Commentary by Kyle Snyder:
“Break out the thesaurus kids because I’ve run out of words to describe this market. With no further introduction, let’s see what the charts and data say. They say Longmont is now Crazy Town. And, it’s not just Longmont. The Carbon Valley just put a stranglehold on their Market of the Year Award that was bestowed on them back in July! Stick with this one because I uncovered some good info for you…
Ho-hum, another month another world record. Look at the graph in the middle of the stats sheet and you’ll clearly see the sheer volume of sales is higher than ANY September in the past 13 years. The fact is, I was in a hurry and couldn’t locate my older data, but I found it. It verifies that in September we sold more homes than in ANY September going back 17 years to 2004. I’m just going to give it world record status.
It isn’t just the number of sales. If you remember August, we set our own high-water mark for average sales price of a single-family home in Longmont at $536,774. The average price from August to September decreased $18,000 and it still comes in #2 on the all-time high list. Additionally, I recalculated the average price for the full year in Longmont. Three months ago, it was just over $501,000 for the year. Now it stands at $503,407. By the end of the year, I predict we will surpass the $500,00 mark for the entire year… unless we run into a pandemic or something…
Note on inventory:
There isn’t any. My inventory number of 228, which is down nearly 30% over last years’ reading, contains just 68 active listings. The other 160 are pending or under contract that represent the majority of the closed sales we will see by the end of October. Those 68 listings in Longmont is .5 months (ONE-HALF a month) of inventory. Attached homes – there are 23 or about two thirds of a month of inventory. In the BoCo Plains 87 or 1.3 months of inventory and the Carbon Valley has 55 listings or about .75 or ¾ of a month of inventory. Plain and simple, we are running out of houses to sell.
The only concerning number I see in the report is the big jump in attached home prices in Longmont. A closer look reveals that a handful of attached properties sold in Prospect in September. If we remove just the 3,000 sf luxury penthouse that sold for $825,000 (and honestly not representative of the attached market in Longmont) the average drops back to an understandable $377,476.
The BoCo Plains area didn’t cross the $1 Million mark for the 3rd time ever, but they sure gave it one heck of a try. It’s reassuring to see a 60% increase in the number of homes sold versus last year and healthy increases in both average and median prices. This area seems to have lagged a bit more than the rest over the past 6 months, but this is understandable since the closer one gets to Boulder, the lockdown culture seems to be more intense.
All year, the Carbon Valley has been the most consistently stellar performer. I awarded them the Market of the Year Award at the end of July and they continue to prove me right. There is a pretty big subdivision being built out there, it’s called Barefoot Lakes, you may have heard of it. It’s new construction and there are several other new construction subdivisions in the area – almost none of that sold activity is included in the results published here. That makes the activity, sales, inventory, days on market and price increases even more amazing.
Total sales volume is UP 20% over last year. Days on market and active listings are substantially lower than last year. And as you can see the average price is NOT going through the roof. We saw the same thing in Berthoud two years ago where new construction of moderately priced homes relieved the upward pricing pressures. There is new construction in Longmont, but not at moderate price points and there you have the difference in why Longmont is 20% more expensive. It always comes back to supply vs demand.”