January 2026 Fort Collins Real Estate | Prices, Rates & Big Predictions for 2026

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Man, does time go by fast. We are in year five of our annual market predictions and update for the new year. Looking at how 2025 fared and looking forward to 2026. Now it was interesting looking, I actually watched all four of my previous market prediction videos to see, you know, what was I looking at? What was I concerned for? Was there anything that I was way off on or spot on? And one thing that struck me was I forgot that 2022 also had such a crazy price appreciation because when I think of 2022, I think of when interest rates jumped from 3% to 6.5%, 7%. But the reality was, was there was still a fair amount of activity at the beginning and part of that year, myself being one of them buying a rental in March of that year that walked in lower interest rates.

So that was still a large appreciation year jumping from like, what was it? It was a, let's see, housing prices jumped 14% all the way up to $610,000. And I thought that they were going to revert back to a more normalized appreciation of 5.5%. But the reality is over the last three years, prices have remained relatively flat going from $610,000 to $625,000 and then staying there at $625,000 in Fort Collins. Other things that I looked at were politically land use code, that was the land development code that got shot down, that moved into the land use code that then really got shaved down dramatically because city of Fort Collins council and members were looking at what the state of Colorado was going to do and said, hey, listen, the state's going to remove occupancy limits.

They're going to allow for ADUs in all single family zones. So let's just remove that from ours and let the state do our work for us. And past phase one and actually are in the process of, and I think have passed phase two finally of the commercial zoning. But obviously like new administration, a lot of pressures, a lot of stress, anxiety. I think fear, interest rates have bounced up and down over the last three years. But essentially if we are currently right around high fives, low sixes, but if we get to June of this year, we will have been at 6% or above interest rates for the last four years.

I mean, that's now a more normalized rate for people. We bought a rental property and we are excited. Just in December, we are excited to get 6.3%. So that just kind of goes to show where we are. But you know, the first thing that we are wanting to do, and other than that, you know, things that I was always talking about, have talked about, and will continue to talk about, jobs, employment, structure, safety, soundness of Northern Colorado, which from what we can see, because of the diversified economy within Northern Colorado, I think is staying relatively strong. Let's jump in. I'm going to share my screen.

If you're watching this or if you're listening to this on the podcast, our YouTube channel Fort Collins Lifestyle, which is an offshoot of our Living in Fort Collins brand, is focused on Fort Collins, Northern Colorado, podcasting, local updates, market updates, and today, predictions. But there will be a visual on that YouTube channel. That's the Fort Collins Lifestyles. So I'm going to share my screen, and this is looking at the four different major communities in Northern Colorado, Fort Collins, Windsor, Greeley, and Loveland, our population centers. Fort Collins has 180,000 in Windsor, about 45,000 in Greeley, just over 100,000 in Loveland, just under 100,000 people.

And all of these are growing areas. But as you can see, there's pretty significant price differences between them. These are all residential detached houses, looking at prices. So on a rolling 12 month basis, all four communities are relatively flat. Greeley saw a 2.3% increase, up to $445,000. But we talk about people getting values, premiums, discounts, depending on where they're willing to live, and Greeley, it's $625,000 in Fort Collins versus $445,000 in Greeley. So you get a pretty big discount for an area that is growing, cool things happening there, lots of new development. Martin Lin putting Cascadia, the $1 billion development there.

So definitely a growing area. Let's look at month supply. Month supply is where we will see some potential canary in the coal mines if we start seeing pretty significant increases. That's not really what we are seeing, but we do see Loveland has popped up quite a bit. Now Loveland does have a lot of new construction, new development in there, so that could have an impact on that that we have seen historically impact places like Windsor as well as Greeley. So some of this is new construction, which new construction does have an inventory problem right now. People are giving away homes. One of our agents, Izzy, she just went on a contract on a new development, new to a new home in Loveland, Colorado, and she goes, they were giving it to me.

So definitely opportunity there. But Fort Collins up just 4.8% to 2.2 months of supply. And we will look back to see what our predictions were for 2025 and how we fared and then moving into our predictions for 2026. Days on market. This is what will increase inventory numbers, but Fort Collins right around 43 days on market up 2.4%. The biggest increase is Greeley to 51 days, 13.3%. And Loveland had 11.6% increase to 48 days on market. More days on market, more negotiation. In fact, we are mid negotiation right now with a property here in Fort Collins. It's going to be a rental, not for us, for a client.

