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We've analyzed 36 Boulder neighborhoods based on affordability
Use historical data to analyze different neighborhoods like a real estate pro. Then build your plan.
Boulder by sub-market: price against pricing behaviour
36 sub-markets with at least 50 sales; 8,066 modelled sales, Jan 2021 – Sep 2026. Y axis: Sale-to-list %.
Dot size is the number of sales; colour is the market area. Sub-market names are as recorded in the Boulder sales file.
Read the neighborhood guides → what homes are selling, what they cost, who is buying, and how to price or bid.
Turn the numbers into a plan: what you can afford in Boulder, the down payment assistance you qualify for, and how Ownify financing compares.
Build your free financing plan →How real estate pricing in Boulder works
Boulder is a negotiation market, not an auction market. Sellers list about five percent above value, buyers close about two percent under ask, and only one sale in seven goes over asking.
What should you bid?
Competitiveness Scorer
Sub-market codes come from the Boulder sales file; the first three characters are the sub-market code used by the scorer.
Negotiable. Homes like this in 101 · Downtown Boulder & Canyon condos close several percent under asking; use the Bidding Analyzer.
Index = percentile rank of a blended expectation of sale-vs-value (40%) and sale-vs-ask (60%) from the home's characteristics and sub-market, calibrated on 8,066 Boulder sales 2021–2026. It is an expectation, not the realised outcome for the last sale.
Bidding Strategy Analyzer
Probability your bid wins
Modelled across bids from 85% to 115% of ask, using the Boulder buyer-win fit on 2,026 sales, 2023Q3–2026Q3.
P(win) combines the seller's probability of selling with the distribution of winning bids around the expected sale price.
Priced near value. Boulder sales close at a median 98–99% of ask in this range; a bid one to two percent under ask wins roughly half the time.
Out-of-sample on 608 Boulder sales: a bid at the expected sale price won 44% of the time (predicted 44%); at 5% above, 90% (predicted 81%); at 10% above, 96% (predicted 95%). Bids 5% below expected sale win less often than the model says (9% vs 17%) — treat low-ball win odds as optimistic.
Selling instead?
Know your bid? Next, lock in the financing. See what you can afford in Boulder, which down payment assistance you qualify for, and how Ownify financing compares.
Build your free financing plan →The university is Boulder's biggest employer of home buyers
Tech is 14.5% of Boulder buyers today. The largest single employer category is universities and research labs at 15.2%, up from 11.2% two years ago.
Buyer share by sector, rolling four quarters
n per window 1,000–1,600 matched buyers; 2021Q4–2026Q3.
Whiskers are 95% confidence intervals on each rolling-four-quarter share.
Two-year change in buyer share, by industry
29 industries, Oct 2024 – Sep 2026 against Oct 2022 – Sep 2024; 6,927 matched buyers.
Change in percentage points of all matched Boulder buyers.
Industry concentration by market area
Six buyer segments across Boulder market areas with at least 60 matched buyers; 6,927 buyers, Jan 2021 – Sep 2026.
Each dot is a market area; the dashed line is the county-wide share for that segment.
Boulder buyers by industry
| Software & IT | 675 | $1,013,700 | 102.7 | 8% | 77.5% | 51.9 |
| Higher Education & Research | 641 | $825,000 | 101.4 | 8.3% | 63.7% | 56.3 |
| Hospital & Health Care | 619 | $910,000 | 100.9 | 11.6% | 68% | 51.9 |
| Accounting & Consulting | 457 | $1,060,000 | 101.0 | 11.4% | 71.3% | 47.5 |
| Self-Employed / Small Business | 431 | $950,000 | 102.8 | 15.1% | 69.6% | 50.1 |
| Financial Services | 322 | $1,061,500 | 100.4 | 9.6% | 73.9% | 48.1 |
| Nonprofit & Philanthropy | 292 | $950,000 | 101.6 | 11% | 70.9% | 50.3 |
| Real Estate | 244 | $951,000 | 99.0 | 12.3% | 68.4% | 48.0 |
| Retail & Consumer Goods | 238 | $900,000 | 100.5 | 13.4% | 71% | 51.0 |
| Legal Services | 203 | $1,036,600 | 103.1 | 10.8% | 72.9% | 50.2 |
| Government Administration | 201 | $830,000 | 100.0 | 10.9% | 63.2% | 55.5 |
| Media & Entertainment | 197 | $1,026,000 | 104.1 | 7.6% | 78.2% | 49.8 |
| Primary & Secondary Education | 197 | $795,000 | 100.8 | 10.7% | 62.4% | 58.0 |
