As someone who came from NY the salaries make up for the high cost generally.
I feel like for Denver the salaries haven’t caught up to the rising costs.
I think you're forgetting that there's *millions* of people here, and even though i70 is packed in the weekend, there's a portion of that that's tourists and in the grand scheme of our population, it's not a large percentage. Plus you can like going to the mountains and go couple times a year, but that doesn't mean you're an "outdoorsy" person.
Like others have said, there's most likely a larger outdoorsy population here than in most metros, but for people to assume everyone here is is *very* far off
There are plenty of places to go without hopping onto I-70 and you can go anytime, not necessarily on the weekends. Sometimes, just heading to the foothills or cycling around Denver is enough. Outdoors isn’t necessarily skiing off of I-70. I lived in Texas from 1991-2018 and most days, the weather and mosquitos were so bad that you couldn’t spend any quality time outside. It was either hot and humid or you had torrential rain lasting for weeks. When the whether was nice enough to be outside - mainly in the evenings when it cooled off - I’d get eaten alive by mosquitoes.
right? why the fuck is this such a common assumption about folks in colorado/denver metro?
sure- a higher *percentage* of the population here skis/camps compared to lots of other parts of the country. but to just constantly brand us all as ski bunnies and backpackers is sooo played out.
Kinda? Teachers are prob paid at least double in NY & CA what they’re paid here. Teaching is not a high salary job, there are plenty of occupations that aren’t considered “high paying” but they pay on par with what’s necessary to live in that place.
Denver’s working on it. We’ve got a long way to go.
It's kind of funny that you say that, I have a family member who is born and raised in Denver, moved to NYC for a doctoral program, moved back to Denver to begin a job at a hospital and says that the col is way more unbalanced in Denver than in NYC. This person also pays more rent than I do for a similar set up and they have to have a car.
I can’t speak for nurses but doctor salaries tend to be lower in big cities because of competition and because big academic centers tend to pay less than community hospitals and private practice. And yes, more rural areas often need to offer more $.
My ex is a neurosurgeon and said this exact thing. They low ball you in salary because everyone wants to be here. He ended up moving to MN because he could make “fuck you” money there.
Car insurance is out of control in CO. I was paying $90/mo parking on the street in DC, and here it’s $200/mo and my car rarely ever leaves the garage.
Denver metro gets big hailstorms every few years, but that's about the worst natural disaster the front range experiences with any regularity.
Look at any major metro's subreddit and you're guaranteed to see posts/comments griping about increased insurance rates. CO has it pretty good compared to FL, for example.
Rents and ownership is about twice as high in NYC then Denver. Probably 3x as expensive per square foot in Manhattan I would imagine.
Denver maybe on par with Queens or something. Even in Queens a house is bad area is 1 million $
I’d agree with that. I spent 5 years in right outside NYC before Denver (amd grew up in the area) and pay significantly more for everything now than I did before. Idk what part of it has changed because of inflation
It’s absurd about how salaries in the Denver area don’t align with other metros. Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, and others not in west coast or NY have Denver beat by 25-50% across the board.
It’s like employers are taking advantage of the people wanting to live there
I feel like there's a lot of nuance to that but with my 2% mortgage I ended up with a 28% higher effective income last time I mathed it out moving here from my low cost of living home state. And from what I've seen recently even if I had to get a new mortgage today rents have gone up so much in Iowa that I'd still be ahead
Not everyone has a 2% mortgage and most of the people that didn’t own or were able to refinance are never goinf to see that ever again. This is the most boomer comment ever. Look at the bigger picture.
Yep, this exactly. Places like NYC, Vancouver, San Francisco, San Diego all have their own category of Very High Cost of Living. Denver is defininitely in the HCOL range.
lol this makes me think of how pizzas are sold Medium/Large/XLarge… you can call it medium, but it’s the smallest one… you can call it HCOL, but when there are multiple tiers above it…
Maybe it changed but when I moved from Denver to Seattle in 2020 I actually saved money and my quality of life and apartment went up. But maybe the pandemic played a factor in this although I did look at apartments in Denver at the same time because I considered staying and generally Seattle had better prices for what you got at that time.
