2026 Housing Market Forecast

2025 has been an interesting year for real estate in Colorado, and similarly across the US.

Early Spring and late Winter were extremely busy, but instead of ramping up through Summer, we saw a nosedive in many areas of Colorado just at the end of Spring that lasted pretty much the rest of the year!

This slow was indeed unusual for Colorado, and Q3 brought a slightly higher buyer's market than seller's, while Q4 turned hard to a buyer's market.

What does this tell us?

2026 is likely to start off and stay a buyer's market for quite some time, as we have been seeing a steady increase in inventory all year.

Some of this was due to builders catching up, some of it due to sellers who are unwilling to part with their 2-3% interest rates and of course, buyers who are unwilling to deal with 7%!

The interest rates have been slowly, in some cases, VERY slowly, trending downwards, and this is leading more buyers to decide it is time to move forward.

I have seen interest rates in the mid-high 5s with the right amount of seller concessions being used to buy down a rate, and with VA rates.

The trending pattern here is higher days on the market, and most offers coming in with high concessions being asked for so that buyers can get a lower interest rate. We are likely to see this continue into the beginning quarter of 2026, if not further in.

The reality is - a balanced market is still a steady market!