Overall, Denver, CO is 63.7% cheaper than San Francisco, CA
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$534,100 Denver, CO
63.7% less
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$3,044Denver, CO
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Everything you need to know about Denver, CO real estate
FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPTION:
- First of all, I wanna thank everybody for joining us today. My name is Scott Fuller, founder of LeavingTheBayArea.com. And welcome to another Market Insider series where every week, we travel the country looking at some of the more popular places that people are relocating to. Today, I'm happy to say we are going east to the Mile High City, beautiful Denver, Colorado. Kristen and Todd Narlinger are my guests today. Kristen, Todd, how are you?
- Great, how are you?
- I'm fantastic. I'm super excited to be talking with you guys today. I know we've got a ton of great information that we're gonna cover. Before we get into introductions, I want to remind everybody that we've got a chat feature on the Zoom platform. We've also have a Q and A section. We love to answer questions, we love to make it interactive, so feel free to interrupt us with your question and we'll go ahead, we'll give you a live answer on that. So anyway, let's get moving. So Kristen, Todd, Madison & Company Properties in Denver. Guys, give me a little bit of background on what you're doing out there, how long you've been doing it, and how you're helping some people relocate into the Denver market.
- You wanna go first?
- You go ahead.
- I'll go first. I'm a Denver native, been here my entire life. I'm gonna go ahead and take that out of there real quick. Denver native, been here my entire life, and got into real estate 1995 actually with RE/MAX Masters. And then in 2008, great timing, decided to open my own brokerage, Madison & Company Properties.
- That was the D-Day for most agents at that point, brokers, right?
- D-Day was about 60 days after I opened up the office. I opened up about May or June of 2008 and about 60 to 90 days later was Lehman Brothers, IndyMac, everything. So, great timing.
- Oh yeah. They couldn't have timed it any better.
- Couldn't have timed it any better. But fast-forward to today, we have over 160 agents, seven offices, right about $1 billion in sales, somewhere in that range. But most important, I would say that we've got some of the best agents in Denver. It's really about being the best, not the most, highly knowledgeable and, per our discussion today, we really have offices in all the key areas in the Denver Metro area, so we're excited to talk about that. And Kristen, go ahead.
- Hi, my name's Kristen Narlinger. I'm married to that guy. We also work together.
- Yes.
- Imagine that.
- Oh boy.
- I'm the relocation and referral director here at Madison. Also, I can speak to the fact that I did not grow up here in Colorado. I'm from the East Coast, from Washington, D.C., area. Came out here in the '90s to go to CU Boulder, go Buffs, and stayed because I liked it so much. So, I can definitely speak to being a transplant from another state.
- Which is great because in your role, kind of charging the relocation side of the business, that's really important because you have to, you kinda really have to walk in people's shoes, right? to understand what's it like to be considering a new market whether it's Denver or somewhere else, and how can you be able to add value based off of your own experiences. So, I think that's really important.
- Absolutely, yeah. I agree 100%. I always tell people how great it is to live here. I honestly don't know another state that I would live in. I've been very happy here and it's great to have that sort of experience of moving from another state.
- Fantastic. So I think what we're gonna focus on first is we're gonna talk about, obviously Denver is a large metro area. There's a lot of growing communities which you guys have seen, you have offices in a lot of those communities. I think what a lot of people are interested in learning about is what are some of the more higher-growth communities and what are some of those price points? What would you get? If I'm coming out, I've got $500,000 to spend or 750 or whatever that looks like, coming from California, what can I expect to get and where are some of those areas at?
- So if it's okay, let me go ahead and share our screen real quick. We actually have a couple maps we wanna share and a couple of sample homes.
- Let's do it.
- All right, cool. Let me go ahead and do this real quick. There we go. And you see our map right there?
- I see it, yup.
- Okay, so this is more of a entire Denver Metro Front Range map, what you can see is Denver is kind of the heart of the front range. What we talk about is this is a seven-county map. When we talk about where we see about 80 to 90% of the business here in Colorado, it's done right here on this map. So we'll break down Denver here in a second which is kind of the hub, the real hub of Denver. We call it the donut hole. And the outside area is kind of the donut. Really, when you look at this map, how it's broken down is you got north, east, south, west. The west side is where right we see Golden, Evergreen. That's where the mountains are. That's really where we stop. It's right where we start to get into the mountains. We don't go any further west. There's really nowhere to grow that way. When you look at what happened in Denver over the last 10 years, where we've seen a lot of the growth is up north and down south. So north, you've got Thornton, Broomfield, Westminster, Northglenn, Loveland, Greeley, what else, Fort Collins, you know, that--
- Yeah. Boulder has kinda reached its pinnacle of growth but yeah, Broomfield, Thornton.
- And then when you go down south, one of the biggest neighborhoods we have down south is Highlands Ranch. Highlands Ranch was one of the biggest PUD communities that has, and been in the last I'm gonna say 25 years nationwide. It's absolutely a huge, huge community that they started, what, probably 25 years ago?
- I think they just had their, what, 30th?
- 30th anniversary.
- 30th anniversary.
- 30th anniversary. And then if you go further down south, you've got Castle Rock, and if you go much further south, which is another area that's kind of booming, is Colorado Springs. And then off to the east, I'll let you talk about the east side.
- Oh, the east side? So Aurora has seen a boom. They're actually building a new home community called Aurora Highlands out there next to the airport, DIA. And they are planning to build approximately 60,000 homes out there. And obviously, they've got the plan to do that--
- 60,000 homes.
