Is the Fort Collins Market Taking Off? | March 2026 Real Estate Update

Auto-generated from the episode audio — may contain minor errors.

Are you guys ready to move your clocks forward? It is spring forward this weekend and I am not ready for it. I just absolutely love kind of having that longer days and I absolutely just hate waking up to the dark skies. It's not fun when the sun comes up around 7 a.m. so I guess we got to reset it, get the sun coming up a little bit later but we'll be to summer soon enough but the real estate market feels like it's heating up already. Now there's a lot going on in the world so I'm not going to dive into any of those specifics but I will say you know what I focus on is local. Local government, local impacts such as interest rates. Interest rates yes they are across the nation they do impact us directly and it does feel that way. We've stayed consistently under six percent really for the last month or so you know kind of fluctuating between 5.75 and 6.25 percent on any given day and that is having an immediate impact on the real estate market. Before I jump into the the statistics for each market specifically we're going to be looking at four markets the four largest markets in northern Colorado. Fort Collins, Loveland, Greeley and Windsor. We're not looking at Johnstown, Wellington, Timnath, Berthoud, Severance, all of these great little communities. Windsor has a population of over 40,000 people so that is the lowest population as far as those other three are concerned, all four are concerned but I want to show you how graphically represented by notebook LM. Here's what I wanted to show you guys, just a graphic representation of how interest rates impact demand. So this is closed sales versus interest rates for all four communities essentially early 2021 when interest rates were below three percent steadily below three percent demand was just on fire there was a lot of properties getting closed and then interest rates started to peak up and you know early 2022 I was actually just I reached out to a client I said hey man you know we maybe should think about refinancing and he said well where they're at I said well you're between 5.5 and 5.75 and he had closed in April of 2022 and I actually closed an investment property in March of 2022 and it's funny he he closed at 4.1 on an owner occupied property in April versus my March closing at 4.75 so he you know definitely has a great interest rate we're not looking at refinancing I was talking with a lender recently and the common thought was every half a point it's seriously worth refinancing but I think the reality is in this world in this day and age with where interest rates are with where prices are it gets a little bit closer to three quarters of a point is when it starts to make sense financially to refinance and then you have to do kind of like you know I have to do a break-even analysis of when do you when does it break even on your savings versus the cost of the refinance now you can roll a lot of those costs in to the the value of the home because a lot of those values have increased but then of course less equity in the property you got to stay in it longer paying more interest so there's a lot of things to consider but this is a great graphical representation of how interest rates you know inversely impact closed sales and demand and we're kind of getting to a little bit of a convergence here at about six percent with where our closed sales will be so maybe if we get down to that five percent which is where personally and a lot of investors real estate professionals believe five percent is a healthy long-term interest rate we'll get to a more normalized closed sales as well but anyways I thought that was just really great graphical representation thanks to some chat notebook LM excuse me you know to put this together so gave them a whole bunch of data about closed sales and interest rates and they put this together for me so I thought that was really great but we'll get into some true data because I played on notebook LM today for the entire day and it's great it's got a lot of cool things that it does it definitely hallucinates just like chatgpt does so you got to verify a lot of the data and I probably made like 20 infographs and I just decided that I couldn't use 19 of them I thought that one was close enough good enough to use and it really just depicts close enough the interest rate versus closed sales demand correlation but let's jump into the MLS data so this is all accurate data looking at median sales price on a residential detached for our four communities four columns up two point six percent to five hundred ninety thousand this is this is on a monthly basis this is not a rolling 12-month basis if you look at a rolling 12-month it's going to pop up quite a bit 625 for Collins 610 for Windsor and 443 5 5 533 000 a lot a lot more normalized rates for the last and let's get out here to the max so you guys can kind of see and this again you can see where interest rates were dropped down we had some crazy increases for these years and then for the last four years almost four years we've seen prices remain relatively flat I wrote a blog post that talked about I didn't I wasn't planning on bringing this up I'm going to see if I can bring it up real quick they talked about incomes versus median sales price and I think this is really worth looking at no I didn't have any graphs on here I think that would have been a great well it was interesting so the median income in Fort Collins in 2016 for a house of four according to HUD was seventy eight thousand two hundred dollars well fast forward to the most recent data and it's now one hundred and twenty seven thousand six hundred that is a five point seven percent annual increase for income now if you look at the the median sales price of homes between that same time period you're going to look at let's see here where to go there we go there we go median sales price in was there we go gosh hang on sorry the median sales price in 2016 was three hundred forty five thousand dollars comparatively to five hundred and fifty nine thousand dollars now this takes into consideration both attached and detached homes but when you go when you annualize that when you look at that over its time period that's actually a five point five percent per year growth which is actually where we've been at historically since the 1970s so our income has actually stayed consistent with price growth since 2016 in Fort Collins those two years have really increased significantly 2020 