If you're a glass-is-half-full kind of homeowner, this news is for you: Despite a housing market that's still clearly struggling (sales of existing homes in Denver dropped by 28 percent in October compared with one year earlier), the average home sale price is up. A home in the Denver area now sells for an average of more than $261,750—an increase of 9.6 percent from this time last year, according to Metrolist Inc. data cited by the Denver Business Journal [2].

If you're still worried about finding good deals in this market, look no further than the UFO-shaped structure lurking over I-70 in Genesee, just west of Denver--the house from the 1973 Woody Allen film, Sleeper. The home was sold at a foreclosure auction because its then-owner, Denver-area businessman Michael Dunahay, had yet to pay some $2.7 million on it. He wanted to keep the house and hoped to outbid the lender. But the 7,000-square-foot abode has now been snapped up by Trans Western Realty for a cool $1.53 million, notes CBS4 [3]. Several years ago, software mogul John Huggins, who owned the house, put it on the market for $10 million [4]. But it didn't sell until Dunahay showed up with a promise to pay $3.43 million for it. Talk about depreciation.