- Yeah.
- 60,000.
- That's a huge undertaking.
- It's gonna be massive. If you've ever flow into Denver, into DIA, you'll see why. I mean, it's just surrounded by lots of land so they have the space to do it. They're gonna put parks, schools, recreation there. It's gonna be awesome.
- And then if we go to the next slide, what I wanna do is kind of break down Denver a little bit. So when people say just Denver, Denver, no, I mean, Denver is literally, this map breaks it down into so many different sections. Denver is so diverse depending where you wanna live. Being from San Francisco, let's just say San Francisco area like the Haight, I don't know what the most popular area or most expensive area in San Francisco is, but for us, it'd probably be, what would that area be?
- Could be Pacific Heights would be, you know, a good area that a lot of people are coming from.
- Perfect. So for us, that area on the center of that map is called Cherry Creek and Wash Park. Those are the two areas that are probably the most expensive areas in the Denver Metro area. And then a little bit further south is a neighborhood called Cherry Hills and Greenwood Village. Those are the most popular. But for the millennials that have been moving out to Denver, they might move to like Sloan's Lake, Berkeley. And then for empty-nesters, would you say, kinda Cherry Creek, Wash Park?
- Cherry Creek, yeah, definitely, Wash Park. Also, the up-and-coming neighborhoods are RiNo which is the River North District, the Highlands. These are all neighborhoods that have been turning over from these old homes and people are coming in and building them up and renovating them and they're becoming hip and very popular and trendy.
- And so, what we'll do is we'll go to the next slide. What we've done here is we've given you an example of a typical home in Denver. We literally just pulled these off of our MLS yesterday. So here's a typical home in Denver. This is what you're gonna find if you're looking in Wash Park, for example, or maybe RiNo, as Kristen was talking about.
- Yeah.
- Beautiful brick--
- Capitol Hill.
- Yeah, Cap Hill. This is just your typical brick bungalow. 1920's is when these kinda homes were being built and what we're seeing is an influx from California, Texas, and other areas where they wanna live Downtown Denver. This could be a millennial buyer or it could be an empty nester or a family. We're seeing it all. But if you look to the left of this house, you're gonna see this brand new big house right next to it. If you see kind of to the left side, you'll see this new house.
- I just noticed that.
- That's why we put this house in here because sometimes, you see that Scott?
- I see that, yeah.
- That is very typical in Denver. There's been a lot of tear downs, knockdowns, pop top situations where people are taking these historic homes, popping the top, adding the second level. But in general, the average price, say, this home right here, is about 550 That would be the average price of a home in Denver right now.
- [Todd] Yeah 550 to 600,000
- How many beds, baths, and square footage would we expect on a home like this for that, you know, 550 plus or minus?
- Great question. This one, for example, I looked it up last night. This one is three bedrooms, two baths, 1,700 square feet, okay?
- Okay.
- Three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,700 square feet, it was, right, was it $595,000?
- Yeah.
- And this is in one of the really nice neighborhoods of Denver.
- Can you guys scroll back, scroll back to the map that you had? This area right here. So which area would be kind of the downtown and then which areas are maybe residential, single family, versus areas that are maybe kinda the, more of the downtown, urban, you know, condos, town homes, more of a high-rise?
- Okay, the urban area will be Speer, Baker, Lincoln Park, right there, you see where Wash Park is?
- Yup.
- That house that I gave you the example of? That was Wash Park.
- Okay.
- Wash Park is kind of, let's call it New York City. Everyone knows Central Park in New York City? This is a very small version of what that is but it's got about three mile loop around it that you can go running, there's a lot of biking. It's just one of the most beautiful parks in Denver, wouldn't you say?
- But of course, if you wanna live downtown, you're looking at more high-rises, condos, lofts. Those are really popular downtown.
- And what kind of a-- Give us a couple of examples. So for people who are, let's say, millennials, maybe that's a popular type of property for them 'cause they wanna be downtown, they wanna be in the action. What would you expect to pay for some of those condos that are kind of in the downtown area?
- Yeah I mean they range a lot. But obviously, some of the nicer condo buildings, you're looking at upwards of six 700 or more depending on what kind of area--
- Probably all the way into the several million. I'm sure there's, you know--
- Oh, absolutely.
- Well, for example, there is, there's a building down there, Scott. Four Seasons built a development down Downtown Denver right down the heart of downtown, and from 15th story up to the 31st story are all condos. Those go from $1.3 million up to $4 million. So, we see everything when it comes. And a lot of those are second homes.
- I would say the average
- But the average.
- $600,000 or $700,000. That would get you a decent...
- $600,000 or $700,000.
- But it's, I mean, if a millennial can afford that, it's great to be downtown. They've got Union Station has been revitalized recently. It's amazing. Now, we've got the public transportation. It is a night and day difference from when I moved out here 25, 30 years ago. It used to be a ghost town downtown and I was--
- Can you guys, real quick, so we have, Irene's mentioning, can you guys, as we're talking about these areas, can you use your mouse to kind of maybe circle around?
- Oh yeah.
- Yeah, just circle around
- Can you see it right here?
- maybe Wash Park right there. I think that was a property that you guys had shown a picture of, which is there.
- Do you see our mouse on there?
- Yup, I see it, you got it.
