Wells: Listen before you list

Heading into summer, the Northern Colorado housing market is doing something useful for sellers. It is giving them a real-time, dollar-specific read on where their home should be priced. The catch is that the read often arrives 60 to 80 days late, and by then it costs $10,000 to $50,000 to act on. Even after the cut, a buyer is not guaranteed.

The April data tells the story. New listings are down across all four primary markets. Fort Collins is off 14.8% year over year, Windsor 22.2%. Active inventory is holding or climbing, and the homes already on the market are sitting longer. Days on market grew in every community except Fort Collins. Sellers are pulling back, and the ones who stayed are waiting.

In April alone, 145 listings cut their price in Fort Collins, 128 in Loveland, 95 in Greeley, and 93 in Windsor. Median cuts ran from $10,000 in Greeley to $15,500 in Fort Collins. Sellers waited a median of 65 to 81 days before making them. That is two months of mortgage payments, utilities, and showings before the market’s feedback finally got loud enough to listen to.

Cutting helps. It is not magic. As of late May, about four in 10 of those April reductions had attracted a buyer, either under contract or sold. The other six are still active or have been pulled off the market entirely.

The success rate scales with both price and place. Below $600,000, the cut-and-find-a-buyer rate holds steady near 45% across all four markets. Above $1 million, the gap opens. In Fort Collins, 46% of luxury sellers who cut found a buyer. In Loveland, 29%. In Windsor, just one of 16 luxury sellers who cut has secured one. That is a 6% success rate.

The takeaway at the top of the market, especially in Windsor, is that the cut alone is not enough. A $50,000 reduction on a $1.4 million listing is only a 3.5% adjustment. When that does not move the home, the market is telling you the original price was meaningfully off, not slightly off.

There is a parallel track of good news in the data. Of the 561 new listings that hit the four markets in the first 26 days of May, about one in three already has a buyer. Some went under contract in 1 to 3 days. Pricing right works, and the market responds in weeks, not months.

Across April closings, the percent of list price received still sits above 99% in every community. Pricing honestly on day one does not mean leaving money on the table. It is how sellers actually capture it.

Three things follow from this data. Price honestly to your tier from day one. The market rewards precision, not optimism. Build $7,500 to $10,000 in concessions into your expected proceeds. That has become the cost of doing business in 2026, not a sign of weakness. And above $1 million, especially in Windsor, give the market real room. A small cut on a large home is rarely the answer.

As Larry Kendall has said for years, your greatest expense in this market is the money you don’t make. In 2026, that lesson is showing up in the data with new clarity.

There are two markets running side by side in Northern Colorado this summer. In one, homes priced right find buyers in weeks. In the other, homes priced on hope sit, cut, and wait. The market is telling sellers exactly which one they are in. The ones who listen first are the ones who win.

Brandon Wells is president of The Group Inc. He can be reached at [email protected].

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