When you sell with The Johnson Team, we walk you through six stages, each one built to protect your price and your timeline: pricing, understanding your costs, getting the home market-ready, life on the market, offers, and contract to closing. Most of the outcome gets decided in the first three. By the time a listing goes live, the price is set and the home is either ready or it isn’t, and the offers that follow are largely a reaction to those two things.
Updated October 2026 · Reviewed by The Johnson Team
How do you know what your home is worth?
Your list price is a forecast, and it should come from comparable sales you can see, adjusted by someone who has walked the house.
Comps here are hyperlocal. Values shift across school district and metro district lines, sometimes across a single street, and comps cannot see condition, updates, light, or whether the lot backs to open space or a neighbor’s fence. That is why The Johnson Team never prices a home before walking it, and why a human, not an algorithm, sets every list price. We also tour your active competition in person, since photos hide what the buyers who passed on those homes saw. Our guide on whether to trust AI to value your home explains what online estimates miss here.
What does it cost to sell a house in Colorado Springs?
Commission is only part of it. The number that matters is what you walk away with once commission, closing costs, prep, and your loan payoff come out of the sale price.
Prep is the cost you control, and we tell you where money spent comes back in the sale price and where it doesn’t. The cost sellers don’t see coming is the property tax credit: El Paso County property taxes are paid a year in arrears, so you credit the buyer for your share of the current year’s taxes at closing. HOA status letter and transfer fees surface late too.
What changes if you’re selling a rental property?
The tax picture changes most. The capital gains exclusion that protects many homeowners applies to a primary residence, so a rental sale is usually taxable, including the depreciation you claimed while you owned it.
A 1031 exchange lets you defer that tax by rolling the proceeds into another investment property, but the rules are strict. You can’t take possession of the sale proceeds, which is why most sellers use a qualified intermediary to hold them. You have 45 days to identify the replacement property in writing and 180 days to close on it, or less if your tax return comes due first, and the IRS does not extend either deadline. Pricing works differently too, since investors value a rental on the income it produces, and a tenant still in place affects both your buyer pool and your showing schedule. Talk with a CPA before you list, and our guide to selling an investment property in Colorado Springs walks through the full process.
What if you no longer live in Colorado when you sell?
Part of your proceeds may be held back at closing. When a nonresident sells Colorado property for more than $100,000, the title company is required to withhold 2 percent of the sale price or your net proceeds, whichever is less, and report it to the state on form DR 1083.
That withholding is a prepayment toward Colorado income tax, not an extra tax, so any amount you don’t owe comes back when you file a Colorado return. If the home was your principal residence right before the sale, you can sign an affirmation at closing and nothing is withheld. This catches military sellers most often: if you PCS’d out and rented the home before selling, the principal residence affirmation may no longer apply. Service members on qualified extended duty can also suspend the two-of-five-year residence test for the capital gains exclusion for up to 10 years, which can change the rent-or-sell math, so confirm both with a CPA. Our guide to Colorado’s nonresident withholding covers who qualifies for the exemption and how to plan around it.
How do you get a home ready to list?
Clean, depersonalize, and fix what a buyer will see first. This is the stage sellers underestimate, and it decides how the next two go.
Buyers form an opinion within seconds of walking in, shaped by the yard, the porch, and the front door. Paint covers more visual surface than anything else in a home, which makes it the cheapest way to change how a buyer feels walking through, and floors come second. You will also complete the Seller’s Property Disclosure in this window, covering what you know about the home’s condition, systems, and history. If the home has a fuel-burning appliance, a fireplace, or an attached garage, Colorado law requires a working carbon monoxide alarm near every bedroom before you offer it for sale.
Staging, photography, and video come last. Staging starts with a complimentary consultation with our staging specialist, and from there it can be as simple as rearranging the furniture you already own or as full as staging a vacant home. Photo and video day is the one prep day worth getting completely right, since that footage is what buyers see first on every site your listing reaches. Depending on the home, we add aerial imagery, a virtual tour, and a digital floor plan, and we tell you which ones your home actually needs instead of selling you all of them. Our Marketing Your Home page covers the staging options and our full marketing plan.
What happens when your home goes live?
Your listing syndicates from elevateMLS to Zillow, Realtor.com, and the other portals automatically. That is distribution, not marketing, so what matters is the work around it.
Before you list, we forecast your days on market and weekly showings, structure your launch weekend so the first showings create urgency, and compare your activity to that forecast every week. When a listing lags, price is the last thing we adjust, after condition, presentation, photos, and marketing. Timing matters too: in the latest full year of El Paso County MLS data, homes listed February through April sold in a median of about three weeks, compared with six weeks or more for homes listed August through November. Our guide to the best time to sell in Colorado Springs covers hail season, PCS season, and school calendars.
Can you sell without listing on the open market?
Yes. COS Instant Offer is our cash-offer program for sellers who value speed and certainty over a full market launch.