- Okay, good. So that's Wash Park right there. And if we're looking where downtown, downtown is, this is Downtown Denver right here. Auraria, Lincoln Station, Lincoln Park. This area right here. Where we're seeing a lot of growth is in this area over here in Sloan's Lake. This area has completely changed. Now, if we wanna go toward the airport is, airport's over here. This is where DIA is when you wanna know in relation. And what Kristen was just talking about is
- Aurora Highlands.
- Aurora Highlands, but Union Station, which is kind of the hub of Denver now, it's really Downtown Denver, there is now a Light Rail, incredible Light Rail, that takes you right to DIA. So, almost anywhere on this map and, let's go back, I'm sorry let's go scroll up this map, almost anywhere on this map, anywhere on this map, you can now take Light Rail down to Denver and then Denver out to the airport.
- So, public transportation
- Fantastic.
- is night and day difference to what, five years ago, even?
- Oh my gosh, yeah. And they're opening a new line all the time.
- Yep.
- That's great.
- Down here in Castle Rock--
- So let's go to, I think you guys had another property you were gonna show, and then also, we had a request to maybe talk about some more, what we'll call affordable areas. We kinda started touching on the 6-700,000. We got off on a tangent a little bit there. But maybe some of the more affordable areas. So maybe some areas that might be, let's say, 300 to 600, something like that. But go ahead on this property.
- So I think I'll go back to the first map. The first map will give you a better idea. Obviously, Downtown Denver is where it's at but to be affordable, you do have to go outside. I'm sure it's the same thing in San Francisco, right? You can't--
- Oh, of course, yeah.
- If you're gonna live right downtown, you're gonna be paying for it. So, you do need to go out to be more affordable. For instance, down here by Castle Rock. Actually, that's where Todd and I live is in Castle Rock. Much more affordable. Highlands Ranch, Parker. They are building a ton of new homes, new home communities out here. Parker, Castle Rock, and Castle Pines. Actually, that's technically where we live. It's called The Canyons. They're building a beautiful new home community out there. Going up north You know, I think Lakewood, for sure, Littleton. Honestly, near the mountains--
- so give us a give us kind of an idea as we're going south near the Highlands Ranch and Parker and some of those areas, give us an idea of you know an average price point and what you would get for that. and I know it's gonna vary--
- [Todd] let me hit in on this because you, you said something about between 300 to 600 I will tell you right now, it is very, it's tough to find a nice home in the 300 range now, they're very few of 'em, very few so Parker maybe $400,000 400,000 to 500,000 is that sweet spot where you'll probably find a nice three or four bedroom starter home, three bedroom, four bedroom not quite as nice as this house, not quite to this size but something a little bit more Production a little bit more like a Richmond or a US Homes or something like that, Shea homes where you can probably what? Four to 500,000 probably?
- Yeah definitely mid 40's
- And that's mid that's reasonable four to 500,000 I mean especially from Bay Area standards you know you're you're getting pretty much an apartment out here if that, yeah.
- Scott we get people that relocate here all the time from California and they're like are you kidding me this is what I get for that price? In a good way they're shocked absolutely shocked.
- I had somebody else ask a question here Jo asked can you talk a little bit more about outlying areas like Evergreen and Golden? So maybe while we've got this map up you guys can point out where that's at and just give some ideas of what those price points would look like on average.
- Yup.
- I was actually just at our office meeting this morning with one of the top teams that works Evergreen so I'm glad they asked that question really glad. Evergreen's right here, Evergreen is on your way up to the mountains this is up of I-70 so you've got 6th Avenue you've got I-70 and I-70 goes this way if you can follow my mouse? but here's the deal with Evergreen, Evergreen's average price right now is about 620,000 it is more expensive than Denver, and it's a very tight market right now, Evergreen is a very, very, tight market it's starting to get a few more, the inventory is starting to finally rise up there but I was just talking to our Tuppers team up there and they said it's still a tough market. Golden, Morrison this is where, what is the Red Rocks?
- Yeah.
- Red Rocks Amphitheater is right here in Morrison so for those people that know Red Rocks that's where that's at.
- And Golden is right here, Golden is kind of in between Denver and Boulder, well a little bit to the left on that mountain but, Golden honestly is getting pretty pricey too.
- Very, 'cause it's landlocked, it's landlocked that's the problem is that's where the mountain is so there's no more growth so it's all about supply versus demand.
- Once you're close to like I'm sure the resorts and everything right? So you're always going to command a little bit higher of a price for that location.
- Yeah for example it takes us about two hours to drive to lets say a good ski area like Vale but for those people in Evergreen or Golden it's probably an hour and 20 minutes that's a big difference when you're going skiing on the weekend which is a big thing, or hiking in the summer.
- Okay awesome well thanks for answering that, so we've talked maybe about some of the different areas and then you guys started to get into a little bit of what's going on in the market, so let's expand a little bit on that. What are you guys seeing as far as the you know available inventory trends, the days on market, some of those trends and how that impacts people who are coming into the area and looking to make a purchase?
- So I have some, a couple of interesting stats I'll throw out there real, real quick Scott from just the stats that just got released this past month from REColorado our MLS, and our housing market right now has 8891 homes on the market, that's the highest amount of inventory we have seen since May of 2013 to put it in relation. So our inventory is finally starting to rise, for I'm gonna say for the past four years we've had about maybe even one month housing supply which is not good for buyers. So we're finally starting to get more of a balanced market, it's interesting it represents a 27% increase in active inventory from April to May and here's the more interesting one 38% increase in inventory year over year. So our May this year versus May of last Year is a 38% increase in inventory, what does that mean? It means that sellers are getting more realistic with their prices, more realistic with terms and with interest rates at 3.75 to three and seven eighths people are able to actually start negotiating a little bit more now than ever before, in the last five years.
