Martin Acres, Boulder: home prices, who is buying, and how homes really sell here

Updated September 2026 · Based on 166 recorded sales Jan 2021 – Sep 2026, 97 verified asking prices and 169 classified buyers

Photo: Mia Anderson on Unsplash (Unsplash License)

Martin Acres is the 1950s ranch grid in South Boulder between Broadway and US-36, and it is the closest thing the city has to a starter-house neighborhood: a 2025–26 median of $895K for a four-bedroom brick ranch on a flat 7,000 sq ft lot. It is also one of Boulder's most competitive sub-markets — homes list within 1% of market value, sell at 100% of asking in a median 38 days, and 37% close over the asking price.

The neighborhood

Martin Acres sits in the south-east corner of the city: Baseline Road to the north, Table Mesa Drive to the south, Broadway to the west and the US-36 on-ramps to the east. The land was William Martin's cattle ranch into the early 1900s and stayed farmland — the neighborhood association records an apple orchard, with the original farmhouse still standing at 35th and Moorhead — until Turnpike Builders subdivided it from 1954 as modest houses for returning veterans and young families, timed to the opening of the Boulder–Denver Turnpike (today's US-36). The result is one of the most uniform neighborhoods in Boulder: about 1,350 houses and a handful of apartment buildings, almost all of them 1950s and 1960s brick or brick-and-siding ranches with a median year built of 1957, on a regular grid of quiet streets. Not one of the homes that sold here since 2021 predates 1950, and not one was built after 2000 — the stock is remodels, pop-tops and additions on the original footprint rather than teardowns.

Value inside the neighborhood moves with distance from the highway and with what has been done to the house. The western blocks near Broadway and Martin Park are quieter and walk to the Table Mesa shopping center; the eastern edge along US-36 carries traffic noise and trades at a discount; in between, a fully updated ranch with a finished basement, a garage and a fenced back yard commands a clear premium over an original-condition one, because the houses are otherwise so alike. Martin Park is the neighborhood's centre, with ball fields, tennis courts, a playground and an off-leash dog area, and the Bear Creek Path runs north from it as a flat bike route to campus and downtown. Schools are Creekside Elementary, Southern Hills Middle and Fairview High.

The neighborhood was heavily student-rented in the 1990s and 2000s and has been shifting back to owner-occupancy since; the university is still a five-minute drive and the SKIP bus runs every ten minutes on Broadway, while the Table Mesa Park-n-Ride gives Denver commuters a Flatiron Flyer stop at the door. Turnover is moderate — about 25 sales a year — and it is nearly all houses: 99% of sales since 2021 were detached, with essentially no condos or townhomes inside the boundary.

Where Martin Acres is

Map centered on the 161 geocoded sales in assessor neighborhood 164; the neighborhood boundary is the Boulder County Assessor's appraisal area, not a formal city boundary.

Homes and prices in Martin Acres

Martin Acres is a single-product market: 99% of sales are detached houses, and the 2025–26 median of $895K is the price of a house here, not a blend. That is 6% below the Boulder median, and at $527 per square foot the neighborhood is about 4% cheaper per foot than the city as a whole — a modest discount for a location ten minutes from campus and the Flatirons. The median home is 1,710 sq ft with four bedrooms and two baths on a 7,350 sq ft lot; the middle half of sales fell between $791K and $999K, and the most expensive sale since 2021 was $1.24M, so there is a ceiling here that most Boulder neighborhoods lack.

The typical home sold in 2025–26 has 4 bedrooms, 2 baths and 1,710 sq ft, on a 7,348 sq ft lot; the median build year is 1957, with 0.0% of homes built before 1950 and 0.0% since 2000. Prices run from $231K to $1.24M.

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 $895,000, a conventional purchase with 20% down at a 6.76% 30-year rate costs about $5,320 a month including taxes and insurance, which lenders would typically want to see backed by a household income near $227,999 and roughly $196,900 in cash at closing. 46.1% of all Boulder sales in 2025–26 closed below this neighborhood's median.

Who is buying in Martin Acres

Martin Acres is a university neighborhood by purchase, not just by geography. University and research buyers are the largest group at 19.5% of identified buyers (Boulder 12.4%), and the higher-education industry alone is over-represented by 84% relative to the city. Government buyers (5.3% against 2.8%) and food-and-beverage workers (5.9% against 2.6%) are also over-indexed, consistent with the NOAA and NIST labs a mile north and with a price point that mid-income professionals can reach. Tech (13% against 15.7%), finance and consulting buyers are all under-represented. Only 11% of purchases are cash, about half the Boulder rate of 20.5% — this is a financed, first-house market.

Share of 169 classified buyers on 115 transactions with an identified employer; industry attribution only, no individual buyer identified.

How Martin Acres prices — and how to play it

A   Ownify competitiveness index 85 / 100 — the highest grade Ownify assigns, which in Boulder means sells at or over asking: homes with these characteristics in this sub-market are expected to close at or above the asking price more often than almost anywhere else in the city. The uniform stock and the sub-$1M price point put many buyers on the same house at the same time.

If you are selling

The Martin Acres convention is to list within 1% of market value — a median ask of 100.7% of value — and to get it: the median sale is 100% of asking, and 37% of sales close over ask against 25% for Boulder as a whole. Ownify's Boulder model puts the probability of selling in the listing at 90% for an ask at the convention, 88% at 108% of value, and 86% at 112%. The odds barely move, but the days do: Boulder listings at or below 105% of value sell in a median 38 days, those at 110–120% in 49, and above 120% in 55. Because 93% of the asking price passes through to the sale price, an aggressive ask is not free — but neither is an under-priced one, since the extra bidders show up anyway. Price at value, or at most 2–3% above it, and let the competition set the final number; only 16% of listings here are still on the market after 60 days.

The house that sells fastest is the one buyers can move into. With every home built on the same 1950s plan, the premium goes to updated kitchens and baths, a finished basement, a garage or carport and a lot away from US-36; an original-condition ranch will still sell, but it draws the investor and the renovator, and they bid to a formula.

If you are buying

Buyers do not have much leverage in Martin Acres, and pretending otherwise costs you the house. Fewer than half of sales (47%) close under asking, the median sale is right at ask, and only 16% of listings are still available after 60 days, so the patient wait-them-out strategy that works in Newlands or on University Hill rarely gets a chance to work here. If a well-kept ranch on a quiet block lists at value, expect to bid at or slightly above asking in the first week; if a house has sat past 45 days there is usually a reason — highway noise, an unpermitted addition, a structural issue in a 1957 foundation — and that is where a 3–5% discount is realistic. At the $895K median, most Martin Acres houses sit inside the Ownify Home Fund's $1M ceiling (2% down) — 77% of sales here since 2021 closed under $1M — and Ownify mortgage financing covers the rest. For a cheaper way into South Boulder, the condos across 27th Way in Martin Acres East (Tantra / Hy View) have a 2025–26 median of $349K.

Frequently asked questions