| Internet & E-commerce | 189 | $1,050,000 | 104.8 | 6.9% | 79.9% | 54.1 |
| Computer Hardware & Semiconductors | 188 | $957,500 | 104.4 | 10.6% | 71.8% | 53.5 |
| Manufacturing & Industrial | 176 | $870,000 | 100.8 | 10.8% | 65.9% | 52.1 |
| Aerospace & Defense | 174 | $829,225 | 103.9 | 6.3% | 69.5% | 57.5 |
| Food & Beverage | 172 | $844,500 | 101.9 | 8.7% | 61% | 51.4 |
| Energy & Utilities | 162 | $1,050,000 | 102.2 | 6.2% | 75.9% | 47.1 |
| Construction & Trades | 155 | $895,000 | 98.3 | 14.8% | 69% | 53.1 |
| Hospitality & Travel | 138 | $872,500 | 102.5 | 13% | 67.4% | 54.7 |
| Biotechnology & Pharmaceuticals | 125 | $1,125,000 | 102.5 | 5.6% | 76% | 50.3 |
| Marketing & Advertising | 122 | $920,000 | 103.1 | 8.2% | 76.2% | 52.6 |
| Architecture & Design | 114 | $902,500 | 103.3 | 7% | 76.3% | 55.3 |
| Venture Capital & Private Equity | 92 | $1,248,250 | 106.9 | 5.4% | 80.4% | 42.7 |
| Medical Devices | 90 | $875,000 | 99.4 | 6.7% | 73.3% | 54.1 |
| Insurance | 79 | $925,000 | 104.2 | 16.5% | 64.6% | 52.4 |
| Automotive | 58 | $860,000 | 99.0 | 17.2% | 62.1% | 49.6 |
| Artificial Intelligence | 51 | $975,000 | 104.3 | 7.8% | 70.6% | 56.4 |
6,927 buyers on 5,000 transactions matched to a classified employer (Clay 4,281 + search-resolved 2,454); aggregated only, no individual identified.
Cash buyers pay more, not less
Across all Boulder sales cash offers close 4.7 points higher relative to value (CI 2.7–6.6), concentrated in condos (+7.2) and homes over $1.5M (+8.3). In the $700K–1.5M core the cash effect is zero. Cash is 21% of purchases, down from 26% in 2024.
Cash buyers pay more, not less
Points of sale-vs-value explained by a cash offer, controlling for sub-market, quarter and property type; 8,066 sales, Jan 2021 – Sep 2026.
Whiskers are 95% confidence intervals from the segment regressions.
Boulder Pricing compared to Value
Pricing strategy quadrants
1,500 sampled Boulder sales with a verified ask, Jan 2021 – Sep 2026, plotted as list-vs-value against sale-vs-value.
Quadrants split at 100% of value on both axes; points beyond 150% of value are not plotted. Shares are of all verified-ask sales.
12.5% of these sales are priced within 5% of value on both sides: the ask lands within 5% of value on 18.9% of sales and the closing price lands within 5% of value on 19.3%. Most of Boulder clusters tightly around value, so the ask, not the bidding, sets where a sale ends up.
What the numbers mean
- Sale-to-list ratio
- Sale price divided by the original asking price. Boulder median 97.9%.
- Owen value P*
- AVM × 0.971 fair-value factor × property adjustment. The 0.971 is the trailing-four-quarter median of sale ÷ AVM.
- Competitiveness index
- A percentile from 0 to 100 of the blended expectation of sale-vs-value and sale-vs-ask.
- Days from ask to sale
- Calendar days from the verified ask to close. Not MLS days-on-market.
Questions Boulder buyers and sellers ask
Is Boulder a buyer's or a seller's market right now?
Neither in the auction sense. 68% of sales close under asking and 15% over; the median discount is 2.1%. It is a market where the ask is negotiated, not bid up.
What is the median home price by sub-market?
Sub-market medians run from $383,000 in Twin Lakes and Stonegate to $2.39 million in Chautauqua. The sub-market chart above lists all 36.
How much does sale-to-asking vary by neighbourhood?
From 96.6% in Chautauqua to 100.0% in Martin Acres, Highland Park, Heatherwood and Table Mesa North.
Do cash buyers get a discount?
No. Controlling for what they buy, they pay 4.7 points more relative to value.
Why is the AI-buyer share so low?
AI buyers are 0.7% of Boulder purchases. The university and health systems are Boulder's tech.
Read the underlying work
- Do agents price their own Boulder homes differently? (2026 study)
- Ownify University
- How Ownify prices homes
- AI, homeownership and affordability
8,417 Boulder residential transactions recorded January 2021 to September 2026; 3,543 original asking prices recovered and verified; 6,927 buyers matched to 5,000 transactions and classified into 33 industries. All buyer statistics are aggregated at the industry, sub-market and quarterly level; no individual buyer, owner or employer is identified.
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