What Boise-area house can you buy? Brace yourself as you see how far your money will go
If you can afford a $1 million home, you have your pick of homes in the Treasure Valley.
Closer to $250,000? Good luck finding anything, particularly if you can’t pay cash.
The market in Boise may not match people’s expectations of what a home priced at $500,000 may look like, experts say. It’s changed rapidly over the last few years as prices have flown sky-high.
“$800,000 is the new $400,000,” Kaysha Clark, an agent with Silvercreek Realty Group, said in a phone interview. “Two years ago, what you could get for $400,000 is now priced at twice that. If you have $400,000 now, you may need to drop your expectations of what that can buy.”
There are a lot of reasons experts say home prices are on the rise. Cash buyers are one, particularly as people move from more expensive areas — yes, that includes California, but also Seattle and several East Coast cities — to Boise, where houses of the same size can cost wildly different prices.
Many employers are also offering employees a chance to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic (an option some are considering making a permanent option) meaning people aren’t tied to the cities where their jobs are.
Another problem?
“There’s just not enough houses for the number of home buyers,” Clark said. “And we haven’t even gotten through the millennials and all the homes they’ll need yet.”
Data from the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service shows that the median home price in Ada County in January — $454,000 — is up about 25% from a year prior, when it was $363,000. The price is up more than 236% since 2011’s $134,900. (Median home prices are the midpoint of all prices.)
In Canyon County, the prices have risen even more steeply: In January 2021, the median was $338,490, up nearly 31% from January 2020’s $258,500. It’s an increase of 370% from January 2011, when the median was $72,000.
So what can you get? It depends how much you’re willing to spend.
Around $250,000
This is now the low end of homes in Ada County — and you may struggle to find anything at all.
Clark, on a recent search, found none. The cheapest house she found was one in Kuna for $269,000 with about 1,000 square feet, three bedrooms and one bathroom. Built in 1963, it is in the Kuna School District and sits on a corner lot. The fixtures and trim in the 1963 home were largely dated, but it had a sizable yard, mature trees and a hookup for a washer and dryer. Its assessed value in 2020 was $164,800.
Clark on Friday, Feb. 19, anticipated it would go for much more than it was listed for. It was listed on Feb. 17, and as of Feb. 23, a sale was pending.
The next-cheapest home listed in Ada County was $299,000. That home, in Boise’s West Valley neighborhood, was similar in size — 1,040 square feet with three bedrooms and one bathroom. The home, built in 1983, sits on a cul-de-sac in the West Ada School District.
You may do better in Canyon County. Clark found five in a search, and two more for all-cash buyers. The additional homes, she said, wouldn’t qualify for loans in the conditions they were in.
Three houses were in Nampa and two in Wilder. Most were more than 50 years old.
One home, listed by Tyler Aldridge with Team Realty, was priced at $219,000. Located on Diamond Street in Nampa, the price equivalent to about $230 for each of its 952 square feet. Built in 1948, it has two bedrooms and one bathroom, and a listing noted it was a “great starter home or rental income.” The kitchen is dated and the bathroom is narrow, according to the photos with the listing, but the home has lots of windows and a sizable backyard.
Aldridge declined to share the winning bid for the house, which is now pending sale, but noted that the listing price was “at or perhaps under market value.”
“Inventory is so low, so what’s happening is we’re getting multiple offers on listings, so we’ll bill a price, but buyers are willing to pay the difference in appraisal or they’re coming in with a cash offer and no appraisal required,” he said.
Clark said she had one client in that range who opted to move to Fruitland, an hour away from Boise, to buy a home for around $250,000.
Homes in that price range any closer to Boise tend to go quickly and for way above asking price, she said.
“The sucky thing is you can only sell your house to one person,” she said. “People are just coming in here offering whatever they can. They’re getting beat out by people that have cash. It’s just nuts.”
Around $450,000
If you’re shopping around Ada County’s median housing price, you have more options. In or near Boise, you’ll get less house for the money than in the suburbs.
Take a home on Brumback Street in Boise’s North End that has a sale pending. It’s a one-bedroom home with one bathroom, offering its owner a nice yard but only 628 square feet inside.
It was originally listed on a Thursday at $350,000. But Jessica Ozuna with Keller Williams Realty Boise, the listing agent, said she had 10 offers by the following Monday. Many of those were cash, including three that were more than $420,000, she said.
“The deciding factor was that the higher offers were cash, but they were all investors,” Ozuna said.
The sale is pending at $408,000.
“It was important to our sellers that whoever bought the house was going to really care about the community and be an owner,” Ozuna said. “The offer we took was owner occupied and financed, but everyone was comfortable moving forward with it.”
