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About Our Market Stats

How this Section is Organized

  • By Houses Size & Type: In the first four sections, including Median Sales Prices, Change in Price Over Time, Number of Sales, and How Quick do They Sell, each chart focuses on a single housing type/size (e.g., small single family houses) and provides comparative data for all the major communities we cover. This makes it easy to see whether small houses are selling more quickly in Boulder or Arvada and to compare prices for mid-sized houses in Longmont and Broomfield. e report the same data in two formats.
  • By Community: In the next two sections, Data for Each Community and Towns, Mountains & Plains, we've organized the data on a community basis. Here you'll find charts comparing tracking price changes for large, mid-sized, and small houses or tracking numbers of sales for various housing size/types for Longmont. This mode of organizing the data makes it easy to see whether condos or small houses are selling more quickly in Boulder or what type of property has increased in value more over the long term in Arvada.
  • Data on the Downturn: In the final section, Recession and the Local Market, we've reanalyzed our pricing and sales data to track the local impact of the downturn that followed the national and international financial crisis in 2008.

Using Stats in Making Home Buying Decisions

You can spend a lifetime analyzing real estate statistics and still remain uncertain of what's happening in the real estate market. Reported numbers, and even trends, will vary depending on the data you use to track the market, how you compile that data, and how you present that data. Still home buyers can learn a lot by spending an hour or two looking at statistical data on the real estate market they're buying in. Stats can give you a sense of whether prices are rising or falling, what communities you can afford to buy in, and how quickly properties are selling.

But stats can also help you make bad decisions. Many buyers, for example, have an urge to use price appreciation stats as a basis for deciding whether they should be buying a home and what community they should buy it in. While you shouldn't ignore sales stats in making these decisions, you need to remember that "past performance does not guarantee future returns." Stats are historical data and shouldn't be used to try to predict the future, at least not in isolation from other information about the community and market. Look at the numbers, and mull them over, but don't take them as gospel or rely on them for critical life decisions. Like all data, they have their limitations.

Background Info on Our Market Stats

  • Cities Covered: Our stats cover the major communities in Boulder County, Broomfield County, and northern Jefferson County including Boulder, Gunbarrel, Louisville, Lafayette, Superior, Longmont, Erie, Arvada, Broomfield and Westminster. In the section titled Towns, Mountains & Plains, we provide some basic stats for some of the smaller towns in the area including Nederland, Niwot, and Lyons as well as the foothills above Boulder, the high mountains in Boulder County, and the rural Boulder County plains.
  • Data Sources: Our data is drawn from two MLS systems, IRES and Metrolist, and from county real estate tax record data as compiled and provided by Metrolist.
  • Chart Background Color: While we state on each chart whether we're using MLS sales or all sales listed in the tax records, we've also used different background colors in the charts to indicate what data sources it is based on. Briefly:
    • Brown Background: Based on data from MLS resale homes only.
    • Blue Background: Based on data from all recorded sales in the tax records.
    • Green Background: Incorporates both MLS resale data and tax record data.
  • House Type and Size: Real estate sales and pricing data are most commonly reported on a community basis, providing information on the sales prices or sales numbers for all homes sales in a community like Boulder or Arvada. In contrast, our data on 3 sizes of single family homes and on condos within a restricted square footage range. This allows us to do an "apples to apples" comparison of prices for comparably sized houses in different communities, to track price changes of comparable houses within a single community over time, and to gain insight into the sales patterns of homes in different size and price categories under various market conditions.
  • Time Frame: Our data from the tax records goes back to 1990. Data from MLS sales goes back to1997 for Boulder County communities and 2004 for Jefferson County and Broomfield County.
  • Types of Sales Covered: Our MLS sales data is limited to houses and condos listed by real estate agents and sold through the MLS systems. We also restrict this MLS sales data to sales of existing homes, excluding sales by new home builders. Our data on sales from the tax records includes MLS sales of existing homes, sales of new homes by builders, County foreclosure sales, and sales of other homes not listed in the MLS.
  • Limitations of the MLS Sales Data: These data includes only sales of properties that have been listed and sold by real estate agents through one of our local MLS systems. Private "unlisted" sales and sales of foreclosed properties through the counties are not included. While many new homes sold by builders are listed in these MLS systems, we have excluded them from our MLS sales data, so that this data is focusing on "resale homes" only.
  • Limitations of the Tax Record Data: Our database from which we pull our tax record data is limited to only the last two sales of each property. If a property sold in 1994, 2001, and 2005, we will miss the data on the 1994 sale. So as we move further back in time, our tax record data is based on an increasing small subset of the sales that actually occurred. We include data on the numbers of these sales primarily to make it clear how large a subset of all sales is being used to generate median price data from the tax records.