- Yeah that's great I mean it creates a good opportunity for not just buyers in your area, but for buyers coming from out of the area and you know I think we see some of those trends nationwide and I can say that we're seeing something very similar here in the Bay Area you know you have to be more realistic as a seller you know to get your home price right, and if it's a very unique property and if it's priced competitively you can get multiple offers but it's not like it was two, three, four years ago, in May it sounds like you guys are seeing something similar.
- It's almost identical literally we had about 50 to 60 realtors in our meeting this morning we're all starting to feel it, we're all starting to feel it loosen up a little bit, and it's a great opportunity right now.
- Oh absolutely yes it's a good thing.
- Excellent, I've got one more question from Charles here, given how expensive Boulder can be are you also servicing that area? So it sounds like, does your team service the Boulder area?
- Yes we service Boulder we're both CU Buffs here so we're both graduates from Boulder so when you say Boulder yes, so Boulder is a--
- But I think the average price right now in Boulder,
- 1.1 or 1.2 right?
- Yeah over a million dollars, it's insane.
- Boulder is like Cherry Hills, if you know John Elway or anything like Mike Shanahan that's where they live in Cherry Hills, the closest thing that we have to the priciest zip code is Boulder. That is a, yeah we do service it, but that's a tighter market but I've talked to some agents that work that area from our firm and it's loosening up as well, we're starting to see some inventory creep up there, but they have a lot of building restrictions in Boulder, Boulder is very restrictive for growth and that's kind of what's happened is just that the supply is just not there but, it's a great area.
- Yeah awesome. Okay thanks getting into more detail on that, I wanna talk a little bit about the active adult 55 plus communities because as it turns out a lot of the people who are escaping the Bay Area have built up you know a nest egg, they have some equity in their property and they're thinking okay we're ready to make a move but what's important to them is what are some active adult options so they can keep active and have a lot of activities and some nice places to live. So give us a couple of areas that are more popular where there's that opportunity for people who are 55 plus.
- Do you wanna go back to the map? Do you wanna show so you can--
- Yeah you can we'll share our map again.
- We'll share our map and show you the areas.
- Yeah Denver has actually really stepped up as far as providing a lot more active 55 plus communities I think they've realized people wanna come here, I don't know I mean a lot of people think, oh Colorado oh the weather's so bad but actually if you live here you realize the weather's actually quite great even in the winter. Maybe not this last winter but in general we hardly ever see, at least not very big snow dumps down here you know a couple of inches here and there but then the next day it melts and it's 60 degrees, so it is a great place for people to retire just because well, weather, price point, access to mountains and whatnot, and recreation, DIA is becoming great as far as an international airport with you know a lot more direct flights internationally which is awesome, and so anyway we've seen quite a build up of some active 55 plus communities, definitely one of the oldest ones is Windsor Gardens that's right in Denver you know you're definitely gonna see more of the smaller condos maybe a little bit more dated when were they built?
- 1970's.
- 1970's, but you know they have they have a ton of inventory there and that's great because they're right downtown also down in Aurora right along, where is 170?
- It's down right there, it's right there.
- Right there.
- And just go above there yeah.
- Is Heritage Eagle Bend is a community that was built a few years ago on a golf course, there's also Inspiration is another large community that is being built with, quite a, I think 1800 homes, new homes being built out there, with a rec center, swimming pool--
- Let's talk about Heritage Eagle Bend real quick not only does it have a golf course Scott but it has a clubhouse they have community events there it's turnkey they've got duplexes, they've got single family homes, so you don't have to take care of your yard you don't have to do the snow plowing when it does snow, but they have incredible events up at the clubhouse. There are several of those kinds of communities around town.
- And as well up north here at Broomfield as well has got one called Todd Creek actually that one's important and then Broomfield's has got another one as well.
- What kind of price point options are we looking at? Obviously you're gonna have lower from the condo town home, up to the single family, but give us kind of a range of what those prices might look like.
- You know definitely for the patio homes in the 400's for sure would be a great price point like you said of course for the newer, larger single family homes get up into the 6 or 700's but for sure anywhere between four and five hundred there's quite a variety of those kind of homes.
- Awesome okay.
- Now real quick I wanna hit on one other thing though in Cherry Creek there is a community that they've created down there, so if you're looking for more high end like they have a ballet they have a grocery service they take care of everything for you, it's absolutely amazing called the, what's it the 250 Clayton I think it is?
- Yeah.
- 250 Clayton so there is, there's high end and then there's more golf course communities when you go down south or up north, so there's a really good range of those kind of communities.
- And it sounds like for a lot of people, it depends on what they're looking for, they might be active we wanna be out golfing out of the area a little bit, a little bit more slower paced or you could be like you said very, very close to a lot of services and maybe the city itself
- Exactly.
- Exactly. Yeah that's what's nice about Denver honestly, is there's a lot of different options that's why I think when people move here they're surprised to say I wanna live in Denver we're like where? there's so many different options you know?
