While every real-estate agent in Boulder Valley screams for more home inventory and some pundits declare the real-estate market is in full recovery, it’s easy to imagine that home prices are soaring across the board. But the recovery from the biggest home-valuation bubble in our lifetime always has had peculiarities that were difficult to estimate, and certainly the upper end of the market still shows that instability.

“I just don’t see it,” Ken Hotard, senior vice president for public affairs at the Boulder Area Realtors Association, said of a recovery in the luxury-home market. “As I look across the last several months, the numbers are surprisingly small.”

The highest price point that BARA tracks are in sales of homes for more than $900,000, and the numbers there are still pretty dismal, Hotard said. There were eight such sales in January 2012, and 10 in January this year. In February, there were 11 such home sales last year and 13 this year.

While the numbers are somewhat encouraging, they are small enough that local experts in the luxury market don’t see any statistical significance.

“I don’t see evidence there’s any dramatic change in the market,” Hotard said.

Certainly the low inventory indicates some problems with the market as a whole, although at lower price points there is certainly a shift to more of a buyer’s market. Listings have multiple offers within days, and properties that are priced right are closing incredibly quickly.

But price, even at the lower purchase points, is still an issue, and buyers are not willing to purchase homes that do not show well, some experts said. At the higher price point, price becomes even more of an issue, said Joel Ripmaster, president of Colorado Landmark Realtors, which specializes in the luxury market.

“The lower part of the market is more of a seller’s market, and prices are increasing,” he said. “But the luxury home market is still a buyer’s market. There’s more inventory, and there’s the amount of time they are listed. They are not showing as well as they should.

“But it is also a perfect time for people to move up, especially for someone (who owns a home) in the $800,000 range to move to $1.2 million.”

Now may be the time for those potential buyers to move. Ripmaster said he believes the luxury market will reach a recovery by the end of the summer if the economy continues to improve and mortgage rates remain low.

“This is an opportunity,” he said. “When everything starts appreciating, that will straighten out this upper-end market.”

For now, Ripmaster said he believes prices at or greater than the $1.5 million mark, a price point he might set for a true luxury home in Boulder, are at least steadying.

“Housing that are selling for $1.5 million are selling at a discount. Prices are sputtering, to maybe increasing a little bit,” Ripmaster said.

“Anticipating this market has been both difficult and interesting. It is feeling itself out in a very different way than what we thought may have happened.”

Certainly, qualifying for jumbo loans was a problem early in the recession, and that may still be felt to some degree today. However, local experts thought inventory was so small in the luxury market that it made gains insignificant.

D. B. Wilson, manager of Re/Max of Boulder, said the price inflection point of $800,000 probably is valid. Homes priced below the $1 million mark, he said, are selling at 79 percent of list price, and homes above at 93 percent.

The low volume of inventory, Wilson said, continues to be the deciding factor in the market as a whole.

“There’s just so much pent-up demand for the ‘Average Joe’ kind of house,” said Wilson, explaining the significant difference between the luxury market and lower-priced homes.

Independent broker Gary Bauer reported a 37 percent increase in sales of Denver area homes valued at more than $1 million in February compared with February 2012, basing his report on Metrolist data. The total sales volume for those luxury home closings in February was $57.5 million this year, compared with $44.25 million for the same month in 2012, a 30 percent increase, he said.

While Boulder County was a significant part of that increase, local experts noted that luxury home prices still have not fully recovered from 2007 — and that keeps properties from listing.

“In Boulder, we did not see the bubble as much … but we still had a 4 percent drop (in valuation). We’ve recovered 2 to 2.5 percent of that since then, but we’re still not fully recovered,” Ripmaster said. “That’s why inventories are so low.

“I have a saying that today’s benefits are tomorrow’s rights, and that is true with home prices, too. Sellers feel they have a right to get prices back to where they were in 2007.”

When people have their lives invested in their homes, that can certainly make a difference.

“Prices were at ‘X’, and people are waiting for it to get back to ‘X’,” Ripmaster said. “That’s why there’s no inventory.”