Pricing Trends
The data reflected in the charts in our section called Median Sale Prices provide a detailed picture of what has happened to home prices in Boulder, Broomfield and northern Jefferson County in recent decades. The charts in this section provide a different perspective on these pricing changes.
First, immediately below, we summarize the price appreciation data that we presented in the Median Sale Prices section with charts that show cumulative appreciation from 1991 to date for each of the cities we cover. You'll find similar data on a city by city basis in the section that we've called Data for Each Community.
Second, using data compiled by the Federal Housing Finance Agency's House Price Index, we provide data on long term appreciation rates for Boulder County and the Denver Metro area along with comparative data for the state of Colorado and the United States as a whole.
Summary Data on Median Sale Prices
The following four charts summarize the price change data that is presented on an annual basis in our section on Median Sale Prices.
Some brief notes:
- Selected Time Frames: Our goal is to track price appreciation over 10 year time periods in these charts. 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 slow growth (or no growth) in prices that started after the dot.com and 9/11 slowdown in the latter part 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., 1992/1992 or 2001/2002). The goal here is to minimize the impact of year on year price fluctuations, especially in communities or housing categories where a lower number of annual sales exacerbates these fluctuations.
Local, State and National Pricing Trends
Relying on data compiled by the Federal Housing Finance Agency's House Price Index, the chart we link to immediately below provides data on long term appreciation rates for Boulder County and the Denver Metro area and comparative data for both the state of Colorado and the United States as a whole. Specifically, the data represented in this graph illustrates the appreciation rate for these four areas, the rate at which prices have increased or decreased on a quarterly basis since 1980. This makes it easy to see how price appreciation rates in Boulder County have compared historically to those in the Denver metro area, to those in Colorado as a whole, and to what was happening nationally with housing prices.
Click here to see this chart on Local, State and National Pricing Trends.
Some notes:
- Price Changes: A cautionary note on reading this graph: Where you see a line on the graph moving up from 4% to 6%, this means that the rate of price increases is accelerating. Where it is moving down from 6% to 4%, this means that the rate of price increases is slowing down, not that prices are dropping. In this case, prices are still increasing at a rate of 4% a year. It is only when the lines on this graph drop below the 0% baseline that you're seeing actually drops in housing prices.
- Metropolitan Statistic Areas: These data are compiled for defined metropolitan statistical areas across the United States. On the negative side, this means there is no way to break out appreciation stats for individual communities like Boulder or Longmont. On the positive side, if you want to compare Boulder County to an area you know better elsewhere in the US, you can look at that data on the FHFA site.
- Repeat Sales Index: These data are probably the best available for tracking home price trends on a large scale. Rather than simply tracking average or median resale prices in a given area, this index tracks multiple sales of specific houses. 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 Boulder County indicate that this home should have increased from $125,000 to $$320,000 through the second quarter of 2007, they can conclude that the price increase for this home in the 3rd quarter of 2007 was $5,000. Compiling this data point with similar data on the repeated sales of thousands (or millions) of other homes, they can then calculate the annual appreciation in a given market by in a given quarter.