We are negotiating it. We've actually come back to them after the holidays when we offered before the holiday season. They got aggressive. They didn't even counter. We resubmitted, re-offered, and it looks like we might get the deal done. So days on market just allows time for sellers to really understand what the market's doing or not doing. And in this case, it's not doing what they hoped for. So they stayed strong at their number. We offered more than 10% off of list price. Some very attractive terms as is cash, close, quick. This is an investor that I'm working with. So we are able to do that.

And the seller's seriously considering accepting this offer. But days on market, when we looked at, if we look back during the craziness, which was 2021 into 2022, Loveland was all the way down to 22 days. Fort Collins, 33 days. It was some pretty crazy times where a home would get on the market and it would go right off. So we definitely watch days on market very closely. Close sales. How are we doing it? What's the demand like in these areas? And across the board, our demand is up. Fort Collins, Windsor, Greeley, and Loveland. And I will say one of the reasons that it could be happening is interest rates.

Interest rates have definitely been seen coming down over the last 12 months, staying a little bit closer to low sixes and even high fives. We got quoted recently 5.875% for a first time home buyer with premium credit. So that is a direct correlation to affordability. We have seen prices remain flat. As I've talked about on the sales prices in Fort Collins, Fort Collins has been at $625,000 since basically end of November. So for almost three and a half years, while incomes have been able to increase, interest rates have ticked down a little bit. I'm going to show you my screen. I'm going to show you my screen here because there's one thing that I want to show you specifically is, I want to show you October of 2023 because this was when interest rates were absolutely at their peak and it absolutely killed the market.

Eight percent was very much something that we were competing against and demand was stalled out, homes were sitting, we were end of the spring, summer selling season getting into fall. So as we see those interest rates come down and somebody asked me yesterday, they have a house that they've got to sell in Texas. They bought a house here in Fort Collins. They got a seller house in Texas. He asked me what I think the market's going to do. We've jumped into the new year and we have seen decent demand increase. We've seen new leads come up and he's got a couple of showings and I said, if interest rates see that five and a half percent mark, the market is going to go freaking bonanza.

So we will wait to see that. I do have a prediction for interest rates, but that's not one of the main ones. And then new listings. This is something to where we are seeing a little bit of an increase in new listings. People are letting life happen. They are being accustomed to the six percent interest rates and moving on with their lives. But we're not seeing a spike. One thing that I'm going to talk about moving into the spring season for all markets in Northern Colorado is we've seen a significant amount of de-listings across the United States, definitely in Denver, definitely happening in Fort Collins.

And there's what's called shadow inventory. And I will say there, there is a little bit of, you know, uncertainty as far as once we get to that, um, April, may time period when a lot of people list their homes. Now, you know, we will typically see, let's see here, let's go back to three years. Um, and let's get rid of Windsor, Greeley and Loveland. And I will do monthly. You know, we will see a seasonal increase during April, may time periods of new listings. So that's typical. But what I don't want to see is this 260, 259, 307, 297 peaks or night right around between 250 and 300 homes. What I don't want to see is this number hit 450 and all of a sudden we have a slew of inventory.

You know, prices could have some pressure at that point if demand isn't keeping up. So if we have an imbalance, let's say, you know, a perfect storm, so to speak for the security of home prices in Fort Collins this spring would be is if we did see the shadow inventory surge past 350 new listings and interest rates do the opposite of what we think they're going to do of continue to kind of take down a little bit and go the opposite way and hit six and a half to seven percent. Demand could, you know, shutter inventory increase and then there could be some serious pressures on prices. Now let's get in.

Actually, I got a quick question, obviously market dependent, but what timeframe do you typically expect rates dropping prices increasing? You know, I was just talking about our sales price on a rolling 12 month average. You know, we've been relatively flat and interest rates jumped as I just showed in July, June of 2022. So when that happened, it put a damper on the crazy growth that we saw. Now this is again craziness. We had 2021 and 2022 that just, I'll sneak out there to five years, 2021 to 2022 was crazy. Just across the nation, Fort Collins wasn't exempt from that. But when interest rates got to that six to 8% rate, you know, from November 22 to now, for all intents and purposes, they've remained relatively flat.