- I've got another question here, can you talk about, and since we've got the map open this is a good time, Arvada and Thornton and all the new housing developments in that area and the future/potential future commercial plans in those areas so did I say that Arvada? Is that right and Thornton?
- So I'm gonna hit on these real quick, back in the day this 36, highway 36 it's not the best map ever but this used to be a toll road, this used to be a toll road back in the day, honestly when you were leaving Denver and you were headed up to Boulder my grandparents actually grew up in Arvada like my grandpa was actually a school teacher at JPS and they lived up in Arvada and what was amazing is that really the growth stopped here Westminster, Broomfield, Arvada and then from all the way up to Boulder there was nothing, now it is all connected, it is all connected like Vail Resorts, Storage Tech, Google, they're all building campuses all along this road, Level 3 is along that road as well.
- Oh yeah.
- So the amount of tech companies, financial service companies they are filling this up, it's what's happening is developers like Shea Homes, US Homes they're all building along this corridor so to answer your question about Arvada, Westminster, Broomfield, Boulder, Louisville they're all kind of connecting together, now from here to here is about 30 minute drive, from Westminster to Boulder but yes, it is definitely booming and there's new construction and then you can find your old 1978 homes as well, not old but older you know what I mean?
- Yeah got it, perfect--
- did that help kind of answer that question?
- Yeah that was a great response thank you. Let's talk a little bit about, you touched on industry employment obviously the Denver area is attracting a lot of tech talent from the Bay Area and they're not being shy about doing it we'll just say that.
- Right.
- So what are some of the higher industry, including tech, what are some of the larger growing industries and maybe some of those major players who are making a larger presence in the Denver area and doing more hiring?
- Well I would say definitely the biggest one that we've seen recently is the VF Corp. That has come out actually from San Francisco they've got a couple other little pocket offices in San Diego and the Bay area, the Outdoor Retailer as you may know of Smart Wool and all different kinds of brands, so they've really decided to pick Denver as they're main headquarters.
- That's Vanity Fair Corporation by the way that's North Face it's, they have all those different brands
- Yeah Vanity Fair Corp.
- That was a big surprise when they announced that they were leaving this area and going out there, I think that was a big surprise to a lot of people.
- We were very happy about it, we were very happy.
- I'm sure you were.
- And the number two is Charles Schwab from a financial service, Charles Schwab built a huge campus they moved some of their big, big people out here thinkers from Northern California area this is a few years back but they have about four or five buildings now in the financial services is the other place where we're seeing a lot of big companies move here and the other one is Solar what's it, I had the notes written down on it, energy, renewable energy is a big thing that's happening here in Denver, renewable energy a lot of companies moving out here as well.
- Yeah it's interesting 'cause I interviewed Charles Schwab recently talking about where the direction of the company was gonna take them from a geographic standpoint without saying we're going, he's basically saying we're keeping our options open whether that's to continue in Colorado or maybe in Texas or so obviously there's a lot of chatter going on and a lot of companies that are keeping their options open and we're certainly seeing Denver attract a lot of those companies even on the small to mid level range.
- Absolutely, now I'll tell you, you stand on the number one and number two states that are relocating to Denver, it is Texas and it's California, those are the two and what we see is anyone moving from Colorado is usually Texas so we see a lot of people literally buying homes here from Texas and they're moving to Colorado, it's very interesting the dichotomy there. Literally I was in a closing where my client was moving to Texas and the person buying the house was moving from Texas. so literally they're just passing across and then the second biggest state is California, we're seeing a lot of influx from California.
- Do you see that mostly from Northern California vary, or is it the whole state?
- Whole state, whole state I'll say probably majority 'cause we're getting VF Corp. We got a lotta VF Corp we sell a lot from Northern California. But we see, we still see a lot from Southern California as well.
- Let's talk about healthcare 'cause a lot of the people again who are coming out looking to retire out there maybe they're at retirement age already in their retirement, a big concern to them is access to healthcare in fact that's one of the first questions we usually get asked, so talk a little bit about maybe the proximity to healthcare services the availability you know some of the major players out there in healthcare.
- Well you know they recently, not recently but over the last many years built that huge health sciences how would you call it? A complex almost.
- It's a huge complex
- I-225 on route to Colorado.
- It was the VA I mean the VA hospital it was actually in the news about how much overruns they had on it, but there's this area in Aurora off of Colfax and I-225 that they have completely revitalized the area it's one of the biggest VA hospitals in the nation it's unbelievable.
- So besides that down south we've got Skyridge Hospital they've built Parker Adventist Hospital in Parker Castle Rock has got a hospital as well, and then Central Denver of course you've got Rose Hospital, St. Joe's there's no shortage of hospitals
- If you look at CU Health and Sciences, what CU Health Sciences have done it's unbelievable what they have done in the Denver area. I mean some of the best research some of the best, asthma research, cancer specialists are really gravitating towards Denver, we get a ton of relocation from doctors that are moving from different hospitals a lot of it.
- Okay interesting yeah.
- Yeah.
- I've got one other question that just came up here, what are the most affordable areas with mountain views and can you also talk about Springs, Colorado Springs.
- Ooh yes, oh that's funny okay so everyone--
- We get a lot of people by the way that ask about Colorado Springs and you know so,
- Oh you do really? Okay.
- Let's do this let's share.
- Yeah Colorado Springs, it's not on there though, it doesn't go that far south but if you were to keep going,
- Right there.
- See Castle Rock right here? I-25 right?
- Yeah that's I-25.
