Published October 25, 2026 in Market Update

Fort Collins sales rose even with fewer listings overall

By Jay L McCoy

Real estate, fort collins

Nationally, Realtor.com reported that active listings grew 5.5% year over year, topping 1.16 million homes for sale. Fort Collins moved in the opposite direction on inventory. The Real Estate Data Aggregator counted 955 homes for sale across the area in the three months ending August 31, 2026, down 8.3% from the same months of 2025. Yet buyers here kept buying. Sales rose 10.8% in the same period. That gap between the national supply story and what happened locally is the most important thing a Fort Collins homeowner should understand right now.

The area-wide picture

Fewer new listings came to market and fewer homes sat available, yet closed sales rose by more than one in ten. That combination tells sellers that buyers are present and willing. It tells buyers that the pool of choices is smaller than it was a year ago, and that priced-right homes are moving.

How each ZIP code performed

The area-wide number covers real differences from one ZIP code to the next. The Real Estate Data Aggregator breaks them out below. I am using the ZIP codes as location markers here. If you want to know what this means for a specific street or subdivision, that is a different conversation, and I am glad to have it.

Where things moved fastest

The Real Estate Data Aggregator shows ZIP 80526, which covers the west side of Fort Collins toward the foothills, had a median of 42 days on market. That was unchanged from a year before, and the tightest pace among the Fort Collins ZIPs. Nearly half of homes there, 49.4%, went under contract within two weeks of listing. ZIP 80525, which covers the southeast side along the Harmony area, was close behind at 39.8% under contract within two weeks, up 4.2 points from a year before.

Where prices rose and where they dipped

Most ZIP codes saw median prices rise year over year. The Real Estate Data Aggregator shows ZIP 80526 up 7.4% to $569,000, and ZIP 80524 up 7.1% to $593,366. ZIP 80525 rose a more modest 1.8% to $589,500. ZIP 80528 was nearly flat, up just 0.4% to $675,000. ZIP 80521, which includes Old Town and the west-central part of Fort Collins, was the one ZIP where the median dipped, down 2.7% to $535,000. That is a small move, and sales volume there still rose 13.5%. A price dip with rising sales volume often means the mix of homes that sold shifted, not that values fell across the board.

Supply is tighter than the national picture suggests

Realtor.com reported that mortgage rates topped 7% in September 2026, the first time since January 2025. That level of rates has slowed buyers in many parts of the country. It has also contributed to Realtor.com's finding that 20.8% of listings nationally took a price cut in September 2026, the highest share since October 2022. Fort Collins is not immune to rate pressure, but the supply numbers here tell a different story than the national one.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that U.S. house prices rose 2.6% from July 2025 to July 2026. The Fort Collins ZIP codes where prices rose did so at a faster pace than that national figure, which is worth noting for both buyers and sellers setting expectations.

What sellers are getting at the closing table

The Real Estate Data Aggregator shows that sellers across most Fort Collins ZIP codes are receiving very close to their asking price. ZIP 80526 led at 99.5% of list price, up 0.5 points from a year before. ZIP 80525 came in at 99.1%. ZIPs 80524 and 80528 were each at 98.9%. ZIP 80521 was the softest at 98.6%, which is still a strong outcome. These figures suggest that sellers who price accurately are not leaving much on the table.

About 22.5% of homes in ZIP 80526 sold above list price, up 2.5 points from a year before. That is the highest above-list share among the Fort Collins ZIP codes in this period. ZIP 80521 saw its above-list share slip 1.6 points to 19.8%, and ZIP 80524 dropped 3.9 points to 15.9%. Those shifts are worth watching if you are pricing a home in those areas.

One note about ZIP codes and what they hide

A ZIP code is a wide net. One street can read very differently from the ZIP code number that covers it. A home off Drake and Lemay sits in a different part of the market than one near the foothills, even if both fall in the same ZIP. The numbers above are a starting point, not a final answer for any one address.