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Change in Price Over Time

Brief History of Local Housing Prices

A brief outline of the history of housing prices in Colorado over the past 25 years:

  • The late 1980s: A two year period of depreciating housing prices in Colorado, associated with problems in the oil industry that had held prices down for several years, ended as prices began rising once again in the latter 1/2 of 1989. Boulder County had only 2 quarters of depreciating values during this period.
  • 1991-2001: A very strong market with 8% annual appreciation rates in Colorado as well as the Denver metro area, with 9% average appreciation rates in Boulder County.
  • 2001-2007: A fairly weak market following the 2001 high tech bust, with 2.5% annual appreciation rates in Denver, 3.% in Colorado as a whole, and 3.5% in Boulder County. This contrasts with 7% appreciation nationally over this period and bubble-level annual appreciation rates of 20% and more in some areas.
  • 2008-2011: The downturn following the financial crisis of 2008 lead to a dramatic drop in the number of sales in our local markets and to significant price depreciation in some areas.

Related Data and Information

Our price appreciation data illustrate cumulative price appreciation from 1991 to date for the cities we cover in Boulder, Broomfield, and northern Jefferson County. These charts are based on the same data used in the section called Median Sale Prices.

If you're interested in price appreciation rates for:

S&P/Case-Shiller and FHFA House Price Index

To put these data in a broader perspective, we've put together this chart on long term appreciation price appreciation/depreciation rates for the US, Colorado, the Denver Metro Area, and Boulder County. This chart is based on data provided by the Federal Housing Finance Agency's House Price Index. For similar data on other metropolitan areas around the country, check out this S&P/Case-Shiller data as compiled by the New York Times.

Long Term Change in Housing Prices

Appreciation Over Time: Comparing Communities

Appreciation Over Time: Current Prices vs. 2006|2007 Prices

Appreciation Over Time: 2001|2002 Prices vs. 2006|2007 Prices

More Comparative Pricing Data

Appreciation Over Time: Boulder Neighborhoods

Appreciation Over Time: Longmont Neighborhoods

Technical Notes on Our Price Appreciation Stats

  • Selected Time Frames: Our goal here is to track price appreciation over 10 year time periods. We selected 2001/2002 as the break point because this was the peak of a period of strong appreciation in the 1990's and a period of more modest or negative price changes that began with the dot.com bust and the 9/11 attack in the latter half of 2001.
  • Two Year Averages: Rather than track appreciation from 1991 to 2001, we've chosen to use the average of the median prices for two year periods (e.g., 1991/1992 & 2001/2002). We took this approach in order to minimize the impact of year on year price fluctuations, especially in communities or housing categories where lower numbers of annual sales exacerbates these fluctuations.
  • Repeat Sales versus Median Prices: The data on housing prices mentioned above provided by S&P/Case-Shiller and FHFA's House Price Index is based on a different and superior method of tracking prices changes than are most housing stats. Rather than simply tracking average or median resale prices, these indices track repeated sales of specific properties. For example, if their data show that the home at 567 Smith Lane in Louisville, Colorado sold for $125,000 in the second quarter of 1992, and then resold for $325,000 in the third quarter of 2007, they know that this home increased in value by $200,000 over that time frame. If their compiled data on other homes sales in the same area indicate that this home should have increased from $125,000 to $$320,000 through the second quarter of 2007, they can conclude that the home increased in price by $5000 in the 3rd quarter of 2007. By compiling this kind of data for all homes sold in the 3rd quarter of 2007, they derive that average/median appreciation rate for that quarter.

Click Here for important information on our stats and how they differ from the stats produced by the Boulder Area Realtor Association. Click Here for statistics from the Boulder Area Realtor Association.