- You just keep going it's about an hour south of Castle Rock right there, maybe 45 minutes that's Colorado Springs and Colorado Springs is actually seen quite a growth recently, people are just moving there it's more affordable I would say the average price of a home down there is around $300,000 so obviously that's a lot more affordable it's beautiful down there you've got beautiful red rocks you've got tons of hiking, a lot of recreation down there at the Broadmoor amazing resort is down there and there's quite a few companies down there as well, so employment is doing well. What was the other question again?
- It was about like where is the most affordable place to find a nice mountain view? I'm thinking you're gonna go right here if it is in that Lakewood area it's right in here this is the area kind of in this area so you're not in Denver you're outside of Denver you're kind of in the west area this Lakewood area off of Union Boulevard is where a lot of people love they feel like they're in the mountains but they're not paying that price.
- More affordable 'cause obviously you cannot, Morrison would not be affordable. Highlands Ranch you can get mountain views.
- Highlands Ranch.
- Absolutely. And Highlands Ranch the average price of a home you know below five wouldn't it be?
- You can get, 475 range.
- [Scott] All right yeah that's great how about, how about Lakewood? So if that's also an alternative what would that run you?
- 400's? The problem is that that's a moving target right now Scott because it was 350 to 375 not long ago now it's like 425 to 450 it's kind of like that new hotspot in here because people come to Denver say I can't afford there, and it's not the lifestyle I wanna really live so they come out near Lakewood. So I will say that is one of the areas trending that's getting a little bit more expensive.
- Perfect let's talk a little bit about it, we've talked about a lot of the growth right? And we're talking about growth growing north-east and south and you touched on this a little bit before with the public transportation but tell us more about what the city is doing and the area's doing to continue to plan for that growth within transportation this sector.
- For transportation? Well the Light Rail that we mentioned before that was a big investment for Denver to build this Light Rail it's been happening over the last many, 10, 15 years, they are constantly, they're actually now adding, you can still look at my map they go to Lone Tree and they're about to open up another station right down here a little bit north of Castle Rock, I don't think there's any more plans right now to go--
- No that's about as far south.
- South but yet they're,
- And this line Scott takes you all the way from here all the way up to here. So there's the line that connects all the way here and now they're making progress going around the loop, so I call this the doughnut right here and the doughnut hole is right here if that makes sense. And then what it's doing is branching off here, I shoulda almost had a Light Rail map up with us today, but it really, kind of the green lines on here you can follow is kind of the Light Rail map, we did not have this 10, 15 years ago. So public transportation is really like, when we go to Bronco games Rocky games, go out to Downtown Denver for the night if traffic's too bad we hop on the Light Rail.
- Yeah it sounds like they planned for growth the right way.
- [Kristen] They have.
- Yeah. And then the second thing is that Denver had a construction defect whilst it was one of the toughest cities in the nation to construct for home developers well there have been so much push to loosen up on that quite a bit and now finally we are starting to see condos being built in Denver where we haven't seen that in the last 10 years.
- Interesting okay so they're loosening up a little bit?
- Loosening up quite a bit we know that we have a demand for more units and we're finally starting to see the condo market really expand on that.
- We're starting to see in California the same thing we've had the issues with growth and construction and a lot of the red tape that goes along with that and they're starting to initiate some legislation that's helping to potentially push that through a little bit quicker, we'll see how it goes. We have a question from Ann here, what about Fort Collins?
- Ooh Fort Collins, Fort Collins has already been booming.
- Okay
- They're not like, really is up and coming but Fort Collins has already seen that boom and continues to boom, that's obviously where Colorado State University is and it has really come around and there has been, definitely an uptick in prices of real estate up there.
- But I'll tell ya it's one of the favorite places that we see, we see a lot of people that relocate from out of state right? That really want to truly retire that's one of the areas they love is Fort Collins.
- That's true.
- It has become, CSU has done an amazing job on that campus and the area around there is just absolutely gorgeous.
- It's a nice quality of life with, yeah the downtown area is super cute lots of breweries there, restaurants, shopping it's a great--
- what points the average what's the average price somebodies gonna pay for a three to four bedroom at Fort Collins?
- Probably 500, 600 now, where it used to be three or 400 it's not Boulder, I'm gonna say it's Boulder part two, and what I mean by that is that Boulder was that it area for many years but it's gotten so expensive that now it's kind of transitioned like Fort Collins I'm not going to say it's done yet, it's still growing but it's really, a lot of people picked up on Fort Collins over the last five years.
- But we'll say it's matured yeah.
- Yeah.
- perfect.
- Excellent okay so one thing that Californians absolutely love to talk about so I'm gonna make sure I bring it up is taxes. When it comes to taxes we win
- You do win
- you do win
- Big winners.
- If it's highest year the winner we are clearly the winner tell us a little bit about what your state income tax rate is, I know, we're not claiming to be CPA's, financial experts but give me kind of an idea what does it look like there?
- Well so, state income tax is 4.63% so that's our state income tax. From a property tax rate from a property taxes Denver in here is actually very, very, very reasonable maybe you'll find a 500, $600,000 home and your taxes will be 3500 to 4000, not bad. Sales tax, sales tax in Denver will be about 7.8% it's about 7.8 wasn't that about right there?
- Yeah.