through 2022 but it's flatlined for the last four years while incomes have actually increased pretty dramatically I thought that was really interesting if you guys are interested and want that blog post I can send it your way but let's look at other information new listings how are sellers feeling about the market and we are going to get it on a monthly basis how are sellers feeling about the market well you know in Greeley and Loveland it feels like they're they're putting new homes on the market like crazy whereas in Fort Collins they are actually you know a little bit more reluctant to put things on the market there is still this feeling of golden handcuffs that same client that I talked with who had the four point one percent interest rate would seriously love to move it's just very difficult for him to and they don't have to they have a wonderful house it's a it's a size that they can fit forever they just don't like the location as much and potentially the amount of upgrades they would have to do but there's really just this golden handcuff feel of being in a four point one percent interest rate comparatively to a you know five point seven five percent interest rate and he bought in April 2022 so prices are about the same but interest rates he'll have an extra two percent so his mortgage payment would increase nearly not 50 percent but pretty dramatically so let's see you're under contract though here's demand okay Windsor actually was really interesting as far as demand goes down twenty point seven percent but Loveland demand is strong really strong for Collins kind of similar to last year's but suggesting over the last 30 days when people have gone under contract the interest rates have been at a point where they're like hey listen we want to lock it in and I'm going to get to the end of this market update and talk to you guys about kind of what we're seeing as far as boots on the ground in the market you know we are looking at potential mean multiple offers buyers who are anyways we'll get there here shortly so stick around till the end and we will talk to you guys kind of the anecdotal boots on the ground data and how to prepare as if you're a buyer or a seller closed sales again for Collins and Greeley and Loveland showing strong demand in the area Windsor showing a little bit less now what's interesting though is Windsor prices are holding strong a little bit stronger they're actually very comparable to Fort Collins a little bit of a discount on the price per square foot and I think if people are looking like hey if I can buy a six hundred twenty thousand dollar house in Fort Collins versus Windsor would I rather be in Fort Collins or Windsor and I think people are saying I'd rather be in Fort Collins at the same price point now if I need a house that's five thousand six thousand square feet and maybe a little bit more value bang for the buck that's where you kind of start to lean towards Windsor very Pro Windsor love Windsor but it's at a similar price point now that is to Fort Collins days on market it was interesting to look at Fort Collins so Fort Collins if you look in January 84 days they dropped all the way to 51 days in February and Windsor actually just went from 87 days to 80 days so still homes are sitting on the market there's a lot of opportunity for negotiations right now but we will get to that kind of analysis here shortly as well Greeley down five point three percent Loveland though for whatever reason up forty four percent versus last February and I was I don't have anything to advise on why that is Loveland stronger this year versus last year except for I continue to say it Loveland is starting to punch above its weight on the community of Loveland lots of cool things going on bass pro shops are getting built there the ranch complex 110 million dollar development going on there Sentara south dirt is moving at Sentara south the northwest side Rihanna Ridge all of downtown Loveland it just seems like a lot of attentionality and development is occurring in Loveland that's the only thing that I could guess as far as that goes I'm just not sure you know but that would actually decrease demand and right now that's saying Loveland prices or homes are sitting on a little bit longer than they were last year so I just don't have a good reason for that month's supply nothing here really too much Fort Collins drop though I think that's probably the most significant back to one point five months of supply the absorption rate homes are coming onto the market buyers are ready we are working with a significant amount of buyers and sellers honestly at this point but a lot of buyers who are just ready they've gotten pre-approved they are ready to hit the ground running they are patiently waiting for the right home and the right price opportunity I will say there have been people that have been waiting two three plus years that have been here in the market that are like hey I am now ready to make a move but I'm not going to jump the gun I'm not going to throw away the two years that I've waited just to jump into something that doesn't work for us so makes a lot of sense but inventory is down right now still pretty strongly in favor of sellers in Fort Collins Windsor probably the closest as far as a balanced market goes a lot of opportunity for buyers there Greeley and Loveland still more a little bit more favorable towards sellers but still homes are sitting and then price per square foot this is kind of where I wanted to talk to you about like Windsor so Windsor has the same median sales price before as far as Fort Collins go but the price per square foot is 30 less so 100 you know a thousand square foot house 30 bucks you know you're looking at a $30,000 difference in price right there so pretty significant for the exact same house about five percent discount if you looked at that at a $600,000 price point most affordable though of course is still Greeley Loveland at 206 we were just having a buyer consultation the individuals wanted to be under 500,000 price or you know the square footage they want to be is about 1,500 to 2,000 square feet this tells us that yes that can in fact happen and you can find a house that's you know 2,000 square feet about $200 a square foot might need some love might need some work but it is there it is an opportunity for you if that is what you're looking for all righty I'm gonna leave uh let's go side by side I'm gonna leave it up and if anybody wants I mean not that you gotta sneeze to see my face maybe I'll go no don't like that I'll go this there we go