She recognized that for a house that size, it can be shocking to see so high a price tag. But it had a lot going for it: The location is near Hyde Park and the Foothills. The house has new floors and fresh paint, the appliances are included, there are several garden boxes in the front yard, and the kitchen and bathroom have been updated to feel modern.
Ada County property records show the house was assessed at $246,100 in 2020. In 2016, it was assessed at $167,700; in 2011, as the market was just beginning to recover from the Great Recession, it was assessed at $120,200.
The North End is one of the Valley’s most expensive neighborhoods. Ozuna noted another house in west Boise that had two bedrooms and two bathrooms and sold for just under $400,000.
Homes in Boise in that price range typically are snapped up quickly, she said, so buyers must move quickly and be prepared.
In Meridian or farther out from Boise, she said, you can expect a newer home in good condition for the same amount — perhaps a “turnkey, three-bedroom, two-bathroom” house.
“Maybe even an office if you’re lucky and move fast,” she added. “A decent subdivision, too.”
Listings in Eagle show a house on Mission Drive pending at $445,000 with four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The top floor of the home has sloping walls to accommodate the home’s roof. One bedroom has a balcony.
In Kuna, a house on Tailings Avenue priced at $435,000 will get you four bedrooms and 2-1/2 bathrooms. It has quartz countertops, a three-car garage and a corner lot.
In Nampa, a home listed for $449,900 offers five bedrooms, 2-1/2 bathrooms and 2,772 square feet. The house was built in 2017 with vaulted ceilings, an open-concept kitchen and a three-car garage. It is pending after less than two weeks on the market.
Around $650,000
If you’re able to spend $650,000 to $750,000, you’ll have many options in Ada County.
$650,000 could get you a two-bedroom, two-bathroom home built in 1918 on 11th Street in Boise’s North End. You would get a split-level home with just over 3,000 square feet and a small yard surrounded by trees. The kitchen is dated and the bathroom could use some love, making it, as the listing says, “an excellent candidate to remodel and flip.” The roof is new.
Roger Lowe, owner of Lowes Flat Fee Realty and broker for the house, said the location — in the Boise School District, near Camel’s Back Park — is one of the largest contributing factors to the home’s price.
“That home in Nampa, you could take probably $300,000 off of it, but it’s in the North End and has the draw that’s there,” he said.
The home in 2020 was assessed at $447,700, more than twice the $215,300 it was assessed at in 2011. Lowe said that people need to remember that assessed values often need time to catch up, and since the market has moved so quickly in the past few years, those assessments haven’t been able to yet.
In Meridian, that same $650,000 could get you 3,300 square feet on Quenzer Way, off Locust Grove Road. You would get four bedrooms and 2-1/2 bathrooms with granite countertops, a 12-foot breakfast bar, a soaking tub in the master suite and high ceilings with lots of windows.
For an additional $40,000, you could get a home in Eagle that’s still under construction. When completed, it will have more than 2,200 square feet with three bedrooms and 2-1/2 bathrooms. Photos show a large kitchen, an office space and a screened-in porch overlooking a park.
Around $1 million
Having $1 million to buy a home will open much of the Ada County market to you, but it still may not match up with your expectations.
Some homes in that range may have sold for $500,000 in years past. Oftentimes people expect large plots of land for that kind of money. Neither is the case any longer.
In Star, it could get you Clark’s listing on Twisted Vine Drive, priced at $995,000.
The home is 16 months old and has five bedrooms (and an office space the listing notes could serve as a sixth bedroom) and 4-1/2 bathrooms. Your money would get you walk-in closets, a covered patio and a giant kitchen with stainless steel appliances, all on a nearly 10,000-square-foot corner lot.
Clark recently saw a log cabin in Emmett on six hilly acres of a cherry orchard, priced almost identically. That kind of large land purchase doesn’t happen closer to Boise.
If you were to spend $1.125 million on a home in Ada County, it could buy you views of the BanBury Golf Course in Eagle. An additional $25,000 could buy you four bedrooms and 3-1/2 bathrooms in Meridian with lots of upgrades.
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Willing to spend $1.175 million? You could get 3,635 square feet in Garden City. That house, on Lakemont Lane, is in a gated community. It has four bedrooms, including some with elaborate murals on the walls, and 3-1/2 bathrooms.
The listing brags of views of the Boise River from the backyard, state-of-the-art appliances (including two dishwashers) and a “spa-like” master bathroom with a clawfoot tub. The house has two separate living areas and quartz countertops. Its price tag is nearly double its $677,400 assessed value.
It was listed on Feb. 19. Like almost every home in this story, its sale is now pending.
This story was originally published February 26, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
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