- About 7.8% now when you get into the suburbs let's talk about this whole area out here, let's just pick on Highlands Ranch for a second, typical property taxes there Scott I mean just close, approximate about 1% so let's just say your seven or $800,000 home your property tax will be about $8,000 somewhere in that general range. Sales tax will be more in your 4.8 to 5.2% though for down south versus Denver might be a little bit more expensive on the sales tax for example.
- Those are definitely reasonable numbers and to put it kind of into perspective for you guys or maybe somebody who's watching this who maybe isn't in the Bay Area state and county tax rate the base is 7.25% and it goes up to about 12.3% again we win highest in the country. The sales tax rates again that's per county but generally around 8.25% maybe up to 8.75%, property taxes generally 1.25% and up if there's you know some additional assessment what we call a Mello-Roos here, school measures you know different things like that, so obviously there could be, again we always suggest when people are looking to go to an area, whether it's Denver or somewhere else talk to your financial planner talk to your CPA to find out how the taxes impact your situation but clearly for a lot of people there's certainly an added benefit from a tax perspective in a place like Denver.
- I think Denver what a lot of people that moved here just say it's just very fair, very reasonable.
- Yeah I mean it may not be a bargain like some states but it's definitely not outrageous.
- What do you guys, what are you guys paying for a gallon of gas?
- So we were just talking about this actually, so it's right now in the high two's to low three's so anywhere like, for just regular unleaded right about 2.75 maybe premium unleaded right about 3 to 3.20 somewhere in that range, it's been varying a little bit like just a little bit--
- But our gas is always very reasonable.
- Our gas is very reasonable.
- Whenever we travel anywhere we always find our gas--
- Like what's it there Scott?
- For premium you're paying anywhere from maybe 4.20 up to a little bit over 4.50.
- Wow
- wow.
- Yeah so again we win all right
- Winner, winner.
- You win.
- Talk about, we've got about five minutes here and I wanna make sure we wrap up on time get as much in as we can and of course we're certainly welcome that you're happy to stay for questions, Mile High Stadium tons of things to do with recreation give us kind of the lowdown what do people like to do there?
- Oh my gosh well obviously you've got the mountains so that's the biggest draw right? If you like to ski there's Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Breckenridge, Winter Park further afield you have Aspen Snowmass, Crested Butte, Telluride, Steamboat but anyway God--
- Some of the best skiing in the world.
- World class skiing we just love it that's probably our number one reason for living here we're big skiers, and then in the summer you take advantage of the opposite season which is the hiking, white water rafting, everything else that goes, to hunt, summer up there in the mountains is amazing.
- Rocky Mountain National Park, National Park.
- National Park it's amazing.
- It's unbelievable and then from a local level for concerts and Denver center performing arts we get some of the best shows in town.
- Red Rocks is number one.
- Got to see a concert at Red Rocks.
- Red Rocks is number one.
- It's amazing.
- And yeah obviously you've got the Rockies games he can talk more about sports but yeah.
- Yeah so Denver, yes I'm a nut, I'm a Bronco nut, grew up on the Broncos but I will tell you what's beautiful about Colorado from a sports perspective, we've got all four major sports, we've got NHL, NBA, Major League Baseball and NFL so season round all year round, between the Nuggets, the Rockies, the Av's and the Bronco's if you're into sports we've got it, we've got it in beautiful stadiums, beautiful time do, and what else? I mean I think that's really, the Denver Museum, National Art Museum, we've got a lot of different things.
- There's a tons to do you won't be bored here.
- Basically if you're there and you're not having fun you're not getting out of your house enough right? Because there's so much outdoors, winter and summer time to do.
- And that's the thing everyone thinks you just hunker down in the winter time actually we get out so much in the winter time it's one of the most active states in the United States it's just a lot of people get out and do stuff a lot of things going on.
- Ann has a question which I want to get to in just a minute but kind of to tie in to what we're talking about with recreation talk about kind of weather, the seasons, how much snow you know during the winter time are you having to get up and shovel yourself out every morning like what's that look like?
- Yeah well like I said this last winter was a little bit different, but I think that was true across all the other states too, so we did see a little bit more snow this year, but if you go back other years I don't think our kids have had a snow day, they were really mad about this, in like four years so that didn't make them happy, but it made the rest of the population happy. In the winter you see a few inches here and there but again the weather fluctuates so much it'll be 60 degrees and it'll melt within the next day or two in spring we get a little bit more rain but, often sometimes you get another quick bout of winter in the spring generally in May, but then obviously right now we're experiencing 70 degrees so we still have not, my gosh you guys had 100 degrees didn't you?
- Yeah it was I think 104 last couple of days I think we'll be down to about 100 which isn't average but here's the thing is, this is the first day that it's been over 80 degrees like the entire year you know this week so it's been very bizarre you know we haven't had a normal spring time we just kind of decided to hit summer real quick this week.
- But real quick in on the weather one of the things Denver's really known for is over 300 days of sun and what people don't realize about Denver it technically is high desert even though we have the Rocky Mountains off to us you'll be, Thanksgiving two years ago, Thanksgiving two years ago we were out playing a football game right? It was 81 degrees in November and so you'll have days in January, February then you'll have days that are zero degrees but honestly overall the fall is absolutely gorgeous.
- Oh my God fall is dry and--
- It's perfect.
