Two Housing Markets in Fort Collins Right Now (Winners vs. Losers) | May 2026 Market Update

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Now, I am so very grateful that I have not ever been in or really close to a tornado. Now, there was a tornado in Windsor in about 2008, but far enough away. Maybe I was young enough. I was at Colorado State University at the time, so I just didn't feel it. But sometimes they call these types of markets a tornado market because a tornado could go through a street and tear apart, rip apart one house and not touch the other house, which is similar to today's real estate market. You could see two houses on the same street, one move within the weekend and one sitting on the market for 60 days. And there are a few things that are dictating that.

Obviously, the largest lever is always going to be price. But on top of that, you can also have a house that is prepared and priced properly and maybe backs to a better area. Like I will say, we back to a busy street, so it would be very easy to see if you turned onto my street and I wasn't priced properly and our house wasn't prepared to go onto the market, staged, pictures, all that good stuff. And across the street, they don't back to the busy street and if they are priced appropriately, we're both in a great neighborhood and their location is a little bit better than mine, their house is going to move and mine is going to sit.

And that's what we're seeing in today's real estate market. Houses are moving over the weekend with multiple offers, fewer and far between in those situations. But then there are going to be homes that are sitting on the market for an extended period of time. We had our monthly meeting today with eXp NoCo. I will say it's been great to be a part of eXp Northern Colorado. There are 50 of us in that organization and we are able to leverage each other's experiences, knowledge, what the feel is on the market, and leverage questions and different expertise. So absolutely loving that. But this is the market update in May, Cinco de Mayo, happy Cinco de Mayo.

We're not going out and drinking tonight, so if you are, have a margarita and think about me. Cheers. But that being said, we're going to jump in today's market, median sales price of homes, days on market, new listings, also a few other things that just are kind of more anecdotal than anything. Let's jump right in. All right. So Fort Collins single family detached houses up to $630,000 but still down 1.6%, but just up barely on a 12-month moving average. We have been sticking at that $625,000 mark for what seems to be years, which has been great as far as just kind of a stable market. I mean, literally since November of 2022, we've been right at that $610,000 to $625,000.

So we will come up to four years this November of having that price point, which has allowed people's incomes to increase. But each month, we are very cyclical here in Northern Colorado. Most of our busy season is going to be between April ending in October with November, December, January and February being pretty darn slow. But let's look at new listings that are coming onto the market. Down 13.5%. This is kind of interesting. We had an interest rate increase at the beginning of March, essentially February 28th was the beginning of the Iran war and oil prices went up, interest rates went from 5.5% to 6.25% and the market kind of got spooked a little bit.

They're like, oh my gosh, what is happening? Interest rates are higher than they once were. Sellers who may have been preparing to go onto the market pushed pause. In fact, we have 14 listings that we're currently working on. A handful of them are under contract, a handful of them are still active. We had a few that were coming soon and we also have a handful that we're working on in the background. But that being said, it's interesting to see that actually 13.5% fewer homes came onto the market this April, comparatively last April, especially knowing that interest rates are still lower than they were last April.

Homes for sale, this is where you are going to see a pretty decent increase. Our inventory on the market up 15.3% and on a rolling 12 month, I think this is really important to look at, we're at the highest levels of a rolling 12 month inventory than we have since 2016 and probably all the way until 2013. Home buyers absolutely have more choices to choose from. There are homes that are sitting on the market a little bit longer. Speaking about homes sitting on the market, let's look at days on market. Back down to 42, 6.7% lower than last April. What that says is the standard contract length, like typical, not standard, typical contract length in Fort Collins is about 30 days, so it gives the home to be on the market 12 days, essentially two weekends, two full weekends before it goes under contract.

Which is what you don't want to see if you're hoping for, if you're cheering for more inventory, longer days on market and prices to drop, it's just, you know, there's some wins in your face as far as that goes. Now prices have remained stable, which is great, but days on market and then again months supply up 15.8%, very similar to homes for sale. Those two numbers are essentially synonymous. Months of supply, Muhlenberg was talking about today, you know, it's a great terminology of essentially if there was not another house that came on the market, the velocity of which the current inventory would leave the market, so it would take 2.2 months to sell all of the homes that are currently on the market.

