A Boise-area first: Median house-sale price tops $1 million in this neighborhood
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Affording Boise: Homeownership
Soaring rents. Skyrocketing home prices. The double-digit rates of increase in the costs of Boise-area housing until 2022 have created increasingly urgent problems for low-income, working-class and even moderate-income Idahoans who need places to live. Affording Boise is a series of Idaho Statesman special reports on housing. This collection focuses on homeownership. A separate collection focuses on rental homes, including apartments.
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Want to be a millionaire? Just sell your home in Boise’s North End for the median price.
For the first time, a Boise-area neighborhood’s median home-sale price has topped $1 million. The median in North Boise in April was $1,034,999, according to the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service’s newly released April report.
Last month, there were 20 homes sold in North Boise — the Multiple Listing Service’s defined area that includes the North End, the Highlands and the Central Foothills. The median is the midpoint, meaning half the homes sold for more than $1,034,999 and half for less.
The neighborhood record comes as prices in Ada and Canyon counties overall set records yet again. The median in Ada County was $595,000, a 23.9% increase from April 2021. In Canyon County, it was $476,500, a 20.3% increase.
Despite these increases, real estate experts have sensed the Boise market calming down. Sales aren’t as frenetic as they were last year. They’ve observed fewer people attending open houses and not as much competition for homes.
“It feels like 2019” before the pandemic helped heat up Boise’s market, said Elizabeth Campbell, Lysi Bishop Real Estate’s vice president of training and growth.
“It’s turning into a more healthy market,” Campbell said by phone. “And we like that. We are super excited about more inventory.”
Arisa McRoberts, a real estate agent with Silvercreek Realty Group, said the market may be a little less harsh for buyers as inventory increases. Low supply and high demand had been a key driver in rising prices in recent years.
McRoberts’ last three clients who had their offers accepted bought their houses at or below the asking price.
“It’ll be exciting for new homebuyers that things are kind of leveling out a little bit,” McRoberts said by phone, “so that they will be able to wrap their brain a little bit more around what the actual experience is supposed to be like.”
Boise is most overvalued US market
Boise in March was the only market of 100 surveyed where the amount of money buyers should be paying based on past pricing trends has fallen from the previous year, a new report says. The report by Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University said, “Boise remains the nation’s most overvalued housing market by a wide margin.”
Moody’s Analytics, an economic research firm, agrees. In a May 2 article, Fortune cites Moody’s data saying Boise is the most overvalued housing market among 392 metropolitan statistical areas examined. Fortune said Moody’s found that Boise home prices are “73% above what fundamentals would support.”
Topping the million-dollar mark highlights a rapid rise for North Boise prices. In March, the median price of 28 homes sold was $812,392. In April of 2021, the median was $647,250. That means prices in North Boise increased 60% in 12 months as the Boise area real estate market continued to challenge buyers and reward sellers.
In March, two other neighborhoods were closer to the $1 million mark than North Boise: Northeast Boise at $950,000 and Eagle at $932,450. Prices in both areas declined in April. Northeast Boise’s median dropped to $918,000 and Eagle’s to $920,000.
”The answer in the North End is always, ‘It depends,’” Campbell said. “... There are specific enclaves in the North End that are just exclusive. Homes don’t come up there very often, so they’re going to hit those higher marks on average and have a higher median price.”
Neighborhood prices often vary more than the countywide prices because the numbers of houses included in the median-price calculation are so much smaller. A few extremely costly houses can pull the median up. There were 23 Northeast Boise homes and 75 Eagle homes sold last month.
The price decrease in these two higher-priced areas came amid increasing inventory countywide. From last April to this April, Ada County’s inventory of homes for sale increased 170%, according to the Boise Regional Realtors.
There were 1.1 months of inventory in April, meaning if no more homes came on the market, supply would run out in 1.1 months. In April 2021, there were only 0.4 months of inventory. Experts consider four to six months of inventory a balanced market.
Demand for high-end homes has slowed, Campbell said. Homes sold in Ada County for $2 million or more are now spending an average of four months on the market, Campbell said, citing statistics tracked by her company.
“In a healthy market, it should trickle all the way down and start affecting the lower price points,” Campbell said. “Now, it could be a blip, where it just is a little hiccup in the market, who knows. … We just have to keep watching it.”
While still a strong seller’s market, the increase in inventory and rising mortgage rates could help create an eventual slowdown in prices — a slower growth rate or even a decrease.
But that hasn’t happened yet. A big chunk of the increase has come from new construction. Their median price in Ada County in April was $645,000, a 36.8% year-over-year increase. Existing homes’ median price was $570,000, a much smaller 16.9% year-over-year increase.
Other details from the latest monthly listing-service report:
- Homes in Ada County spent an average of 16 days on the market, a decrease from the 20-day average in March but a slight increase from April 2021’s average of 14.
- Only 3.4% of Ada County homes sold for less than $400,000. Seven hundred eighty-nine of 817 homes sold for $400,000 or more.
- The median price of existing Canyon County homes — which has many of the lowest-priced homes available on the market in the Treasure Valley — was $425,000. They spent an average of 12 days on the market.
- Lowest median prices: Parma, $382,500; Southwest Caldwell, $401,886; Northwest Nampa, $431,000.
This story was originally published May 11, 2022 at 11:09 AM.
