2017 Commentary

Last year, both OCC and EAS MLS areas showed double-digit appreciation. In 2016, both areas seemed to return to earth with average price gains below the MLS average. In Old Colorado City, a little deeper explanation is required. The first part is the fact that the average asking price at year’s end 2016 was $333,217. In Old Colorado City. Tell almost anyone four years ago that homes, on average, would be asking more than $330,000 in Old Colorado City and you’d get an eye roll followed by “yeah, right.” The second part of that is that prices usually showed very little room for negotiation selling extremely close to their asking price. The third is symptomatic of the market: there just wasn’t as much good stuff for sale in OCC in 2016. One of the only places to list fewer homes in 2016 than 2015 was OCC, and if buyers came across anything good, they showed up in droves. Anecdote time: we put two listings under contract in OCC in 2016. One had seven offers in three days and sold for $10,000 over asking price. There was an escalator clause in one of those offers for $31,000 more than the asking price (that’s a whole other story for another time!). The other listing had a buyer in line before the sign went in the yard.

Standard Disclaimer: The Where to Buy Project is an Annual Creation of WelcomeWest.com for Selley Group Real Estate. It uses data extracted from the Pikes Peak RSC Multiple Listing system for the previous calendar year and compares it to the prior calendar year. For the 2017 report, the effective data range is January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2016. The information is then visualized and comprehended using Focus1st.com Pricing Software. Information is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. 

How to Use The Where to Buy Project: For a resource guide on how to better comprehend the Focus1st Graphs, please refer to the Where to Buy Project Source Video . In all cases, Days on Market is measured differently in Focus1st than in the RSC MLS: It is the length of time between initial list date and day of close. The RSC MLS measures this date in marketing days, the number of days between initial listing and the day of contract. To standardize measurement, subtract 40 days from the Focus1st measure to provide an approximate equivalent to the same measurement in RSC MLS.

Crown Hill Mesa

Crown Hill was the first single-family neighborhood on the mesa west of downtown Colorado Springs. Built around Lower Gold Camp and extending south to Rio Grande, it’s a small neighborhood but sees a lot of inventory turnover year after year. In the last five years, it has grown tremendously in popularity. The reasons have to do with scarcity: there are few newer home options west of I-25. Buyers that want S/W or want CEN often times really want both access to downtown and access to trails, walkable places. Crown Hill Mesa therefore is a wonderful compromise-that-doesn’t-feel-like-a-compromise because it is close to downtown, is across the street from Bear Creek Park and add to that, the attribute of newer homes.

Gold Hill Mesa

We have two Categories that we track in GHM: One is the single-family-only market. The majority of Gold Hill Mesa is a single-family neighborhood with a number of local builders building in this area (some, like Hi-Point, specialize in the neighborhood) but there are also quite a few town home sales. In general, the idea of town home ownership is something we are lukewarm on throughout Colorado Springs. That isn’t to say that we do not sell town homes; it is to say that buying a town home should have an added layer of logic behind it. Is the area convenient to a lot of your day to day? Is the area walkable? Are there deep-seated, core city amenities that are easily accessible? The reason behind this is that most town homes are built right alongside single family areas that have a suburban appeal, but a suburban appeal and a town home appeal is quite different. The whole idea of a town home is urban. An urban dweller will want our-your-door convenience. It’s intriguing that Gold Hill Mesa offers this in a way that is pretty unique in Colorado Springs. So there are two reports here: one restricted to single-family sales, and one that shows all activity (town homes included).

Single-Family

All Activity

Old Colorado City

Old Colorado City is an arbitrary distinction largely driven by the MLS mapping system. If you can’t tell, the MLS mapping system bugs us. We have one client who has their driveway within the MLS mapping systems’s OCC boundary, but the house and most of the lot sits inside WES. The line cuts right through the yard. The MLS won’t change it. Zillow and Realtor.com use zip codes and that helps buyers as all of OCC is 80904. Old Colorado City was notorious for it’s lawlessness. While downtown Colorado Springs was Little London where people actually went a’courting on big-wheeled bicycles wearing monocles, The OCC was known for gun fights and whole blocks burning down. And that was just on a Tuesday. Some blocks are a random pastiche of 1890 Vic’s next to post WWII squares, artful bungalows, a foundation-cracked hovel and a one-off scrape in-progress. It’s Happening in OCC. It’s less expensive than downtown and closer to trails and the commercial corridor on Colorado seems to be extending east towards “Gateway” (a sometimes-used term for the stretch between Limit and I-25 along Colorado). Generally, appraisers will use sales interchangeably from Eastern, Middle and Western OCC. They understand that even though these areas may be 2+ miles apart, buyers want the area and style of a house. There are lots of particulars to an individual property in OCC and in some ways it’s an appraiser’s nightmare because of it (square footage means jack-squat). To track the area, we have created four random designations:

• Eastern OCC
• Middle OCC
• Western OCC
• And Northern OCC

Great names, huh? We have defined the boundaries below. Areas not here are the area south of Highway 24 sometimes called “Bott” due to the even broader range of values and difficulty in forming a pattern of value; and Mesa Heights, a 90’s built neighborhood of two streets at Uintah and Mesa that’s just too-small to track.

Eastern

This is boundaried on the west by the 8th/Limit intersection with Highway 24 and runs north into the Promontory Open Space; north to the Hagerman Open Space; and then continues east to I-25.

Middle

This takes the Eastern Boundary and goes to 21st. The southern boundary is Highway 24 and the northern boundary is Uintah.

Western

This is the area south of Uintah to Highway 24 that is west of 21st to approximately the Manitou Safeway.

North

This is the stretch of the MLS-mapped OCC area north of Uintah.