Jacob McCrackin
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PCS season is over. The families with July report dates have moved in, the offers are signed, and Colorado Springs has gone quiet the way it does every September.
If you are buying here between now and the end of November, that quiet is worth money to you. Not because prices collapsed, because they did not, but because nearly every part of a transaction that works against a buyer in June works the other way in October.
The Pikes Peak Association of REALTORS® August 2026 report puts average time on market at 46 days, up from 40 days in August 2025. Sales were down 5% year over year. The number of homes available was up 7%.
Read those three numbers together and they say one thing. There are more houses, they are sitting longer, and fewer people are competing for them. In May, the same house would have had three other families walking through it on the same Saturday morning.
More leverage is an easy thing to say and a harder thing to spend. Here is where it turns up in a real contract.
Sellers whose summer did not go to plan. A house listed in June and still sitting in October belongs to someone whose timeline broke. They have probably cut the price once already, they are heading into the slowest eight weeks of the year, and they are doing the arithmetic on carrying the place through to spring. That seller negotiates very differently from the one who had four offers in May.
Concessions rather than price cuts. Most sellers in a softening market would rather pay toward your closing costs or buy your rate down than drop the asking price, because the asking price is public and the concession is not. That preference is useful to you. A seller-paid rate buydown lowers your monthly payment further than an equivalent price reduction does, and the payment is the number you actually live with for the next several years.
Room to negotiate the inspection. In a hot market, an inspection objection is a good way to lose a house. Right now it is an ordinary part of the deal. You can ask about the roof, the furnace or a credit without a backup offer waiting to replace you the moment you raise your hand.
VA offers get read on their merits. Sellers who passed over VA financing in 2021 did it because they had a cash offer sitting next to it. Most of them no longer have that luxury. It does not make a sloppy VA offer acceptable, but a well-written one now gets the consideration it always deserved. If you want that handled properly, this is exactly what a military relocation realtor in Colorado Springs is for.
Fall inventory is healthier than it was a year ago and it is still thinner than May. Fewer new listings arrive in October and November, and the ones that do skew toward sellers who have to move rather than sellers testing a number to see who bites.
So the honest version reads like this. You get more negotiating power over a smaller set of houses. If your list has something specific on it, a particular school attendance area, a shop with 220 power, a main-floor primary bedroom under a set number, you may wait longer to see it than you would in spring. If what you need is more ordinary, you are better off buying now than waiting for the spring inventory and the spring competition that arrives with it.
Plenty of people with an April or May report date assume the house hunt starts in March. It does not, or at least it should not. Getting your VA certificate of eligibility, your pre-approval and your price range settled in October costs you nothing and puts you in a position to move the week something right appears. Waiting until March means doing all of that at the same time as everyone else, in the middle of the season when sellers have the advantage back.
If your move also means selling a home here, that side has its own timeline and its own rules around entitlement and assumability. We cover it on the sell your Colorado Springs home page.
Possibly a little, and December and January are genuinely quiet. The risk is that inventory thins out at the same time, so you trade a slightly better price for a much smaller selection and end up competing with spring buyers by the time you find something. Nobody times this precisely. What can be said is that the leverage available right now is real and measurable.
It is usually easier. Appraiser workload follows transaction volume, and volume is down. The seasonal thing to watch is not the appraisal itself, it is the minimum property requirement items that Colorado weather makes harder to fix once it turns, such as exterior paint, roof work and anything needing a dry day.
No. What you paid relative to the comparable sales matters, the month on the contract does not. Buying well in a quiet market is the thing that protects you at resale, not the season you happened to sign in.
Market figures: Pikes Peak Association of REALTORS®, August 2026 report. Last updated September 17, 2026.
Jacob McCrackin is an Army veteran, a Colorado native and an associate broker with Solid Oak Realty. If you have orders in hand, or you are simply working out whether this fall is your window, book a buyer consultation and we will look at your timeline and your price range honestly.