Days on Market Are Up 21%: What It Means for Pricing Your Westside Home

A pricing playbook for 80904, 80905, 80906, 80907, and 80919 sellers now that homes are taking nearly three weeks longer to sell.

I looked at 20 years of Westside listings this week while I was pulling comps for a client on the Old Colorado City side of 80904, and one number kept nagging at me: 48. That's the average number of days a Colorado Springs home now sits on the market before going under contract, up 21% from a year ago. Not a crash. Not a stall. Just a market that's quietly asking sellers to be more precise than they used to have to be.

Here's the honest context. Citywide inventory sits at 3.8 months of supply right now. By the textbook definition, that's still short of the 5-to-6-month mark that usually separates a buyer's market from a seller's market, so I won't tell you sellers have lost the upper hand entirely. What has changed is that active listings are running close to double what they were before the pandemic, and buyers know it. They're not desperate. They're comparing. And a listing that sits for three or four weeks without a showing gets read as a signal, fairly or not, that something about the price or the home itself is off.

Here's the part I want Westside sellers to really sit with: a price cut doesn't just cost you the dollar amount of the cut. It costs you the momentum of your first two weeks on market, which is when the most serious, most qualified buyers are watching. It resets the "why hasn't this sold" clock in every buyer's head. And on the Westside specifically, where inventory is thinner and buyers know the neighborhoods well, a stale listing gets noticed fast. I've watched buyers in 80905 skip a showing entirely because they saw a price drop and assumed something was wrong with the house, when the real story was just an ambitious initial number.

Why sellers price too high in the first place

Most of the time it isn't greed. It's math done with the wrong inputs, or a number chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with the market at all. I've sat at kitchen tables with rightsizing sellers who quoted me what a neighbor "heard" a house sold for three streets over, with none of the updates or the lot size accounted for. And I've sat with sellers where the real number wasn't about the house at all. It was about not being ready to actually leave the neighbors they've had for fifteen or twenty years, and pricing high without quite admitting that a slower, "testing the waters" listing felt safer than a fast, real one. I get it. Leaving a place where you know who's going to grab your mail when you're out of town, and genuinely not knowing if you'll build that kind of relationship again, is a real loss, not a small one. But a home priced to stall doesn't actually buy you more time to get ready emotionally. It just costs you money later, on the same timeline you were trying to avoid.

What "priced right" actually looks like right now

Pricing right the first time isn't about racing to the bottom, and it isn't about "leaving room to negotiate" either, which is one of the most common pieces of outdated advice I hear from sellers who last sold a home a decade ago. In a market with this much inventory, "leaving room" just tells buyers there's room, and they'll ask for more of it than you planned to give. The number that works is the number a well-informed buyer would agree to without blinking, based on closed comps from the last 60-90 days in your specific zip, not the whole city average. That's a very different number in 80906, where the median closed price over the last 90 days is running $630,000, pulled up by the larger lots and Broadmoor-area homes mixed in with more modest Stratmoor condos, than it is in 80905, where the median sits at $380,000.

Median sale price by Westside zip

Here's the current snapshot across the five zips I work most, pulled directly from MLS closed sales over the last 90 days:

Notice the spread. That's a $250,000 gap between 80905 and 80906, and 80919 isn't far behind 80906. Pricing off a citywide average instead of your specific zip and even sub-neighborhood is exactly how sellers end up tens of thousands off from day one, and that gap shows up in the offer, or the lack of one, within the first two weeks.

The rate backdrop matters too

The 30-year fixed averaged 6.68% as of August 19, per Bankrate's survey of large lenders, with local lenders quoting a range of roughly 6.59% to 6.75% this week. Most forecasts have rates holding in the mid-6% range through the rest of the year rather than dropping sharply. That matters for pricing because it means the buyer pool isn't going to suddenly expand from a rate drop bailing out an overpriced listing. The buyers who are out there now, at these rates, have already done their monthly payment math. They know what they can afford, and they will not stretch for a home that's priced $15,000 above what the comps support, no matter how nice the kitchen is.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if my Westside home is priced right for today's market?

Look at closed sales within your specific zip from the last 60-90 days, not active listings and not the citywide median. If your number requires the buyer to believe your home is worth more than three or four recent, comparable closed sales in your neighborhood, it's not priced to today's market yet.

What happens if I price too high on the Westside right now?

You lose your first-two-weeks momentum, which is when the most motivated buyers are watching new listings. With days on market already up 21% citywide, an overpriced listing tends to sit long enough that a price cut becomes public on the MLS, which resets buyer perception and often lands you at a lower final price than if you'd priced accurately from day one.

Should I leave room to negotiate or price at market value?

Price at accurate market value. Citywide supply sits at 3.8 months, still short of the textbook 6-month buyer's market threshold, but active listings are running close to double pre-pandemic levels and buyers are comparing closely. "Leaving room" in that environment just tells buyers there's more room than you intended to give, and you end up negotiating from behind instead of from a position of a clean, well-priced listing.

How long will it take to sell my home if I price it correctly?

Citywide days on market is averaging 48 right now, up 21% from a year ago, but accurately priced Westside homes routinely beat that average because they generate showings in the first 10 days, which is the single biggest predictor of a fast, clean sale.

What if I'm not emotionally ready to price my home to sell fast?

That's real, and it's common, especially when the hard part isn't the house but leaving neighbors and a community you've built over years. Tell me that up front. We can time your listing around your actual readiness instead of using price as a stalling tactic that costs you money later on the same timeline.

Want a real number for your Westside home, not a guess?

About Les Goss

Les Goss is the founder and President of Colorado Peak Properties, associated with Metro Brokers, specializing in the Westside of Colorado Springs (zips 80904, 80905, 80906, 80907, 80919). A former classroom teacher and fix-and-flip renovator since 2004, Les holds eight designations: PSA (Pricing Strategy Advisor), SRES (Seniors Real Estate Specialist), ABR (Accredited Buyer's Representative), GRI (Graduate, REALTOR Institute), MRP (Military Relocation Professional), ePro, NHCB, and REMD.