But I do think we've been at 6% interest rates for four years and if interest rates get to sub six and are stable there and at five and a half percent, I think people will jump and jump fast, jump hard. When prices, at that point, we could see go the opposite way. So the perfect storm of price compressions, reductions would be shadow inventory comes surging, interest rates go up, we could see some price reductions, compressions. But if inventory kind of does what it typically does and interest rates come down, at that point, yes, I could see prices going up. I think if it happens, to your questions, I would say spring time period.

I know you're going to be coming out visit April, May time period, but I would say spring early summer is when we could potentially see those prices starting to kind of take off a little bit just because that is when the majority of buyers are in action and Northern Colorado is basically after the Super Bowl starts to pick up. But as soon as school, a month before school gets out, so school gets out I think May, end of May, end of April is really when we start to see buyers truly hit the market and hit the market hard. But I will tell you that my predictions for price appreciation are going to be from $625,000 to $630,000 for the year.

So I don't think we're going to see any major price increases. Alright, I am going to go through how my predictions were versus how it turned out in 2025. So predictions for 2025 politically, yep, ADUs passed in 2024. The expenses of building ADUs really didn't have a huge drive, but I do think that's something to look at moving into 2026 is what is the state of Colorado going to do to help ADUs get built more? What is the city of Fort Collins going to do in Northern Colorado? So I definitely think that's something worth watching. Okay, let's see here. Home prices on a rolling 12-month basis, oh, here we go, predictions.

We predicted they were going to go from $625,000 to $635,000, a 1.6% increase. The reality was they were flat. They were at $625,000, a 0.3% increase, but the reality is they were flat. Inventory, we predicted they were going to go up to 2.5%, but it actually was 2.2%. So still a 4.8% increase, not nothing by any means, but we did think that was going to go up a little bit higher. We thought it was going to go up 19% to 2.5 days. Days on market, up 2.4% to 43 days. We thought it was going to go from 43 days to 47 days. You know, 47 days is a much more normalized market. June of 2022, this was kind of COVID time period.

Let's see if we can go up max. This is a much more normalized days on market for Fort Collins, 45 to 47 days. So I think we're going to get there, we're going to get back there to a more normalized market. We're back, we're creeping back to a more normalized market, but with inventory being so low, new construction, you know, Larimer County, Weld County is expected to grow to over a million people in the next 25 to 30 years. So there's this massive amount of growth that's happening and home builders still can't build fast enough, even though they have inventory waiting. I think people are still, buyers are waiting on the sidelines and they are really starting to see kind of this light at the end of the tunnel, like, hey, listen, sub six isn't so bad.

I didn't like six and a half. I definitely didn't like seven, but sub six, let's do this. Closed sales actually increased comparatively to our thought process was at 1,802. We predicted it was going to be at 1,755, a 5% increase, but we actually saw a 7.3 increase in closed homes in 2025 demand increasing to where, you know, the low times of where interest rates, affordability, we're struggling the most late 2023 and into early 2024 is when home affordability was struggling. But we saw last year that home affordability started to get a little bit better. Income started to increase. People started to say, I'm done waiting on the sidelines.

So this will be interesting. Let's see here. Things that I was watching last year was interest rates, which is affordability, housing supply and inventory, zoning impacts, ADUs. How is the overall market going to do? We had a new administration, you know, what was the stock market going to do? What was the, are we going to be in a recession? How does remote work change? And that is definitely something that I'm watching moving forward. I think Fort Collins, all of these different smaller communities, smaller, not big metros, had massively positive impacts to their home values. You could say that is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on if you already own a home or have to buy a home.

But when remote working happens and is still happening, it provides people the ability to work like a buddy of mine works for a company that is in the Boston area, but lives here in Fort Collins, making incomes that are, you know, very strong, very great. But I also had a friend that I actually just saw for the first time since high school, which is a long time ago now, almost 20 years, and he worked for LinkedIn and he moved his family to Alaska where his wife was from, but LinkedIn called back all their workers and he said, you know what, I guess this is the time that I just am going to walk away and take a year off.