um all right so what are our teams seeing on the ground well I will say uh definitely geographic specific so Windsor's a little bit slower right now so you have an opportunity to go in there look at homes that have been sitting on the market for 40 50 60 80 100 plus days and get aggressive on your pricing negotiations homes in Fort Collins we're seeing homes come on the market and get multiple offers open houses this last weekend had a couple had 28 guests through the open house um we had a property that was not in Fort Collins kind of Louisville area and it came on the market at a million dollars we offered five percent more than it we were financed and we were in second position I believe they ended up with five offers and they ended up going with the cash offer so you know we are seeing multiple offers and some agents fortunately or unfortunately I'm not sure what the you know it was a crazy time between 2020 and 2022 I mean I was averaging four offers per client when it came to multiple offers my highest was nine offers for one client um you know a lot of clients would also get on their first offer there are so many different strategies and techniques and you know we are I was very invested with this offer that we just lost to in second place because the agent while he's been investing in real estate since 2015 he's been a broker third party broker since about 2022 so about four years does a great job but hasn't didn't wasn't a part of the insanity that was 2020 to 2022 so we basically have like a library of here's strategies of how you can win the deal while protecting your buyer clients and you know putting your best foot forward and sometimes that's not the highest price there could be different levers used uh it could be um you know tightening up your deadlines having an extremely clean offer having your lender call that buyer rep the listing agent and talk to them about how not only are you pre-qualified you're pre-approved assets verified incomes verified you're essentially through underwriting we just got to get a house to buy also on top of that you know I've in the I hung my hat there was only one inspection I ever waved notice because an individual had a net worth of about 50 million dollars and they just said I don't I don't really care if I have to buy the house cash twice type of deal I was like okay you're a rarity so we can waive that inspection but otherwise I never once waved in a single inspection and I would highly recommend if you are in that position yourself in a multiple offer situation you do not need to waive an inspection you can limit it which is a very gray area to health safety structure and then from there appraisal gaps if you're competing against cash offers there's just a lot of different tools including relationships understanding buyer and seller motivations how can you get this deal do you want to be the first offer in or do you want to be the last offering it's wild that these are seriously things that we became experts at you know and are at right now and I'm not wishing that market to come back by any means it was not fun it's an emotional roller coaster for buyers you know sellers if that if this does actually happen we will see the flat line I'm going to show you guys the we're at median sales price on the rolling 12 months over a maximum time period you know we've seen this flat line between 2020 end of 2022 now to 2026 that will go away you know so I want to talk about some kind of strategies my buyers are talking to if you guys have any questions ask now ask live if you're watching this on a rerun feel free to ask and I will definitely get back to you and answer those questions alrighty the market's already moving and shaking I know we're in the third day of March right now but the market is is actively moving we've got buyer activity going strong we've got listings that were actually hey let's wait till the first couple of weeks about April and we're having those conversations like no if we're ready to go let's get it on the market interest rates are below six percent buyers are active let's get it if we can let's not rush to it because we have one opportunity our first impressions our best impression let's make sure we're ready for it but if we can get the property on the market sooner let's do it so buyers are definitely got a pent-up demand they love seeing those interest rates come down a little bit using strategies as far as seller concessions go now only about 45 percent of homes on market are having to offer concessions 55 percent or so roughly are not having to offer concessions and they can be anywhere between you know one to three percent of the purchase price now there is an important piece of information here as well depending on how much money you're putting down dictates and and considering the type of loan dictates how much of a concession you can negotiate now a lot of the times it doesn't necessarily matter too much to the seller but it could put you into a position you'd rather know going into your offer like hey we're at a 600 we're at a 550,000 sales price 700,000 sales price and let's go to 700,000 700,000 sales price but we're asking 28,000 20 30,000 in concessions to buy down our interest rates we want to get it as low as possible no closing costs but you're only putting 10 percent down on it so you're putting 70 per 70,000 down um you know there's there's different parameters i don't know all the parameters but you just have to be careful that you don't go over that and have to retroactively go and negotiate some of those concessions like hey seller i can only use 25,000 of the 30,000 concessions can we use five thousand dollars of it to reduce the price and so long as you've been playing nice in the sandbox generally that's not a problem hopefully your agents your real estate agent has a relationship with the person on the other side our act our professionals in their industry and can get that done but it's better to avoid that on the front end so that's a question if you're really focusing on concessions to understand going into the negotiations but that is a strong opportunity like hey you can buy it down from 5.75 to 5.35 i would say a 5.35 mortgage loan is something that i would consider holding long term you know if you know we were able to get to 4.75 maybe you refinance at that point but 5.35 historically is not a bad interest rate uh spring market it feels like for colin's has seen some 70 degree days we had a 72 degree in uh february which was wild um got some rain today thank goodness but it does feel like spring