Percentage of original sale price kicks up to 100%. I am still seeing plenty of homes going under list price. We're going to talk to you about kind of different price points and things to take into consideration. This is specifically to Fort Collins and the month of April, single family detached, but very interesting as far as all of that goes. I am going to leave this up, definitely feel free to ask questions while we're going through this. This is the time to ask them. I will answer it live. If you're watching this on a rerun, comment below. I will make sure to answer it as soon as I possibly can.

Let's put up the sales price for Fort Collins. All righty, jumping into some other information, this is the Fort Collins market analysis for April, 48.8% of homes that came onto the market went under contract in the month of April. Nearly 50% of the houses, again, the thumbnail on this picture is two sides of the market. Half are sitting and half are going type deal. Now it's a little bit different. It feels more like one's moving for every three that are on the market and two are sitting. The average price reduction of a home that's sitting on the market is 2.6% of the list price. I personally, I will say, we're actually selling our cabin right now and I am a firm believer of make substantial cuts in the 4 to 5% range rather than the 2 to 3% range.

Depending on your price point, of course. Now I'll talk about different price points here shortly, but I'm a firm believer of I don't like the death by a thousand cuts. Make it substantial, get it done, get under contract. Let's see here. I wanted to talk about the price per square foot of homes that are selling versus homes that are sitting. The homes that have sold and are under contract in the month of April have a median finished price per square foot, so not total price per square foot, because I'm going to show you right here on the data, we're probably closer to like 250, yep, $254 per price per total square foot.

That includes unfinished and finished square feet. Comparatively to finished square footage, the homes that are moving do come with a little bit more value, priced at between $305 to $307 per square foot, comparatively to the ones that are sitting on the market, an average of $324 per finished square foot. So people are looking and seeing value for that. One thing that we've talked about with a lot of our clients coming into the market is both sellers and buyers is like, listen, it's already expensive to buy a house. What we don't have a lot of money to do is renovations after we close. We don't have the ability to go in and completely rip out and tear out new carpets and paint and things of that nature.

So if you're selling your house, especially kind of in that more first time home buyer, second time move up buyer, you got to have a turnkey move-in ready house. Let's see here. Most homes that are selling have got two garages, that's kind of pretty typical. Averages for homes that are going under contract and selling, early 1990s, that's where a lot of the value plays are coming in. Let's see here. Lot sizes, all .24, .25 acre lots. That's pretty standard here in Fort Collins. Let's see here. Now here's an interesting one. Price distribution of homes that are sold on the market. About 25% of homes sold are basically $450,000 to $750,000, excuse me, 50% of homes and another 20% or so above a million dollars with the fewest amount of homes selling between $750,000 to $1 million.

That's a really kind of interesting price point because it is the move up home so they have to sell their first house and get into their second one or it's a relocation client, but those are the fewest amount of homes on the market that are selling $750,000 to $1 million homes. And they're the ones that are currently sitting on the market the longest. Price reduction, 136 homes had price reductions in the city of Fort Collins in the month of April, 2.65% roughly, but homes over a million are seeing closer to a 3.5% average price reduction. Again, when you start to get up onto those prices, a little bit lower is different.

Again, those entry price levels, like if you're in the 450s to 500s, a 2% to 3% price reduction. So anywhere between $8,000 to $15,000, depending on if you're at $400,000 or $500,000 can make a difference for somebody buying a house. Whereas if you're in the million dollar price point, you're going to have to go from $1,050,000 to $1,025,000 easy to get into a different price bracket, but really in that situation, I'd probably go from $1,050,000 to like $999,000 to really move the needle to get that thing sold. A conversation to have with yourself if you're a seller is, what is your strike price?

And if you have a market valuation of like, let's say $600,000, but you're good walking away with $550,000, I'd probably move your list price down to about $585,000, $590,000 and get that thing on the market, even if the market's telling you $600,000. Because the homes that have value and are priced right are the ones that are moving. 33% of homes sold at exactly list price. Now 63% of homes, 102 of 162 houses sold at or above list price. So there was about 37% or so that sold at or below list price. So definitely interesting as far as those numbers go. But actually, if it went below list price, only about 2% under list price.

