Home prices are soaring in Eagle. Here’s the latest seven-figure milestone

Median home prices in Eagle flew over $1 million in November, marking the first time a mid-market house topped seven figures in the Boise suburb.

The median price for an Eagle home reached $1.05 million last month, up roughly 16% year over year, according to data published in December by the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service, a real estate clearinghouse.

The figure counts both new and resale houses. November saw 25 new homes sold in Eagle at a median price of $1.25 million. Forty-eight existing homes sold for a median price of $876,000.

In Eagle, as well as in Boise’s northern neighborhoods, expensive new builds seem to be driving the market, said Elizabeth Hume, president of Boise Regional Realtors and an Eagle-based associate broker with Group One Sotheby’s International.

“It’s not just Eagle — it’s new construction,” Hume said. Building materials remain pricey to begin with, she said, and once homes reach the million-dollar mark, buyers expect luxury features and fixtures, driving the price higher still.

Countywide, 666 homes changed hands in November, commanding a median sales price of $565,000. That represents about a 7% increase in median price over the previous November across all of Ada County. New homes accounted for about a third of all sales at a median price of just under $600,000. Resale homes made up the rest at a median price of $540,000.

For home builders, that’s good news: A year prior, newly constructed houses were selling for less than used ones across the county as a whole — a bad market indicator for developers.

The median price tag on newly built homes in Eagle first topped the million-dollar threshold during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Michelle Bailey, president-elect of the trade association Idaho Realtors and an associate broker at Keller Williams in Boise. The mean, or average, price for all homes sold has topped $1 million, too, pulled up by high-end, multi-million-dollar developments, she said.

In a text message to the Statesman, Bailey said she wasn’t shocked to see the overall median sale price — that is, the midpoint of the housing market — follow suit.

The reasons why Eagle has gotten expensive have to do with the buyers as well as what they’re buying. “Word of mouth” has put Eagle on the map, Hume said, and many of her clients are following friends and family to town in search of space and nice — often new — construction.

Eagle is overwhelmingly made up of detached single-family homes, according to Ada County data. And, at a mean size of 2,759 square feet, houses in Eagle were almost 30% larger than the Ada County average, according to a 2020 report from the county. Those houses tend to come with more land, too, Hume said.

“There are some typical neighborhoods, but there are also some neighborhoods with water frontage, with larger homes, with larger lots. There’s horse property,” she said. “You get a little bit of everything.”

“Everything” includes quick access to downtown businesses — a perk she thinks new high-end developments in nearby Boise have been slow to create near residential neighborhoods.

“The places where they built the luxurious homes, where they have the big lots … have not had the infill with commercial yet,” she said. “I always compare Eagle to the small town you see in a Hallmark movie, because it’s just cute.”

Hume has lived in Eagle for almost 20 years. In that time, the city’s population has basically doubled, closing in on 34,000 people in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While she said she didn’t envision the town’s growth, she doesn’t see it stopping.

“I think any time a home is priced well, and staged well, and looks good in photographs, it’s going to sell quickly,” she said.