is here uh we're talking about the tale of two markets the pristine and priced right market and everything else if you are priced right and you are turnkey ready to go those are the homes that are getting multiple offers if you need some work some love and you're kind of asking for a higher price point it is potential that you are going to sit on the market and have to negotiate so those are going to be what dictates your days on market and ultimately what you close at one thing to consider as far as the seller goes a lot of times one of your first offers is going to be your best offer we had two listings last year that the seller did not accept the initial offer let's just for numbers sake seven hundred thousand dollars got an offer for 660 didn't like it had to do a price reduction to 680 ended up closing that property at 640 so left some money on the table there because we were early on the market they said hey we can do better ultimately that was the best offer they could have closed and made some tens of thousand dollars more and that was one of two deals so sellers have to have this conversation you know and we can only help them so much but ultimately you know it is the sellers sellers will that we want to respect we help them understand a lot of these things but you know it's emotional now know that going into it if you're prepping your house for sale you know your first offer generally speaking is sometimes your best offer so try to get that thing locked up and and understand the market buyers are you know they have they're very discerning they're discretionary they're like saying hey listen if i can get this house for this i'll buy it but i'm not gonna buy it and i've i've been waiting for two years i've seen everything on the market for two years i'm access to zillow i'm asking access to chat gpt i'm asking all these questions i'm a i'm an edgy i'm an educated buyer at this point and i'm not going to sacrifice you know what you want as a seller because this is what i need as a buyer now ultimately if you are that pristine and priced right house and there's three offers on the table you got to come with your gloves up and ready to fight um let's see here playbook for sellers um get ahead of the game right now get get your property prepped ready get on the market uh there are definitely going to be a surge of showings right now buyers this is going to this is game time buyers are getting pre-approved they're getting in the market they're going through open houses they are ready to make offers so as a seller get ready to rock um as additionally as a seller prepare to negotiate on inspections okay i think the reality is we just negotiated a new roof today on one of the properties that we got uh our buyers on and uh super awesome i mean uh super excited about that now as a seller those are some expectations coming into it like you gotta understand there's gonna be negotiations on the price and there's gonna be negotiations on the inspection you can get you can try to avoid that as much as you can but sometimes these furnaces haven't been touched for 30 years sometimes the roofs have to be replaced and there's no hail damage um there's things that the buyer couldn't see while walking through the house now you can hedge that a little bit as a seller disclose what you can on your seller's property disclosure so that you can at least have a leg to stand on i can tell you for me personally i just sold a condo of my own last year had windows that weren't operational three of them and i said three windows in the living room weren't operational the buyer came to me and said hey listen windows aren't operational we want you guys to to pay for those and i was like i told you guys no it was in the seller's property disclosure you should have made your offer based off of the knowledge that was given to you at the time of making your offer which was everything in the mls touring the property what your agent says and the seller property disclosure that i provided to you from there i ended up giving them 500 bucks i said you guys can use 500 bucks you can use that towards a replacement of one window a repair of all three whatever you want to do i'll give you 500 bucks you know because ultimately the goal for me was to get the deal done and when we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to the 500 i'm not going to step over you know dollars to pick up dimes type of deal so i did give them a little something but i did stand on that seller's property disclosure saying hey i disclose this to you you can take your negotiations and move on i'll give you a few bucks as for buyers you know we're we are expecting to see more inventory this spring we are having tons of conversations with uh clients currently past referrals prepping listings to go on the market in the next one to two months and we're a small group you know we do 100 transactions a year there are a thousand more you know basically two thousand transactions a year in fort collins let alone northern colorado we are going to see a good amount of inventory come on the market so prepare for that specifically tax day okay that is the highest amount of new listings to hit the market right around that tax day so be ready for that get pre-approved if you haven't talked with the lender talk with the lender make sure that your credit score is dialed in there are tools to get your credit you know where it needs to be to get the bet ultimately the best interest rate possible there was a webinar if you're interested in seeing that webinar that i put on with joe uh whitlock chris murphy of the whitlock murphy group murphy whitlock group uh great information there if you're looking at getting pre-approved definitely would suggest that having a clean well-presented offer means more than you could imagine work with a professional agent who has done this a lot of times who can make sure they can present your offer as a package all the disclosures understand the pre-approval going through the process having communications with the listing agent these are all things that are going to help you as a buyer win in today's market especially if we get into a position of competition so that's going to be kind of how buyers and sellers should operate in today's world from our perspective of course we are here to answer questions and if you have anything that you'd like to talk about specifically this is on our fort collins lifestyles youtube channel we are doing this once a month on the first tuesday of every month appreciate you guys watching and have a great night