What Is for Sale vs. What Is Selling: A Price Band Look at the Pikes Peak Market

A recent industry report, covered by The Gazette, described a moderate shortage of homes for middle-income earners in Colorado Springs. That raised a question we could answer directly from the live MLS data: how does the inventory sitting on the market right now line up with what buyers actually closed on over the last 90 days?

We pulled every active residential listing in the Pikes Peak MLS footprint and every residential closing from the trailing 90 days, then lined them up price band by price band. Land, commercial, and rentals are excluded. The figures below refresh automatically as the market moves.

The full spectrum, band by band

Months of supply is active inventory divided by the monthly closing pace in that band. Under 4 months favors sellers, 4 to 6 is balanced, and above 6 favors buyers.

The middle of the market

From $300K to $1M, the share of inventory and the share of sales track within about 4 points of each other in every band. The $400K to $500K range is the engine of this market: it accounts for about 1 in 4 closings and carries the tightest supply on the spectrum at 3.5 months. The median active listing asks $489,500 and the median closing settled at $475,000, about $14,500 apart.

The loosest part of the spectrum

The $1M and up band holds 9.3% of the inventory but produced 6.1% of the closings, which works out to 6.2 months of supply. That is the only band on the spectrum past the 6-month line that typically marks a buyer-favoring market. Buyers shopping in this range have more selection and more negotiating room than buyers anywhere else on the price spectrum.

The entry level is thinner than it looks

Under $200K shows 5.2 months of supply, which on its face suggests soft demand at the most affordable end. The composition tells a different story: 96 of the 170 active listings in that band are condos, where association dues push the true monthly cost well above what the list price implies. Only 64 single-family homes under $200K exist in the entire MLS footprint right now.

What middle income actually reaches

The latest median household income estimate for El Paso County is $90,778. At the most recent reported average 30-year rate of 6.44%, with 5% down, $250 per month for insurance, and the median property tax rate we observe on active listings (0.39% of price per year), the math works out like this:

• At 36% of gross income ($2,723 per month, the upper end of conventional guidelines): the ceiling is about $393,000. That reaches 1,425 of the 5,072 active listings, or 28% of the market. Restrict it to single-family homes and it reaches 850 of 4,266, or 20%.
• At 28% of gross income ($2,118 per month, the traditional guideline): the ceiling is about $297,000. That reaches 566 active listings, or 11% of the market. Just 244 of those are single-family homes, 6% of single-family inventory.

Closings mirror the same boundary: 28% of the last 90 days of sales came in at or under $393,000, matching the 28% of inventory listed there. The portion of the market a median-income household can reach is not oversupplied relative to demand. It clears at roughly the same share it lists.

Methodology: active residential listings and residential closed sales for the 90 days ending July 30, 2026, full Pikes Peak MLS footprint, land and commercial excluded. Months of supply is active count divided by average monthly closings in the band. Affordability assumes 5% down, a 30-year fixed loan at 6.44%, $250 per month insurance, and the median observed tax rate of 0.39% of price per year. Income figure is the most recent Census ACS median household income estimate for El Paso County. Source: elevateMLS data, updated July 30, 2026 by Rob Thompson, Realtor. Figures refresh automatically as the market moves.

What to do with this

For buyers, this is why we built the search around monthly payment instead of list price. Taxes, insurance, and association dues move the real number, and two homes with the same list price can differ by hundreds of dollars a month. You can search every active listing by total monthly cost here.

For sellers, the band you list in determines how much competition you face. The table above shows exactly how fast your segment is clearing and how many other homes you would be up against. You can see what the data says your home is worth with our home value estimator.