If a fast, certain closing is what matters most, the cash offer may be the whole answer. If you’re torn between the two, we’ll show you what you’d walk away with each way so the tradeoff is clear. In the interest of full transparency, Jeff Johnson, who owns The Johnson Team, also owns COS Instant Offer. Your agent works for you, not for either company.
How should you handle an offer on your house?
Evaluate the whole package, not just the price. Listing your home does not obligate you to accept any offer.
Closing date, possession, financing strength, earnest money, and what the buyer is asking you to cover all move the value of an offer up or down. A full price offer with a same day deadline is not automatically the best offer on the table, and an acceptable offer and the best offer are often one phone call apart. Our standard is simple: acceptable isn’t acceptable.
What happens between contract and closing?
An accepted offer is closer to halftime than the finish line. Inspection, appraisal, and the buyer’s financing all have to clear before you close.
Colorado homes sell in their existing condition unless the contract says otherwise, so you are not obligated to fix what an inspection turns up, though the practical test is whether a typical buyer would treat an item as a must. If the appraisal comes in low, the gap gets covered, split, or renegotiated. On a VA or FHA loan, that appraisal stays attached to the property for six months or 180 days, so the next buyer using the same loan type inherits the value if the deal falls apart. On closing day, the title company pays off your loan, you sign the deed, and possession transfers unless you negotiated a rent-back, which Colorado’s standard form caps at 60 days when the buyer is moving in.
What makes selling in Colorado Springs different?
Five local factors shape a sale here that would barely register somewhere else.
- Roof age and hail. A roof’s age and claim history can decide whether a buyer’s insurer will write a policy at all, which makes it a deal issue, not a cosmetic one.
- Metro districts. A metro district is a special taxing district a developer sets up to pay for a new subdivision’s roads, water, sewer, and parks. Homeowners repay that debt through an added mill levy on their property tax bill, often for decades. Many newer Colorado Springs subdivisions have one, and the CREC contract discloses special taxing districts, so a buyer will see that higher tax bill in their payment math whether or not you ever noticed it in yours.
- School district lines. D11, D20, D49, D2, D3, D8, D38, and D12 boundaries split neighborhoods and sometimes blocks, which is part of why comps have to stay tight.
- Well and septic. El Paso County no longer requires a septic inspection when a home sells, though many buyers still order one, while Teller County now requires an inspection by a Teller-licensed inspector on every septic sale. For a well, the buyer completes the state’s change-of-owner form and the closing company files it with the Colorado Division of Water Resources, so have your permit number ready.
- The military market. Fort Carson, Peterson SFB, Schriever SFB, the Air Force Academy, and Cheyenne Mountain SFS bring steady PCS demand, and sellers who have already moved out of state face Colorado’s nonresident withholding rules at closing.
What can you expect when you sell with The Johnson Team?
A price backed by data, honest advice on prep, and someone tracking every date in your contract. Our process for sellers walks through how that works from the first walkthrough to closing day.
We take no referral fees from lenders or inspectors and keep no preferred vendor list. A dedicated transaction coordinator tracks every deadline between contract and closing. Every listing comes with our Easy-Out Guarantee: if you’re unhappy, you can end the agreement with an email or a text, and we absorb the photography and marketing costs. A human handles every pricing decision and every negotiation.
Good To Know
Colorado Springs home selling FAQs
It depends on three stretches. Prep runs about 1 to 2 weeks for a vacant home, 1 to 3 weeks for an occupied home in good shape, and 4 to 12 weeks if the home needs real work. Time on the market varies by price point and season. Contract to closing usually takes 30 to 45 days with a financed buyer, or 2 to 3 weeks with cash. We set expectations for your price range before you go live.
From October 2025 through September 2026, 62 percent of homes we listed sold at or above list price, compared with 52 percent countywide, and 58 percent sold with no price reduction, compared with 52 percent. Our median days on market was 24, against 31 for the county. These numbers shift with the market and the season, so ask us for current figures for homes like yours.
Before you spend money on prep. A walkthrough tells you which projects will come back in the sale price and which won’t, and that conversation costs nothing.
Yes, and most sellers do. The title company pays off your loan and any liens from the sale proceeds at closing, and you receive what is left.
No. Colorado allows owners to sell on their own, but you take on pricing, disclosures, the CREC contract, negotiation, and every deadline between contract and closing yourself.
Want the full Colorado Springs Home Seller’s Guide?
The complete guide goes deeper on every stage and includes the pre-listing checklist, the photo prep checklist, the showing checklist, and the moving and change of address checklists, all in one file. Download the full seller’s guide.
The Johnson Team has been selling Colorado Springs homes since 2010, with thousands of closings and more than 2,700 five-star reviews across Zillow, Google, Realtor.com, and Facebook. We are the most reviewed team in Colorado and the #1 Keller Williams team in Colorado by closed units. If you want this conversation about your own home, reach out to our team.
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