Check out this graph of residential real estate values, inclusive of single family homes and condos, based on Price per Square Foot for the city of Boulder over the past 3 years.

You’ll see that values remained relatively stable over the course of 2014 at around $250-260/SF. Then in Jan of 2015 property values,  based on sales, made a distinct jump to $287/SF and ended up averaging around $300/SF the rest of the year.

Is This The Next Big Price Increase?

In February of 2016 we saw a similarly large jump, up to $340/SF. If this increase holds up and follows a similar trend to the Jan 2015 jump, we are probably looking at a near term average pricing of $350/SF for 2016.

I reviewed the data (that is the residential real estate sales) for February 2016 in Boulder and this appear to be a broad-based increase, covering ~62 property sales. Further, I looked at each of the 62 properties and could not identify any high outliers.  The only outlier was from the Boulder Affordable Housing Program and was on the low side (and it was significantly lower).

What does this mean for you?

Overall, expect to pay more (or get more) for housing in Boulder. In the short term, if the pattern from 2015 repeats, pricing for March will be a bit lower than go even higher in April. So buy immediately and wait to sell until April.

If you want to speak with me about your Real Estate needs, give me a call: Brandon 720-352-5633

In this series we are taking a look at how quickly homes in various parts of Boulder and nearby communities have been selling & how close to asking the purchase price is. Each article takes a look at a different area and adjusts the data set criteria for that zone.

For segment #2 I thought we would look at downtown Boulder. Downtown is the largest high-price (per square foot) area of Boulder with a diverse housing stock of condos both old and new, single family detached homes, student rentals, landmark properties, apartments and even a few trailers. The high valuations are primarily driven by scarcity and desirability of the area. Because there are a lot of old and not-updated properties, high end finishes get you a double bonus here. That said, most of the properties included in this data set don’t have high-end finishes. Additionally, many of these properties are rentals.

For this data set I had to up the purchase price limit to under  $1 Million as the lowest sale price in this zone over the past year was $543,000. Even at that we only got 15 sales in this area. In fact there were more sales over $1,000,000 (18) than under. That’s about as entry level as it gets downtown.

Data Set Criteria Quick Look

Listing Price: below $1,000,000

Area: Downtown Boulder (see map below)

Time Frame: from Nov 2013 though Oct 2014 (12 months)

Housing Type: Detached, Single Family (meaning no condos, no apartment buildings, though this will sweep in rentals with mother-in-laws and the like)

 Data Set Map

Sales Velocity

Sales Velocity	# of Sales	Average DOM	Average DTS	Average DTO
Totals	19	77	86	53

 

This is quite a bit slower than the South/East Boulder data we looked at last time where the average DTO (days-to-offer) was 27 days less at 26. While notably lower, 53 days is still respectably quick. With such a small data set outliers may have an outsized effect, let’s take a look:

A review of the data shows only 4 significant outliers, 1 that was very short, entered as sold in 1 day. Agents often do this to get the data into the MLS when the sale is out of market. In this case the agent found a buyer before putting the house on the market. There were also 3 houses that had really long sales times of 144-318 days. These homes typically were over-priced but stayed on the market long enough to get close to what they wanted.

If we remove these 4 outliers we get an average days-to-offer of 25 which is even better than the the south/east Boulder numbers.

This offers a clear lesson to sellers on 2 points:

1. If your home is priced at market, it will sell quickly

2. If you want to get a price above market, just wait a year and you’ll probably get it (though one of the long DTOs did take a nearly 10% haircut on their price, it was a very run-down property)

 Home Sales Price Impact

Sold Statistics	Count	High	Low	Median	SP/LP
Totals	19	$973,000	$515,000	$719,600	99.23%

 

As with our previous data set we are still looking at a 99%+ ratio of sales price to listing price. This is primarily a function of how hot the market is and a signal that we have not yet peaked. So let’s keep on selling!