Like many Colorado homeowners, Iâve tracked local real estate prices with disbelief.
Is this a continuing boom, a bubble ready to burst â or something else? Something weâve never experienced in the Pikes Peak region is a prolonged real estate shortage, a mismatch of supply and demand. Booms in the past have usually ended as financing became more difficult, inventories mounted and sellers had to accept less. That may yet happen, but itâs hard to imagine that itâll be anytime soon.
Yet Colorado has oscillated between boom and bust since the Pikes Peak gold rush in 1858-59, when tens of thousands of adventurous souls sought their fortunes in the mountains of the western Kansas Territory. A fortunate few made it big, some stayed and prospered and many left empty-handed. Our history may center upon the rich and lucky, but our individual and family narratives are deeper and wider. We may have come here for a job, for a brief visit or to make a fortune â but