The Group Shares A Positive 2020 Northern Colorado Annual Growth Forecast

By Blaine Howerton and Matt Dierlam
North Forty News

More than 1,000 people packed the room at the Embassy Suites in Loveland on January 22. The Group’s 225 Realtors attended and invited clients to join them. They were there to hear the Real Estate and Economic Forecast for Northern Colorado. The Group has organized the event for the past 25 years.

The Group compiles quality data with its insights from the last year to help show customers, realtors and investors what the 2020 landscape will look like in Northern Colorado.

The forecast has earned community respect by being 99.5% accurate with the number of homes sold and 98.75% accurate with average home sale price.

The audience was captivated and the mood was upbeat. There were multiple audible gasps when Brandon Wells, The Group President, showed the 10-year recap data demonstrating how the average home sales price increased between 2010 and 2019. In Ault/Eaton/Kersey/LaSalle/Mead/Milliken, for example, the average combined home price increased by 205%.

“Our outlook is very positive,” said Wells, in an interview with North Forty News. “We can expect continued growth but at slower rates when compared to the past decade; we see no looming recession in NoCo at this time.” 

“From my perspective, looking at the region, we have had an incredibly healthy and robust job market. We went through the great recession a decade ago. It  had minimal impact compared to other parts of the country,” he said “We believe the health of our economy is still very strong.”

The Group is forecasting average home prices in Northern Colorado will increase another approximately 2.1% in 2020, from $415,669 (2019) to $424,761. Interest rates should remain relatively stable in 2020, which increases affordability.

The company says data shows unexpected opportunities in previous years (for both buyers and sellers) allowed homebuyers to borrow more money to buy a house. Meanwhile, allowing current homeowners to refinance to lower their monthly costs through refinancing programs. This created a stable and growing market.

The findings also show employment in Northern Colorado kept growing while interest rates stayed low – especially in Larimer County (Fort Collins and Loveland). By the end of 2019, 7,000 more Larimer County residents were working than the year before. Weld County employment increased by nearly 6,000. Jobless rates in both counties hovered well below the national average at 2.1 percent.

Personal finance website SmartAsset ranked Fort Collins-Loveland No. 4 among the country’s most stable housing markets for 2019 (https://smartasset.com/mortgage/best-housing-markets-for-growth-and-stability-2019). WalletHub ranked Greeley as No. 20 nationally among 300 cities on its list of best local real estate markets in 2019 (Fort Collins was No. 34). The area’s surrounding communities (Berthoud, Severance, Windsor and Wellington) are key factors in those rankings, due to the regional nature of the data collected.

“We are still very much in a sellers market,” said Wells. “We think there’s going to be continued stabilization in the marketplace.”

In his presentation, Wells shared a 10 year Northern Colorado perspective from 2010 to 2020. He said the Average price of a home increased by 86% in Fort Collins, 91% in Loveland, 135% in Greeley/Evans, 80% in Windsor/Severance, 175% in Timnath, 86% in Wellington, 129% in Berthoud, and 205% in Ault (and surrounding combined areas).

Over the years The Group has built its community of Real Estate Agents in Northern Colorado to 225 strong. “The Group has been involved in 26% of real estate transactions in Northern Colorado. So that’s one in four,” said Wells. “We are incredibly grateful and thankful for all of the people who trust us to provide their real estate services and information.”

The report and slides from the evening have been posted at: https://www.thegroupinc.com/forecast-2020

About The Group:

The Group, Inc is 100% employee owned and operated. It is not a franchise. It is the largest independently owned real estate company in Northern Colorado. The Group completed $1.8 Billion in transaction volume in 2019.