So keep that in mind when you're negotiating. When that house gets to that price point that it's moving, you're going to go under 2% roughly. There were some pretty crazy homes that also sold. Another house in Parkwood listed at $1.7K, sold for $1.9K. Another home listed at $1.5K, sold for $1.72K. But then on the flip side, there was a home off of Prospects listed for $1.6K, sold for $1.3K. And then another one listed at $980K, sold for close to $700,000. So there are absolutely those sellers out there that have got a ton of equity and their goal is to move the property. They want to get it done.

We were fortunate enough just a few months ago negotiating on a million and a half property and we got it for nearly $1.1M. So those are few and far between, but there are sellers with a substantial amount of equity that are willing to take a bite to get the place sold. Again, I'm talking firsthand experience. We've got a cabin that we have a good amount of equity in it, mostly because we just put a lot of down and also we put a lot of money into the property that we can take hits on the list price. Now, of course, we'd like to sell it for the most that it possibly can, but for me, I don't have any emotions on it.

Let's get the things sold. Let's price it where it needs to price and get it moved. Here are some things that are kind of more anecdotal, not anecdotal, but there are surveys. Consumer sentiment is at a near all-time low. I do want to show this. Let's see. I want to make sure you guys can see this on ... Yes. Consumer sentiment is at near all-time lows. Now what's interesting is in November of 2025, it was actually lower than that. I don't know what was happening in November of 2025 off the top of my head, but the Iran war is definitely causing a lot of concern. Oil prices are up, which are impacting bonds and impacting the 30-year mortgage, which was putting a lot of fuel on the fire in the real estate market.

But we're lower than some of these recession time periods in 2008 and 2009, the savings and loan crisis in the early 90s, and we're lower than that currently. I'm not sure what's keeping the market afloat. The stock market's going absolutely bananas. I do think that that's actually a ... There is the wealth effect that when somebody's stock accounts are at all-time highs, they feel much better, even if they don't have to sell, but the wealth effect of going and buying a house comparatively to when the stock market's down, getting beat up, and they're like, no, I don't want to buy. I just lost 13% of my value, my portfolio.

Interest rates, here's what's driving the market. We were down for a long time, basically beginning of the year all the way up until end of February. Here's essentially the start of the Iran war is February 28th, and from here we spiked all the way up to 6.4, 6.5% 30-year conforming. Right now we're back down about 6.3% for 30-year conforming loans, but if you work with the mortgage broker, we are seeing some interest rates in the 5.75 to 6% range. Now some of that you're going to have to buy down, I think 6% though, 6.125% is offered with no cost, maybe even a credit to the borrower. So if that's something that you're interested in, give me a call.

We're definitely seeing some opportunistic buyers in the market, very patient buyers. We were talking about the buyer journey today at our meeting, and we were talking about how I think people really, and I love to see this honestly, now granted, we made an offer on a house that was in Midtown Fort Collins on the west side. There were two other offers. We were the third. We had to go above list price. We were using different negotiation tactics. We were able to secure that property, but it was like disheartening, like, damn. We were first in. We thought we could get the property. Two other offers came in.

We had to go a little bit above list price, nothing too crazy, but we were able to secure it. But the majority of the time, a lot of these homes are sitting in the buyer's journeys a little bit different today. They might start off exploring homes through open houses. Hey, let's go look at houses, just open houses, a lot of them. There are a lot more open houses these days than there has been in many years. They start there, they kind of at that point maybe get their agent involved. We've seen this a lot of times, like, hey, we just saw this house this weekend. We'd like to go back. When you get a chance, can you set up a private showing, and we'd like to get your opinion on it.

Absolutely. Let's get over there. Let's do some due diligence. Let's just see what's going on around the area, do a little bit of a CMA on the property, look at what the market value is, in our opinion, compared to what it's listed for, and see if there's any moves that we want to make on that property. But it might take two or three visits of that home before the buyer is ready to pull the trigger. And if they are ready to pull the trigger at that point, it could be a negotiation tactic to get an under list price, get some seller concessions in your favor as the buyer. As far as the seller goes, buyers are ready.

