Gunbarrel Green & Old Post: the 1970s houses on big Gunbarrel lots, who buys them, and why they sell over asking

Updated September 2026 · Based on 48 recorded sales Jan 2021 – Sep 2026, 33 verified asking prices and 45 classified buyers

Photo: Vincent Y @USA on Unsplash (Unsplash License)

Gunbarrel Green's replatted blocks — Carter Trail, Pali Way, Tanglewood Trail, Petursdale Court — and the Old Post pocket beside them are where Gunbarrel's 1970s custom houses sit on lots of a quarter to half an acre, a mile or so from the Boulder Country Club. It is a small sub-market — 48 sales since 2021 — and the most competitive one Ownify tracks in Boulder: sellers list about 3% below market value, 42% of sales close over asking, and only one buyer in twenty-five pays cash.

The neighborhood

Gunbarrel Green is the large 1960s–90s subdivision that runs along Idylwild Trail from Lookout Road south to Carter Trail, in the heart of Gunbarrel, an unincorporated community of about 9,500 people northeast of Boulder that is governed by Boulder County rather than the city — county sheriff, county land-use rules, and a Gunbarrel Green HOA for the common areas. The "replats" the County Assessor groups here are the sections where the original plat was redrawn into bigger parcels: Carter Trail, Pali Way, Tanglewood Trail and Court, Petursdale Court and Green Willow Court, along with the small Old Post Road and Old Mill Trail pocket off Idylwild. The result is a lot median of 12,600 sq ft, twice the size of a Gunbarrel North lot and comparable to the Boulder Country Club streets to the north.

The houses are one generation: the median sale in 2025–26 was built in 1974, with 4 bedrooms, 3 baths and 2,440 sq ft, and only 2% of sales postdate 2000. Gunbarrel Green's stock is two-story, split-level and ranch houses, most with basements and two- or three-car attached garages, many of them owner-built or custom, which gives the streets more variety than the 1990s tracts to the north. What varies the price is the amount of remodeling and the lot: an original 1970s four-level on a quarter acre sets the floor around $740K–$900K, a fully renovated house on a half-acre backing open space reaches $1.5M–$2.3M.

The neighborhood's amenities are Gunbarrel's: the Boulder Country Club golf course and pool a mile north, Twin Lakes Open Space and its trails to the west, the Gunbarrel Shopping Center, the tech and biotech employers along Lookout and Spine Roads, and the Diagonal Highway into Boulder or Longmont in fifteen minutes. Schools are Heatherwood Elementary, Platt Middle and Fairview High in the Boulder Valley district. Turnover is very low — about eight sales a year — which is the main reason the market clears the way it does.

Where Gunbarrel Green (replats) / Old Post is

Map centered on the 44 geocoded sales in assessor neighborhood 136; the neighborhood boundary is the Boulder County Assessor's appraisal area, not a formal city boundary.

Homes and prices in Gunbarrel Green (replats) / Old Post

Every sale is a detached house. The 2025–26 median of $1.05M is 11% above the Boulder median, but at $435 per square foot the sub-market is 21% below the city's $552 — Gunbarrel land is cheap by Boulder standards, and a 2,400 sq ft house on a quarter acre here costs what a 1,400 sq ft house on a city lot does. The middle half of sales ran from $895K to $1.23M; the $740K floor is an original-condition 1970s house and the $2.3M ceiling is a full renovation on one of the largest lots. With 48 sales since 2021, single large sales move the yearly medians noticeably.

The typical home sold in 2025–26 has 4 bedrooms, 3 baths and 2,440 sq ft, on a 12,594 sq ft lot; the median build year is 1974, with 0.0% of homes built before 1950 and 2.1% since 2000. Prices run from $740K to $2.30M.

Median sale price by year

Single-family houses   Condos & townhomes   (labels: sales per year, houses / condos)

Medians move with the mix of what sold each year (a run of large rebuilds lifts the house number); a bar is omitted when fewer than three of that type sold. Read the trend, not single-year steps.

What it takes to buy here

At the 2025–26 median of $1,049,500, a conventional purchase with 20% down at a 6.76% 30-year rate costs about $6,238 a month including taxes and insurance, which lenders would typically want to see backed by a household income near $267,357 and roughly $230,890 in cash at closing. 55.8% of all Boulder sales in 2025–26 closed below this neighborhood's median.

Who is buying in Gunbarrel Green (replats) / Old Post

Gunbarrel Green buyers are tech-corridor households. Tech is the largest sector at 20% (Boulder 16%), consulting and professional services are 13% against 9%, and health care is close to its city share at 11%. Manufacturing buyers appear at 6.7%, nearly three times their Boulder rate, and telecommunications buyers at 4.4% against half a percent city-wide — the Gunbarrel employers again. The striking absence is the university: education and research buyers are 2% here against 12% for Boulder, the lowest share of any sub-market, and nonprofit buyers do not appear at all. With only 45 classified buyers these are tendencies, not precise shares. Cash purchases are 4.2%, the lowest in the city and a fifth of Boulder's 20.5%: this is a financed, move-up family market.

Share of 45 classified buyers on 31 transactions with an identified employer; industry attribution only, no individual buyer identified.

How Gunbarrel Green (replats) / Old Post prices — and how to play it

A   Ownify competitiveness index 90 / 100 — the highest grade Ownify assigns, which in Boulder means homes with these characteristics in this sub-market are expected to sell at or over asking more reliably than anywhere else in the city. Under-value listing, scarce supply, big lots at a Gunbarrel price and mortgage buyers who compete on price rather than terms all point the same way.

If you are selling

The Gunbarrel Green convention is the opposite of most of Boulder: list about 3.2% below market value and let the market bid it back. The median sale is exactly 100% of asking, 42% of sales close over asking, and the median sale lands at 99.3% of value — so the under-pricing works as a strategy but does not, on average, produce a premium over value. Ownify's Boulder model puts the probability of selling in the listing at 91% for an ask at the convention (96.8% of value), 90% at value, 88% at 108%, and 86% at 112%. Because 93% of the asking price passes through to the sale price in Boulder, an ask at or a couple of percent above value would be expected to net more than the convention does with only a small loss of odds; the cost is time, since Boulder listings at or below 105% of value sell in a median 38 days and those at 105–110% take 42. The sensible middle: list at value, not under it, hold an offer deadline after the first weekend, and expect to close at or just over asking in about six weeks.

If you are buying

This is one of the hardest sub-markets in Boulder to buy under asking. Only 39% of sales close below ask, 42% close above, the median sale is at asking, and just 15% of listings are still available after 60 days — and because sellers here price a few percent under value, an asking-price bid is often already a discount to what the house is worth. Bid at or above asking on the first weekend with a clean, well-financed offer; with cash buyers at 4%, a strong pre-approval and a sensible appraisal-gap clause compete on even terms. Half of the sales here close under $1M, inside the Ownify Home Fund's $1M ceiling (2% down); the renovated half is financed through an Ownify mortgage rather than the 2%-down program. On affordability grounds, the Gunbarrel condo complexes and Heatherwood's smaller houses nearby are the lower-priced alternatives. Value the lot size and the mechanical condition of a 1970s house over the kitchen: the land is what holds up.

Frequently asked questions