Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. HOMEPAGE

Competition for homes in Colorado was fierce even before a wildfire destroyed 1,000 houses near Boulder. A burned-down lot listed for $350,000 shows how strong the market still is — despite the climate risks.

A house on fire in Colorado.
A home burns in Louisville, Colorado, a suburb of Boulder, during the Marshall Fire in December 2021. Marc Piscotty/Getty Images

  • In late 2021, a wildfire destroyed more than 1,000 homes in the suburbs of Boulder, Colorado. 
  • The fire leaves fewer houses in a place where buyers already fight over listings, pushing prices up.
  • Buyers appear poised to continue scooping up properties at premium prices, despite climate risks.

In Superior, Colorado, a small subdivision known as Sagamore once offered a version of suburban paradise. Residents there enjoyed mountain views, a Costco and Target within walking distance, and a quick drive to nearby Boulder.

Wildfires destroyed that. Today, the neighborhood is a wasteland of ash and blackened trees, the result of the Marshall Fire that swept through the area at the end of December. The blaze leveled more than 1,000 homes over 6,000 acres across Superior and Louisville, another suburb of Boulder.

All of the nearly 200 homes in the Sagamore neighborhood burned down, with only concrete foundations and rubble left behind. Former residents are now wrestling with whether to begin a lengthy and expensive rebuilding process or to sell and move on.

One owner has already made the difficult decision to leave: On January 19, a roughly 3,500-square-foot lot on Mohawk Circle in the subdivision was listed for $350,000. Online, some Twitter users balked at the price, particularly since public records showed that the land plus the two-story home that once stood on it last sold in 2007 for $290,000. "This is depressing," Phillip Ball, whose Twitter bio says he lives in Louisville, tweeted.

But what happens to the burned lot — which got at least one offer at the full asking price and is now under contract less than two weeks after hitting the market, according to the listing agent Aaron Su of Resident Realty Colorado — could be an indication of the area's prospects. 

The two-story home on Mohawk Circle, before the Marshall Fire.
The home on Mohawk Circle, in the Sagamore neighborhood of Superior, Colorado, before it was destroyed in the Marshall Fire. Courtesy of Aaron Su, Resident Realty Colorado
The driveway at 116 Mohawk Circle is surrounded by ash and blackened trees. The home that once stood there is gone.
All that remains of the property on Mohawk Circle. The lot was listed for $350,000 in January. Courtesy of Aaron Su, Resident Realty Colorado

If it sells at or above the asking price, it'll be a signal that demand for homes in this popular pocket of the state remains robust despite the fires. And in Colorado, which since 2018 has suffered four of the five largest wildfires in its history, the years-long process of rebuilding neighborhoods like Sagamore could show how both average homeowners and real-estate investors are reckoning with the threat of more frequent and more severe natural disasters. If buyers continue to scoop up properties at premium prices, they'll do so despite the growing climate risks.

Most immediately, local real-estate agents told Insider the Marshall Fire's destruction of 1,000 homes puts even more pressure on a market that was already facing a severe housing shortage. Competition for homes in Boulder County was particularly fierce during the 18 months leading up the wildfire. The affected areas sit between Boulder and the state capital of Denver, two growing tech hubs that have been popular destinations for people moving during the pandemic, lured by its natural beauty and laid-back, athletic lifestyle. 

The burned lots are also likely to attract investors who see an opportunity to scoop up properties for lower prices, said Brett Sawyer, a longtime broker in the area and the chair-elect of BOLO Realtors, a local trade association. Sawyer added that he already knew of "a couple of folks" who were working with investors to buy up some of the lots. 

He said he saw a similar influx of investors in the aftermath of 2020's Calwood Fire, which destroyed or partially damaged more than 20 homes in Colorado, including a residence of one of his clients in a subdivision north of Boulder. There are very few opportunities to build new homes within the city of Boulder, Sawyer said, and much of the land outside Boulder has been built on as well. 

"When you take the combination of the setting, the lifestyle, and the number of high-paying jobs that are in this area, we're going to continue to see upward pressure on housing demand here," Sawyer told Insider.  

Interest in Boulder area surges despite the growing fire risk

The threat of wildfires is a common consideration in Colorado mountain towns, which are farther from major cities like Denver or Boulder. But the Marshall Fire spread rapidly across suburban areas that had been widely considered safe in the past.

"It's just not something you expect in the suburbs," Matt King, a broker associate at Kentwood Real Estate who lives near Boulder, said. 

Ulrich Salzgeber, a real-estate agent in Steamboat Springs, a small mountain town about three hours from Denver, said he's bracing for increased risk across the state, including its more populated suburbs.

"It's not a matter of if but when we're going to get hit by a wildfire," said Salzgeber, the chair of Colorado Project Wildfire, an effort organized by the Colorado Association of Realtors to help real-estate agents and homeowners mitigate the threat of fires.

At the same time, the area around Boulder appears poised to remain desirable, with demand outpacing supply and pushing prices up. In Superior, the median sale price for a stand-alone single-family home reached $877,000 in December, up from $652,500 just a year earlier, according to an analysis of local multiple-listing-service data by Boulder County Realty.

colorado marshall wildfire
Aerial photos show the destruction from the Marshall Fire on January 2, 2022 in Louisville, Colorado. Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

King said clients who were touring properties in Louisville and Superior before the Marshall Fire continued to show interest after the disaster.

"They came here and said, 'We still want the Louisville-Superior area,'" King said. "It's still a great place to live."

What's next

The result, King said, will likely be increased competition in the market. And as homes are rebuilt, that could stretch the local labor force even more thin as homebuilders struggle to keep pace with demand.

Owners in neighborhoods like Sagamore that were decimated by the fire will have to weigh the cost of rebuilding against the challenge of trying to compete in today's frenzied real-estate market, Brigette Modglin, another broker associate at Kentwood Real Estate, said.

The fire also showed the importance of making sure your homeowner's insurance has kept pace with rising home values — after the Marshall Fire, Modglin said she called her insurance company and realized her own coverage did not account for recent increases in her home's value. But for some owners whose homes were destroyed by the fire, it was already too late.

Su, the listing agent for the lot in Sagamore that was listed for $350,000, said he'd been contacted by several brokers who were considering listing similar properties on behalf of other clients in the neighborhood. 

"They all want the experience and opinion from my case," Su said. 

The owner of the property, through Su, declined to comment for this story. 

Su reiterated that the location was still desirable. In two or three years, he said he envisioned the neighborhood beginning to take shape again.

Malibu, California, which suffered a similarly devastating fire in 2018 that destroyed hundreds of homes, could provide an indication of what's next for neighborhoods leveled by fires. King of Kentwood Real Estate said he recently spoke with real-estate brokers there who told him that they were just now starting to see rebuilding.

King and other local real-estate agents told Insider they expected it to be at least two years before homes started rising on the barren lots affected by the fires.

"I keep saying this is unprecedented because it is," King said. "How fast can you rebuild 1,000 homes?"

 

Real Estate Colorado Housing Market

Jump to

  1. Main content
  2. Search
  3. Account