Wells: Not a buyer’s market, but a buyer’s moment

The question I hear most from buyers this summer is a simple one. Should I wait? They sense the market has loosened, and they wonder whether patience will be rewarded with a lower price. It is a fair question, and the answer is more useful than a yes or no. Buyers do have the most leverage they have seen in years. It just does not look the way they expect.

Start with choice. Across our four primary markets, homes for sale reached the year’s high in June, climbing steadily since January. After several lean years, buyers simply have more to look at.

But here is the honest part. This is not a glut. Against last year our inventory is running about even, actually a touch below June 2025, and against the pace of sales it is still tight. Every primary market is clearing its supply in under three and a half months, a balanced and healthy market, not an oversupplied one. Homes priced right are still selling, and pending sales in June ran up double digits from a year ago. Demand has not gone anywhere.

Where the opportunity lives depends on which town you are standing in. Fort Collins offers the most to choose from — 424 homes for sale in June at a median near $676,000 — yet it still moves quickly at 2.6 months of supply. Greeley remains the affordability anchor at a $443,000 median. Loveland is where patience pays best, with new listings running about 10 percent ahead of last year and homes taking a little longer to sell. Windsor is the quiet one, its inventory down roughly 11 percent from a year ago and its days on market the longest in the region, a thin market that rewards a patient buyer.

So what shifted? The rhythm of the year. The spring listing season peaked earlier than usual and then flattened, instead of building into summer the way it did in 2025. The frenzy cooled, and that is the opening. Buyers are no longer fighting a dozen offers on every fresh listing, and the homes that have sat now belong to sellers ready to deal.

There is a second door, and it belongs to new construction. Most national builders in our region, including D.R. Horton across Greeley and Wellington and Lennar in Fort Collins and Loveland, close their fiscal years between September and December. The back half of the calendar is exactly when they most want a finished home off their books. A builder is not emotionally attached to the house the way the family down the street is. A completed spec that sits is a cost, not a keepsake, and they will trim their margin in ways an individual seller rarely will.

Watch how the deal is built. Rather than slash a sticker price and drag down a community’s values, builders stack incentives quietly. It starts with a bought-down interest rate, often near a full point below market, then adds a waived lot premium, finished landscaping, closing costs, and a design allowance. Small alone, together they routinely reach twenty or thirty thousand dollars in real value, without the price on the sign ever moving.

The takeaway is not to wait for a downturn the data says is not coming. It is to get prepared, get pre-approved, and shop with intent. The best leverage of the year is sitting in the homes that have waited and the builders racing a year-end clock.

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

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