Martin Acres

If you want a Boulder address and the other neighborhoods have been knocking you back on price, Martin Acres is the one to look at. It's small ranch houses on a grid in south Boulder, a short bike ride from campus, and a typical one is worth about 14% less than the Boulder average.

Two things about it are worth knowing before you go and look, and neither shows up in a listing.

What it costs

A typical Martin Acres home was worth $831,852 in June 2026, down 2.9% year over year. Across the whole city the same index reads $972,493, so Martin Acres runs 14% below it.

That figure is a typical-value index rather than a sale price, which makes it a good way to compare one area against another and a poor way to decide what to offer on a particular house.

On renting: asking rents in ZIP 80303 ran $2,369 a month in June 2026. Zillow publishes rent by ZIP and not by neighborhood, and a Boulder ZIP covers areas that have very little in common, so read that as the going rate around Martin Acres rather than the going rate in it. It also tracks asking rents on new listings, which sit above what people already in a lease are paying.

Getting around from Martin Acres

Driving times below are free-flow, with no traffic, measured from the middle of the neighborhood. Treat them as the floor. The trip to Denver in particular is materially worse at rush hour, and the trip to campus can be slower than the map suggests once you add finding somewhere to put the car.

For context, the average Boulder resident's trip to work is 18.1 minutes and 17.5% of them walk or bike it (Census ACS 5-year 2024). The long commutes in this county belong to people who live outside Boulder and drive in. See cost of living for what running a car here adds up to.

Schools serving Martin Acres

• Elementary: Creekside Elementary School at Martin Park, 359 students in 2024-25.
• Middle: Manhattan Middle School of the Arts and Academics, 482 students in 2024-25.
• High: Fairview High School, 1,863 students in 2024-25.

Two things to know before you rely on that. The attendance-area maps BVSD publishes were last updated between 2015 and 2018, so we used them to identify the schools and then checked each one against the federal school directory to confirm it is still open and to get the enrollment. And boundaries do move. Before you sign anything on the strength of a school, run your exact address through BVSD's own school locator.

Where these numbers came from

Pulled 2026-08-08. Housing figures move monthly, so re-check anything more than a quarter old.

• Zillow Research: the typical home value (neighborhood-level index) and the ZIP-level asking rent, both for June 2026.
• OSRM on OpenStreetMap data: free-flow driving times from the neighborhood centroid.
• USGS 3DEP: elevation at that same point.
• BVSD attendance-area layers for the assignment, and the NCES Common Core of Data 2024-25 directory to confirm each school is open and to get enrollment.
• Boulder County Assessor: the boundary this page measures from, valuation area 164 . These are property-valuation boundaries, not legal or planning ones.

The first thing: prices here went down

Martin Acres was down 2.9% over the year to June 2026. Every other neighborhood we cover was between down 1.8% and up 2.2%, and the city as a whole was close to flat. So this is the steepest fall in our set, by a clear margin.

If you're buying, that's a reason to look harder here, not a reason to worry. If you already own here, it's the number your neighbor won't mention. Either way it's one year of one index and we're not going to invent a cause for it. The wider context is that Boulder generally has been softening: the average city home sold at 98.2% of list in May 2026 and spent 55 days on market, both weaker than Longmont at 99.6% and 35 days or Louisville at 100.4% and 39 days. There's more on that in our real estate market guide.

The second thing: the traffic

Martin Acres sits inside a triangle of Broadway, Table Mesa Drive and US 36. That's the price of being this convenient, and it's the reason the neighborhood is cheaper than Table Mesa immediately to the west.

It matters much less in the middle of the grid than on the edges, and the difference between a house backing onto the highway and a house four streets in is large. Walk the specific block, at a time when people are actually commuting. This is not a neighborhood where the map tells you enough.

Who actually lives here

First-time buyers, CU staff and graduate students, young families, and a substantial number of rentals, because a small house near campus is an easy thing to rent out.

Worth flagging one quirk of the school map: Martin Acres shares an elementary and a middle school with University Hill, but the two neighborhoods split at high school. Martin Acres feeds Fairview and the Hill feeds Boulder High. If a specific high school is part of your reason for choosing a house, check that assignment rather than assuming it follows the elementary.

What's genuinely inconvenient about Martin Acres

• Road noise on the edges. Covered above, and it's the main one.
• The houses are small and plain. Modest post-war ranches. Many have been extended, and an extended one costs meaningfully more.
• A lot of it is rented. Proximity to campus makes these easy rentals, so owner-occupancy is lower than in most family neighborhoods and turnover is higher.
• You're not walking downtown. Eight minutes by car with no traffic. Bikeable, and most people do bike it, but it's not Whittier.
• Affordable here is still $831,852. If that number doesn't work, the answer is probably Longmont or Lafayette rather than a different Boulder neighborhood. See Boulder vs Longmont.

Who Martin Acres actually suits

First-time buyers who want to be in Boulder rather than near it, people working or studying at CU who'd like a short bike commute, and anyone willing to trade quiet for value. It's also a sensible landing spot if you're moving here without knowing the city yet: you can buy in, live centrally, and work out where you actually want to be.

Once you've picked a neighborhood

We stick to the moving-here part: what areas cost, who lives in them, and what the trade-offs are. For everything you'll actually do from Martin Acres once the boxes are unpacked, our sister sites go far deeper than we could here.

• Taste Boulder for restaurants, cafes and coffee, with menus and prices.
• Outdoor Boulder for trails, trailhead parking and seasonal access, plus the guide to acclimatizing if you're arriving from sea level.
• Boulder Things To Do for events, attractions, and Pearl Street.

Related guides

• All Boulder neighborhoods, compared side by side.
• Cost of living in Boulder.
• The Boulder real estate market: days on market and sale-to-list.
• Boulder vs Longmont.
• Homes for sale in Boulder.

Martin Acres FAQ