Superior and Louisville Have the Same Median Price. They Don't Have the Same House.

In March 2025, a handful of neighbors in Superior's Sagamore subdivision started calling the town to complain about a house going up on their block. Matteo Rebeschini, who lives near the new build, told Denver7 the home's height and setbacks weren't matching what everyone else on the street had been required to build. Diana Leiker, another neighbor, said every other house in Sagamore was the same height and width except this one. Town officials confirmed the home was within code, with one exception: an ADA accessibility accommodation had granted the builder roughly six additional feet of height for an elevator, a decision made without public input because of federal accessibility and privacy law.

Nobody did anything wrong. But the story is a useful warning for anyone shopping Superior or Louisville right now: the block you're touring may look uniform, but the rules that built each house on it were not applied the same way twice.

That matters more than it sounds like it should, because the headline numbers coming out of both towns this year make them look almost interchangeable.

The Number That Looks Like a Coincidence

Redfin's data shows Superior's median sale price came in at $967,000 for the three months ending May 2026, up 17.9 percent year over year. Louisville's median for the three months ending June 2026 was $959,000, up 10.9 percent over the same period last year. Eight thousand dollars apart. Both towns posting double-digit annual gains. If you're cross-shopping the two, it's tempting to conclude they've become the same market wearing two different zip codes.

Zillow's home value index tells a different story. Superior's typical home value, as tracked through Zillow's Zestimate-based index, was $832,589 as of June 30, 2026, down 2.2 percent over the past year. Louisville's was $830,316 as of July 31, 2026, down 0.8 percent. Two data sets, same towns, same season, and one says prices are climbing fast while the other says the typical home is worth slightly less than it was a year ago.

Both are accurate. They're measuring different things. Redfin's median tracks what actually closed. Zillow's index is built to estimate the value of the typical home in each market, adjusting for the mix of what sold. When a disproportionate share of closings in a given month are new-construction rebuilds selling well above the neighborhood's older stock, the median climbs even if the value of a 1998 ranch three doors down hasn't moved much at all.

That's exactly what's happening in Superior and Louisville right now, and it's the direct legacy of the Marshall Fire.

Why the Mix Is Doing the Work

The Marshall Fire destroyed 1,109 homes across Louisville, Superior, and unincorporated Boulder County on December 30, 2021. In the years immediately after, reporting on the rebuild found new homes going up on burned lots were selling for upwards of $600 per square foot, while nearby homes that survived and were remodeled were trading around $450 per square foot. That's not a small gap. It means a buyer looking at two similarly sized houses on the same street could be paying 30 percent more per square foot for one of them simply because of when it was built and what it's built to.

Superior lost 391 homes and three businesses. Louisville lost 550 properties. Every one of Sagamore's 172 homes burned. As those lots got rebuilt, they came back as new construction, often larger, more energy efficient, and priced accordingly, sitting next to homes that never had that reset.

By March 2025, Superior had issued rebuilding permits for 74 percent of its destroyed buildings, with more than half of the rebuilt structures cleared for occupancy. Louisville was further along: 90 percent of its destroyed homes were rebuilt or under construction. Countywide, an October 2025 accounting put the combined rebuild at 74 percent complete with another 9 percent still under construction.

Here's what that difference actually means for a buyer touring both towns today: Louisville's rebuild has had more time to settle into its surroundings. More of its new construction has already sold once, been landscaped, and stopped looking like a construction site. Superior's rebuild, while well along, still has a higher share of homes at the permit-issued-but-not-finished stage, which means a Superior search today is more likely to put you next to an active job site or a still-vacant, cleared lot than the same search in Louisville.

The Zoning Question the Median Price Never Asks

The Sagamore dispute matters beyond the neighborhood it happened in because it points at something a median price can't tell you: rebuild-era approvals in both towns were handled case by case, under compressed timelines, by staff trying to get displaced families home faster. That's a defensible choice. It's also why setback exceptions, height allowances, and design review outcomes vary block to block in ways that predate the current owners and won't show up in a listing description.

If you're comparing a rebuilt home in Superior to one in Louisville, or even comparing two rebuilt homes on the same street, it's worth asking your agent to pull the permit history on the specific parcel, not just the neighborhood's general reputation for having "bounced back." A house built under an accommodation, a variance, or an early-phase permit before design standards tightened may carry a different resale story than the one next door.

The Insurance Line Item That Doesn't Show Up on a Listing

The other piece of this that a median price hides is what it costs to insure the house once you own it. Colorado's Division of Insurance found that at least two-thirds of Marshall Fire households faced insurance gaps, with the average shortfall exceeding $100,000. That gap is the reason some lots sold instead of rebuilding, and Boulder County's own recovery reporting has noted that in some areas, larger new homes have replaced more modest ones that once stood there.

For a buyer today, the practical version of that history shows up in the insurance quote, not the price history. Parcels that fall within Zone AE flood designations in parts of the burn area can carry an additional $1,500 to $4,000 a year in flood insurance on top of standard homeowners coverage, a cost that has nothing to do with square footage or finish level and everything to do with where the lot sits. That's a number worth getting in writing before you write an offer, not after.

What This Actually Means If You're Choosing Between the Two Towns

If you're picking between Superior and Louisville on the strength of their published medians, you're comparing two numbers that are being pulled upward by the same force in slightly different proportions. Louisville's higher share of completed rebuild means its median has had more time to reflect a blended, settled market. Superior's rebuild is still catching up, which means its recent price gains are more heavily weighted toward brand-new inventory, and its typical, non-new home may be worth closer to what Zillow's index shows than what the sale-price headline suggests.

Neither town is overpriced or underpriced because of this. But it means the smart comparison isn't Superior's median against Louisville's median. It's asking, for the specific house you're looking at: was this parcel part of the rebuild, and if so, what generation of permit and code did it come in under? That question tells you more about what you're actually paying for than either town's headline number does.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Tour

Does buying a rebuilt home mean buying into ongoing construction noise? In parts of Superior, yes, at least for now. With roughly a quarter of the town's destroyed buildings still working through permitting or construction as of last year's reporting, some blocks remain active job sites. Louisville's rebuild is further along, so this is less likely there, though not impossible on individual lots that sold later.

Is the per-square-foot gap between new construction and remodeled homes still that wide in 2026? The $600 versus $450 figures came from reporting in the first two years after the fire, when new construction was scarce and in high demand. That gap has likely narrowed as more rebuilt homes have come to market and resold at least once, but it hasn't necessarily closed, and it's worth checking current comps on the specific block rather than assuming either number still holds exactly.

How do I find out if a specific address was part of the fire footprint? Both Louisville and Superior maintain public rebuild dashboards, and Boulder County's recovery site tracks countywide status. Your agent can also pull permit history directly for any address you're considering.

If you're weighing Superior against Louisville, or trying to figure out what a specific rebuilt address is actually worth compared to its neighbors, that's exactly the kind of block-by-block reading a median price can't give you. Paul & Kam has spent the better part of two decades in these towns and can walk the permit history, the insurance math, and the comps with you before you write an offer, not after. Work With Us.