Colorado Springs area home sales jumped in December, even as the number of active listings continued falling month-over-month — signaling a shift in the residential real estate market toward buyers, one local expert said.

“We still have plenty of houses and not enough buyers, but the sellers who are leaving are getting kind of motivated,” said longtime real estate agent Brian Maecker of Re/Max Advantage in Colorado Springs.

Following a cooling off period throughout 2023 and 2024 after reaching a red-hot peak in 2022, the real estate market was flat in 2025, a trend that likely will remain in 2026, Maecker expects. Some appreciation is possible near the end of the year, he said, barring further consumer uncertainty influenced by a volatile economy and shifting national policy.

A Pikes Peak Association of Realtors Report released this month shows 909 single-family and patio homes sold in December. That’s an 8.6% jump from 837 in November, and 3.7% more than the 877 homes sold in December 2024, according to historical data maintained by The Gazette, based on the association’s figures.

Additionally, sales last month were at a four-year high, the most for any December since 1,443 sales in December 2021. And it was the first month since September that sales rose on a year-over-year basis, data show.

The total number of homes sold in all of 2025 surpassed the number sold in 2024. Last year, 11,788 single-family and patio homes sold, compared with 11,503 the previous year.

At the same time, active listings of single-family and patio homes in the Colorado Springs area fell month-over-month beginning in August. Active listings saw their biggest month-over-month decline in 2025 in December; there were 20% fewer single-family homes for sale last month than there were in November, though inventory was still 13% higher than it was in December 2024.

Maecker attributes falling inventory to a slower marketing period and frustrated sellers.

“Partly it’s marketing, and a lot of it was sellers giving up and deciding they’re just going to wait (to sell) until the spring,” he said.

Typically, sales slow from mid-December through January, Maecker said. But federal cutbacks and the longest government shutdown on record, which lasted from Oct. 1-Nov. 12, slowed home sales in the late summer and the fall in a community where a large population of military personnel and federal employees live and work.

Mortgage rates, as well, remain above 6% since cresting that threshold in September 2022. Though trending downward, the national average 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 6.06% as of Jan. 15, according to the latest figures available from mortgage buyer Freddie Mac.

“A lot of us thought last year would be a good year” for real estate, Maecker said. “Typically, after an election, the market’s always pretty good. … When government spending froze, and you have Colorado Springs as an area that is heavy with government (employees and contracts), when no new contracts are being executed … and you blend that with interest rates being at 6% when we started the year, we didn’t have the market we expected.”

Sellers must now readjust their expectations for how much they can sell their home in a flat market, and buyers are realizing that mortgage rates around 5% or higher are the new norm.

“They have to realize it’s not 2022 anymore. We’ve had two years of a flat market, somewhat declining. It’s becoming slightly more of a buyer’s market; you’re going to see inventory climbing and activity climbing as well,” Maecker said. “… I think 2026 will be fairly flat, with slight appreciation at the end of the year, assuming no more government (variability). As money starts flowing to contractors, then I think we’ll see what I remember being normal, which is about 3% to 4% appreciation a year.”

It was less expensive to buy a home last month, too, data show.

The median cost of single-family and patio homes fell to $460,000 last month, the lowest all year. That’s down 6.5% from $491,990 in November, down about 5% from $485,000 in December 2024, and is the lowest median home price since February 2024, when it was $455,950.

Maecker doesn’t expect the median home price will change drastically in the near-term because there are still more homes for sale than buyers, he said.