So there is something to be said about that as a concern and consideration. Insurance costs not going down, which does impact affordability. Fortunately, property taxes have been relatively flat. We did increase some mill levies to help with schools in Fort Collins and otherwise that was kind of the largest increase, but not anything too dramatic. And then finally, how is AI going to impact Fort Collins, the real estate world, the world in general, not as much as I thought it would have, but I still think that's something that we are watching and I think it's just starting to scratch the surface of what it could do.

All right. Moving into my predictions for 2026 home values. I think they're going to be relatively flat. I think they are going to end the year on a rolling 12 month average at $630,000. I think it's going to be about a 1% Oh, time out. Let's jump into national market predictions. Okay. I did look at this. I think it's important, but I think like last year, like all these predict, all these predictors were like saying four and a half, 5% home and value appreciation did not happen. It was actually flat. Now most of these predictors are getting a little bit more squeamish on making these predictions between realtor, Redfin and Zillow, a 1% for Redfin, 1.2% Zillow, 2.2% Redfin and Redfin for their home price appreciation for 2026, um, existing home sales.

We thought we were going to get back up to like four and a half to 5 million homes sold each year. We ended 2025 around 1.2 to one point, or excuse me, 4.2 to 4.3 let me see here. We, I wrote it down. We ended the year on a national level. Oh, between 4.1 to 4.2 million homes sold. And the prediction, and this was from realtor.com, uh, suggested that at the end of 2025, we were going to end at 4.5 million homes sold. So nationally demand wasn't doing what they thought it could do. And so for their, uh, current predictions, um, Zillow is suggesting that it could be a 4% increase realtor.com, a much more modest 1.7% increase.

All of the mortgage rate averages are right around 6.3% on average for the year. Um, still probably better than the 6.75, 7% that we saw now personally jumping into some of my personal market predictions. Um, again, on the home value, I think it's very going to be very modest, right around 1% from 625 to 630,000. That's on an ending 12 month roll, rolling 12 month average. So to your question, as far as when could prices, you know, spike, yeah, there's obviously things could happen. One of the worst predictions I made was at my very first market prediction, I, I, it was at the beginning of 2022 and I said, we're at 3%, three and a half percent for interest rates.

I think, you know, because of the fed funds going to be increasing their, their rates, um, we could end at three and a half to 4% or maybe it was four to four and a half percent, something like that. And we ended at like 7%. So I was way off. So, you know, I've always joked about it in the past. Predictions mean absolutely nothing. Um, you know, this is just what the feel is. The hope is that it remains, you know, steady Eddie, you know, a safe, clear environment and by no means do I want 2020 to 2022 to happen again with these spikes of prices. Um, and I don't really ever see a big drop off cliff in Fort Collins, Northern Colorado for prices, but you know, comparatively to, and I talked with somebody about this recently.

Um, you know, a Miami, Florida, Las Vegas, Houston, Texas, you know, some of these areas that are very driven by a single industry, Vegas, gambling, tourism, um, you know, Miami retirees, Houston, oil and gas, and if that industry gets decimated, that market goes with it. Fort Collins, we're extremely diversified, 8,000 employees at Colorado State University, Broadcom, Intel, Lanham County, City of Fort Collins are all large employers, uh, Woodward Governor, a publicly traded company, uh, Vestas Blades in Windsor, Nutrien in Loveland. You know, we do have a pretty decent, uh, diversified economy.

I would say if Colorado State University went under or secondary universities, UNC and CSU went under, that would have a pretty dramatic impact in the overall economy in Northern Colorado. So if that happened, yeah, we could see some cliffs of prices and activity, which would impact everybody here in Northern Colorado. Um, okay, inventory. I think this is my, this is probably my most aggressive, uh, prediction. I think we are going to see it jump from 2.2 months to three months, which you won't even see that max. Now you would see this if this went all the way back to 2007, 2008, we were up to six months.

