Colorado Springs, CO, Has a Shortage of Homes for Middle-Income Earners

Prospective homebuyers often face a challenging market, particularly those in middle-income brackets who find themselves caught between rising prices and limited options.

A new analysis from the 2026 Housing Mismatch Report, a collaborative effort by Realtor.com® and the National Association of Realtors®, highlights a significant disparity between available homes and what many can truly afford.

Buyers earning around $75,000 can currently afford homes priced up to about $261,140. Homes priced below this point currently account for only about 23% of listings nationally, a stark contrast to the approximately 44% found in a balanced market.

This represents an effective shortage of about 311,000 listings within reach of these buyers. Alarmingly, 36% of metros fall below 70% alignment, indicating that many lower- and middle-income households face a severe shortage of listings within their price range.

This imbalance is particularly evident in places like Colorado Springs, CO, where the housing market presents a notable shortage for middle-income earners.

Understanding the Colorado Springs, CO, housing market

The housing market in Colorado Springs currently faces a moderate shortage of homes for middle-income earners, according to the 2026 Housing Mismatch Report.

For buyers earning around $75,000, the share of affordable listings in March 2026 was only 7.40%. This is a slight improvement from March 2025, when the share stood at 5.30%, but still indicates a significant gap.

The report identifies a deficit of 1,485 affordable listings missing from the Colorado Springs market for these buyers. This persistent shortage highlights the ongoing challenge for many who aspire to homeownership in the area.

To better understand these dynamics, the report also introduces the Listing-Income Alignment Score, a new metric that reframes how affordability is often discussed. This score measures how well the current distribution of home listings matches the distribution of household incomes in a given market.

Inventory data can show whether more homes are coming onto the market, and affordability measures can indicate whether buyers have gained OR lost purchasing power. However, neither fully answers the crucial question that guides most buyers: What are my options?

The Listing-Income Alignment Score addresses this by measuring how well the distribution of home listings in a given market matches the income distribution of local households. A score of 100% means listings are distributed proportionally across income levels, while a lower score indicates that available listings do not match what local buyers can afford. The score is calculated by comparing, at each of 12 income tiers, the actual share of listings that a household in that tier can afford against the share they would be able to afford in a balanced market, where listing prices are distributed proportionally across all income groups.

For Colorado Springs the March 2026 Listing-Income Alignment Score was 70.50%. This score represents a positive change of +12.8 compared to 2025, suggesting some improvement in market alignment.

However, when looking at the longer term, the score shows a change of -3.8 compared to 2019, indicating that the market is still less aligned with buyer incomes than it was before the pandemic.

What needs to happen next for the Colorado Springs, CO, housing market

While some improvements are noted, the path to a truly balanced housing market in Colorado Springs requires more than just an increase in overall inventory. The focus must shift to the types of homes available and their price points to meet the needs of middle-income buyers.

“The U.S. housing market continues to face a structural mismatch between the homes available for sale and what buyers can afford,” says Nadia Evangelou, NAR principal economist and director of real estate research.

Too much of the inventory available today remains concentrated at higher price points, leaving a shortage of options for entry-level and middle-income buyers.

“The data makes clear that more inventory alone won’t be enough to unlock the housing market,” Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com®, adds. A true recovery requires homes at the right price points.

Until the supply of entry-level and middle-market homes grows to meet demand, many buyers will continue to find the market out of reach despite headline improvements in affordability and inventory.

Generated with AI assistance and finalized through human editorial oversight by Dina Sartore-Bodo and Gabriella Iannetta.