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Longmont and surrounding areas house sales statistics

Kyle Snyder from First American Title takes a look at stats for June
Kyle Snyder, First American Title
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NEWS RELEASE
FIRST AMERICAN TITLE
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What part of this market are you tired of the most? I’m most tired of the Fed. I think they have lost their grip and are no longer in touch. Sure, they helped blow my interest rate prediction out of the water by their threats of more rate hikes… prolonging the instability of the financial markets, but I’m not sour about that. At this point, I say go ahead and raise your darn rates, get it over with, because that puts us one step closer to returning to a healthy market. There are other things, but I’ll let that rest.

In the meantime, turmoil has helped to create some interesting, and dare I say fun, numbers this month. We are going to begin with something pretty amazing. We have firmly established that higher interest rates increase borrowing costs. I’ve also suggested that higher interest rates don’t affect the wealthy in the same way as they affect the rest of us. Possible proof is the following: June 2023 Average Sold Price in Boulder - $2,073,003! This is the 2nd time this YEAR Boulder has had an average sales price OVER $2 million.

January and June of this year are the only times Boulder has eclipsed this lofty mark. In January there were just 23 closings and two of them rang it at $13M and $9.8M. In June, there were 65 closings with just 11 of them under $1M. Of the 54 closings over $1M, 23 of them were over $2M and two of those were over $8M. Pretty staggering. We need someone to go see if these were cash sales or if they actually took big loans with a 7% interest rate. Fun numbers, right?

Since we live in the real world, we’ll celebrate the fact that the average price in Longmont and the Carbon Valley are up slightly this month. Since they were down slightly last month, and we’ve passed the midway point of the year, I thought we’d check on where we stand versus the recent past. The first place I looked was the yearly sold totals. Closed sales typically follow new listings, so I took a peek at that too. I cast a wide net to give us a good picture of the entire region. 

I searched new, single-family listings in 2023 in Boulder, Larimer and Weld Counties. For the entire first half of this year versus 2022 new listings are down 19.1% (to 8,531). It seemed like we have been picking up steam the last couple of months, so I looked at new listings for April through June and those too are down a similar 18.9% (to 4,961). I cast the same net for single-family closings in the first half and, with no surprise at all, overall sales are down 22.4% (to 5,909)...completely in line with new listings and possibly suggesting a decline in active listing inventory.

After sustained double digit price growth over the past 10 years, the lack of price growth stings a little harder than it should. It goes against the trend and just feels wrong. It lends itself to speculation about prices falling, bubble talk pops up again (ugh!), and some “expert” comes up with another tsunami of doom. Let’s take a look at some real results and you can decide the health of this market for yourself. The data I’m referring to is in the graph in the middle of the stats report.

Results from four Front Range cities are given. Each bar represents the average price of a single-family home for the first half of the year. This larger data set gives us a more accurate picture than comparing month to month. In ALL cities, you can see a huge price jump from 2021 to 2022 from 16.2% to 20.3%. This is fairly typical of our recent history, but still dangerously high and unsustainable. Next, from the first half of 2022 to 2023, all four cities have average price results from -3.2% to +1.1%. I didn’t include Boulder for our graph because the numbers ruin the perspective, but they are up 6.5% this year over last.

What does all of this mean to you, me, your clients, the market we are in, and the one we will face? I don’t have a crystal ball and I’ve been wrong before, but I believe it bodes well. Fewer sales have not resulted in oversupply (as predicted by “experts”). High interest rates have not pushed home prices down. There are still both buyers and sellers participating in the most difficult market since 2010. The bottom line is there is nothing any of us can do about it besides go find a new lead, then go do that again and again until you find one of those elusive buyers or sellers. And as I’ve said many times, the downside to this is: all that lead gen will make you a very busy bee when interest rates do come down… and they will come down.

There isn’t much to say about the individual areas in the report. Longmont attached days on market is due to new construction. Monthly price increase/decrease are in line with the market. Lyons doesn’t see many sales, but when 8 of 20 sales so far this year are over $1M, it’s reflected in their high average and median prices. And it looks like Firestone, Frederick and Dacono may be peeking the head up with more listings, but a full ¼ of their active listings are new homes. If those builders are still offering buy downs, it could be a perfect fit for your buyer.

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