Um, I think three months would be great for the market. I think it is a balance for buyers. It puts a realistic expectation for sellers. Um, so I, that's my boldest prediction is three months, a 20% increase, um, from 2.2 months. Days on market. Again, I talked about this a little bit before. I think it's going to get back up to more and more, a more normalized 47 days. So even at three months, homes are going to move. The demand is picking up and, um, but sellers are going to have to have a conversation with reality. They're going to price their house, maybe do one price reduction or negotiate, you know, the percent of original list price.

You know, we got above a hundred percent, but, um, you know, Fort Collins has always been pretty historically at 100%, um, you know, there's a lot of different reasons for that, but right now we're sub a hundred percent. So there's some negotiation power and I think negotiations power is good. You know, I think it gives you a true market value of a home. Um, the last thing that you honestly want to do as a listing agent is put your house on the market and have three offers all at that, you know, uh, list price. Because what that tells me is like, Hey, maybe we left some dollars on the table. I'd rather, uh, you know, let's for an example, list at $610,000 you get three offers at $610,000.

Yeah. Maybe you can negotiate between those three and say, Hey, I'll, we'll go with you if you're 615 because you're cash and no inspections, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, but what if you went 625 and they gave you a 98% offer, uh, you know, so that's 12,000 and it gives you at $613,000. So it gets you an extra, you know, few thousand dollars. So there's negotiation isn't a bad thing. I think it truly represents the, what the market value as a home, um, between 2020 and 2022. You never knew what a value was because there was so much demand. Interest rates were down. Affordability was at an all time high and people were like, I don't care.

I'm buying this house. Closed sales. We'll go up to 19, 1950, um, still, you know, not up to our peaks in 2021, uh, but a little bit closer to a more normalized, uh, market conditions still a little bit under, but 1950 and 8.2% increase, um, and interest rates. I think we're going to hover right around 6.25 to 6.5%. That is a wimpy prediction, but, um, that is what I believe. We're going to sit there for another year, uh, before anything else truly happens. Now ever since we moved, it's funny, you know, um, not everyone has found the new channel because there's kind of some, there's some reasons, I guess, that YouTube algorithms, all that kind of stuff because this is so specific to Fort Collins, local market, local podcasts.

Um, it's a smaller channel, but I am going to stick around for a few minutes. If you do have any questions, now is going to be the time to ask, um, while I remove this from my screen, you get to see my bright and shiny face, um, because I'm bald, uh, you don't see it, but, uh, you know, it's funny, I was joking with my wife. I was telling her, I was like, you know, there's, there might be something to this whole sleep thing and eating well and try not to stress because I feel great right now. I feel revitalized. Um, I would force myself to only sleep six hours, get up, go to the gym for a decade.

And I'm kind of like, you know what, let's take care of ourselves. I'm, I'm, I'm no young pup anymore. I'm not old by any means, but, uh, you know, just need to take care of myself a little bit more. But, uh, this is the time for you guys to ask, um, all questions related to Fort Collins, Northern Colorado real estate. Hopefully this was a, of value, uh, to look at what the market is doing in Fort Collins prices, you know, remaining, remaining consistent. Um, the one thing I didn't show and I will put it back on the market is just the monthly, uh, sales price because it did, um, kind of, it shot down and then tick back up.

I would say some of these, sometimes the unfortunate thing is, uh, Fort Collins is a small market, you know? Um, and some of our data gets skewed by a few things cause like when I, when I did my November market update and we, and I see prices plummeted to $565,000, you know, the lowest since 2023, I was like, whoa, you know, that could be, that could be a little scary. And then they shoot right back up. This could literally be a data error for some reason. Like what, what happened here, um, cause it's not typical that prices jumped back up to 625, especially in December, because as you'll see, you know, prices usually bottom out December, January, February, and seeing it pop back up in December was like, that's kind of interesting.

So it could have very well have been like a data issue there. Um, but we are at a 3.3% versus December of last year increase. Um, so I didn't show that month over month, but, um, appreciate you guys watching. Uh, as always, if you guys are buying, selling or investing here in Northern Colorado, give my team and I a call, text, email, would love to be an asset on your team, helped hundreds of families relocate here and tons and tons of local families help buy, sell and invest. So appreciate you guys watching.