro Denver’s already-hot real estate market.

The latest numbers from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors show that the median home price – for both single-family detached homes and condos – in metro Denver continued to rise in March, reaching a new high of $407,000. That’s $7,000 more than February’s median price and it represents an increase of more than 9 percent since the same time in 2017.

Denver’s continuing problem of low housing inventory is still an issue but things did improve slightly last month. The metro area saw a total of 4,619 active listings, which is 13 percent higher than the month before but 6 percent lower than March of last year. The average for this time of year is more than 15,000 homes for sale.

Some real estate experts had predicted Denver’s real estate market would cool off a little bit this year, but so far that doesn’t appear to be happening.

“The anticipated cooling effect of unaffordability has yet to materialize in the figures,” said Steve Danyliw, a Denver-area Realtor and chairman of DMAR’s Market Trends Committee. “All in all, there are good numbers across the board with the same story line of low inventory and prices moving higher.”

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Rising inventory and prices are not unusual this time of year – spring is usually when the real estate market picks up. That can be good news for buyers and sellers alike – but especially buyers, who will have a slightly easier time house hunting as more homes enter the market.

“Seasonally, March signals the start of the spring selling season bringing increased buyer and seller activity,” Danyliw said. “Homebuyers will see more properties available for sale, while home sellers will see increased competition from other sellers.”

Overall, sales are down for the year so far. Slightly more than 10,500 homes have sold in metro Denver in 2018 and that number is about 6 percent lower than this time last year.

Denver’s luxury home market continues to thrive, however. More than 160 homes sold for $1 million or more in March, which is about 43 percent higher than in February and almost 21 percent higher than March 2017. As prices continue to rise, year-to-date luxury home sales have tripled in the past four years, according to DMAR.

The most expensive home that sold in the greater Denver area last month was a three-bedroom condo in Boulder that sold for $5,500,000.