- Indian summers and don't forget we're known as the Mile High State so we're at 5280 altitude so that may affect some people but for us,
- That's where you go to train right? To sports train you go there right? because that really kind of gets you going. It's interesting because I was born in Denver didn't live there for very long but I've got a lot of family there and I can attest to the fact that when you go there it could be like 75 one day and the next day it's like snowing and 30 degrees and I've never see that before where it can have that extreme in 24 hours. We certainly don't experience that in California, but it's interesting right? you wake up to see what's going on.
- It makes it fun, it makes it fun but overall generally it's usually pretty nice it's usually pretty, we don't get the highs of the highs we don't get the lows of the lows it's just nice, most of the time.
- Okay so I wanna get to Ann's question here she asks if you hadn't talked about traffic please comment on traffic. So we did talk about kind of what they're doing as far as mass transit, some of the lines they're putting through but for the people who are in commute, maybe they're commuting to the metro area how long are you gonna expect to sit in traffic going there and coming back?
- That is a good question Ann, yeah something that everyone wants to know moving to Denver I'm not gonna lie traffic is not great
- It's increased a lot Scott over the last few years we have noticed that as locals, it has gotten worse. It definitely has gotten worse.
- But they've got measures there, they are right now they're expanding a couple of highways, they're actually expanding between Castle Rock and Colorado Springs right now, finally they're adding a lane on each side, before it was just two lanes each way so a four lane highway connecting two major metropolis' so that's nice, also 470 they're finally extending that. They already expanded I-25 which runs north and south and I wish that they had expanded it even more but I would say if we're going to commute from say where we live--
- Let's say the south area Castle Rock to downtown without too much traffic.
- Yeah not on a Friday night when there's like a Bronco game?
- Yeah what do you say like 35 to 40 minutes probably?
- Yeah.
- Somewhere in that 35 to 40 minutes, 40 minutes.
- But at two in the morning you could get there in 25 minutes.
- Yeah so that gives you a good relationship, 35 to 40 now in bad traffic maybe 50 an hour, it'll be an hour to get down to Denver and that's from way down south here, that's from here and then same thing from up north they've done a lot of good lane expansion so to answer your question they're working on it, our highways are constantly being worked on they're trying to expand I think they're trying to relieve some of the pressure with Light Rail but yeah it all depends I think just like any city back in the day you used to be able to fly down here but it just depends on when and where you know?
- Yeah and I wouldn't think that anybody's gonna be too shocked if they are coming from the Bay Area or Los Angeles right? And they're coming out you know might be 30 to 45 minutes they're probably not gonna be too shocked at that.
- No.
- What we hear is they're like are you kidding me? This is not traffic is what we hear, they're like if you think this is traffic go back to California that's traffic. Nothing like that, for us that've lived here forever it's a little bit more than we're used to.
- Perfect okay that was a great explanation anything else that, any other questions that anybody has? I know that we are, we're technically wrapped up here but I wanna make sure that we got everybody's questions anything that you guys have, Kristen, Todd anything we forgot to mention?
- I think we covered it all.
- Obviously if you have other questions feel free to reach out to us anytime, we're happy to answer any questions.
- Absolutely.
- Real estate or otherwise doesn't even matter ask me any questions about Denver I'd love to share it with you guys.
- And if somebody was you know, if they were, had a lot of information and they have a reason to come out there and take a look and start getting a little bit more serious about kind of being hands on is that something where they can come and meet with you guys and maybe you can show them around a little bit?
- Absolutely we can connect them with one of our agents, they can give them a tour of Denver you know obviously that doesn't cost them anything they don't have to be obligated it's just--
- We do it all the time we do these realtor tours.
- Just kind of like a stay cation just an exploratory--
- An area tour yeah.
- 'cause a lot of times I think that that's really helpful for people, this is great, great information but you only really get to understand an area once you go out there and you start looking at maybe three or four different areas around the Denver market and I think that's where you really start to say okay this could be a viable option for me for my next move.
- I agree.
- Absolutely yeah area tours are very popular, we get a lot of people from out of state that just come to check it out for a weekend hop in the car with one of our realtors and we just take them everywhere and just show them around so you get a feel for what it's about.
- Awesome okay I think we've got every question answered here and guys thanks again Kristen and Todd Narlinger appreciate your time and for anybody who's watching this live if you have somebody that might be interested in looking at it in three or four days we will have this recorded version available which we can send to you, you can watch again and you can get everything out so, guys thanks again any questions let us know info at LeavingTheBayArea.com and we'll be in touch.
- All right thanks Scott.
- Thanks Scott.
- Take care you guys okay it's been fun bye bye.
- Bye.
- Bye.
Cost of Living Comparisons
Denver, CO VS San Francisco, CA
50.7% less
Cost to Rent
1.3% more
Utilities
12.6% less
Food & Groceries
7.8% less
Health Costs
26.6% less
Transportation
8.8% less
Auto Insurance (Annually)
61.3% less
Auto Sale Tax
71.4% less
Auto Registration (Annually)
9.9% less
Sales Tax
8.6% less
State Income Tax
2.4% less
Child Care
Commute Comparison
| Denver, CO | San Francisco, CA | |
Average Commute Time |
25 mins | 45 mins |
Comparison of gas prices |
$2.70 | $4.49 |
Live Traffic Comparison
Denver, CO
San Francisco, CA
Climate
Denver
San Francisco
86
Average Summer High68
57
Average Summer Low55
49
Average Winter High58
20
Average Winter Low47
245
Sunny Days Per Year259
17
Rain (inches per year)25
60
Snow (inches per year)0
Current Temperature in Denver, CO
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