They are savvy buyers, ready to go, make moves, and if the house is priced right, turn key in a good location, it is going to sell and potentially sell with multiple offers. Don't ever bank on that, but you can hit the lottery of sorts if you have those three things and then you price your property appropriately. Those are all the things that we're seeing as far as our side of things on the listings. We had a condo that went on a contract the first weekend, and we didn't have much hope for it, but we just happened to have the right buyer come through. Decent marketing, good pricing, but ultimately it was a great buyer that just demanded that property and we were able to get it under contract and close.

Some single families that have been renovated still need some work, but are at least 80% of the way done, leaving the buyer with 20% went under contract. We double ended a condo where there was a buyer that went back five times to view this condo and ended up missing out on it, where there was an unrepresented buyer that came through, made an offer, buyer-seller came to the table, essentially agreed on price and terms. We're closing on that thing that had sat on the market for I think about 30 days or so. Our cabin's been sitting on the market, no showings. We priced it where we thought it was maybe a little bit on the higher side.

No huge motivation for us to move it and you can see with it just being priced a little bit too high, it's sitting, no showings, no activity, and potentially going to sit there for a while. When I told my team, I said, listen, if it sits for 30 days, I want to see it cut from $4.99 to $4.74 and I want to get it moved at that point, which I think at that point it will move, but that's 25% over a 6% reduction or about five, excuse me, about a 5% reduction and that's what I think is important if you're a seller and want to move the property. So I said, hey, listen, I'm fine giving it a go, but I also don't want to waste my time with this thing up on the market, so let's go ahead and get this thing priced to sell.

On our buy side, writing up contracts, some of them are multiple offer situations, some of them are under list price. We had one that is $1,050,000 that we got it for $1,060,000, built rapport with the sellers on that transaction. So if I'm getting ready as a buyer, I'm being patient, opportunistic, I'm doing some market research tours, looking in the market to see what's going on, what's moving, why is it moving and understanding when I'm ready to pull the trigger, I'm ready to go pre-approved, know the market, feel comfortable with the range of prices that this house might sell at. And as a seller, deep clean, declutter, depersonalize, curb appeal, touch up paint, get the house depersonalized, get it ready, staged, professional photography.

I will say, crazy quick story, sell in the cabin, it's up in Red Feather, get the property steam cleaned on a Monday. We didn't go up there to check before pictures, but everything was basically perfect except for getting the place steam cleaned is what we wanted to do. Steam cleaned, steam cleaned on Monday, pictures are on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, I get the pictures back and I wanted basically everything being able to send out to our title company, brochure makers, all these different things by that Thursday. So everything's on this timeline of how things should flow and I get the pictures back on a Wednesday, open the link and there are pictures of the chairs on top of the table, the ottomans on top of the couches and I'm like, what is this?

I lost it. I was like, I get it. Maybe you can't move the chairs and ottomans off of the couch and table, but at least give me a call. Just tell me, hey, Patrick, it is your pictures, we can't do them, there's chairs on top, our liability doesn't allow us to move those. Make it up, whatever, but just tell me so that I don't get them the next day. Can't necessarily go out that day, can't go out the following day, but it delays all of the process. So it was absolutely crazy and today I was hearing some horror stories of different staging that went kind of south. So these are kind of the things that a lot of sellers don't necessarily see that's going on in the background of like, my two other partners on the cabin, I showed them, I was like, this is ridiculous, how crazy is this?

But it's just an annoyance and it's like, yeah, just figure it out, get it done, but I couldn't believe I got those pictures back. So hopefully next month when we do the market update, I will have an update for you and maybe that bad boy will have sold. But otherwise, that's kind of it for today, median sales price, 12 month rolling average, staying steady Eddie, new listings are down, inventory's up a little bit, but days on market are substantially down. Some homes are moving, some homes are sitting, it's all about strategy as a buyer and strategy as a seller getting the property onto the market.

So appreciate you guys watching and until next month, you guys enjoy the rest of your evening.