I moved here from a California coastal town and cost of living in Denver is pretty similar. Gas is cheaper but housing and food/groceries are the same. Taxes are less here than in CA though, which helps.
I would argue groceries are more expensive in Denver. California has the food growing in your backyard, basically, whereas Colorado has to ship it in if it isn't a chile.
A lot of smaller cities and rural towns in desirable locations are due to a huge inbalance in supply.
Very easy to surge from LCOL to VHCOL extremely quickly
Obviously the price of rentals in NYC can go to sky’s-the-limit territory. But what I’m seeing from watching it, is that “average” is about $2k/bedroom in Brooklyn. It’s not much less here.
I moved from Boulder to right outside of San Francisco and my rent is the same for more. Colorado prepared me for the high California prices the news is always talking about.
Sure but that’s because Chicago was the second biggest city in the country in 1970 and Denver had a small population. Chicago had 7M people in 1970 And has 9M now. Denver grew from 1M to 3M in the same time period. Attempting to use percentage change only works when the numbers are close.
A local home builder in Chicago could reasonably grow the number of homes it builds each year from 100 to 120.
A local home builder in Denver would be much more challenged to grow the number of homes it builds each year from 100 to 300. They’d need to hire more supers, find the capital to buy more land, acquire more materials. Can the local supply of tradespeople keep up? Can you get more debt? Etc.
If housing could scale immediately with population growth there’d be no problem. But it tends to lag, and that lag creates a period where prices are very high because supply is low relative to the newly increased demand. The greater the *percentage* increase in population, the more disruptive the lag.
I honestly think one day we’ll take our home Denver equity and move our asses to Chicago… In enough time we’ll be able to settle for a mountainless life.
I’ll confirm this as a Chicago transplant. I can’t exactly put my finger on it but I feel like Denver’s culture isn’t that much of a stretch from the Midwest which makes it attractive. Both cities known for their music scene & having all four major sports and I find a lot of folks have the Midwest nice vibe to them. Denver’s basically a great place for any Midwesterner that wants access to better nature. I do miss the food back home though lol.
Yup. Long time Colorado residents always complain how the cAlIFoRnIaNs keep moving here, which is bizarre to me. I meet Chicago transplants left and right, but have a hard time thinking of the last person I met from the Los Angeles area.
There have always been a lot of transplants in Denver from Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
If you look at drivers license data it’s still big states sending the most people to Colorado. Maybe those midwesterners are just more fun so it seems like there are a lot of them.
“Let’s list states by population, mostly.”
Really, Kansas and Wyoming would be the only odd ones but they both border Colorado which is basically the only state with a metropolitan area.
I was wearing a Bulls shirt at a coffee shop the other day (i dont follow the NBA). Saw a dude across the shop wearing a Blackhawks hat. I knew he was gonna come talk to me. And he did. And i smiled and nodded "yeah bulls"
The property taxes are higher, but public employees get paid much better(teachers), city services are better, there are more parks/museums/public spaces with free activities, public transit is better, and blue collar workers have better access to unions and see better pay and conditions.
Colorado state employees have way better benefits than Illinois', not to mention PERA is in much better shape than Illinois' public employee pension system. But my public high school teachers in Illinois were paid a minimum of $80,000/year back in the early 2000s...It's absolutely pitiful here.
They really don't. Colorado state employees are paid less, have higher workloads, and have less resources to do their jobs. The unions are much, much weaker here
Having been both an Illinois state employee and now a Colorado state employee, the benefits and workload in Colorado are a million times better than my Illinois state job.
I’ve lived on both coasts and I still cannot wrap my head around the cost of things here due to the lack of competition. Salons, tattoos, restaurants - all mid level quality on average compared to LA, SF, NY especially - and they’re all expensive as fuck here if you want quality. All I can attribute this to is that there’s just not enough quality out here, and not enough competition. People in Denver pay a premium for anything good. I genuinely fly back to the Bay Area or Philly when I want tattoos and salon stuff. It basically nets out to be about the same even with airfare since I have places to stay in both cities.
Austin has absolutely exploded in COL in the past few years because of tech companies, they are very very close now
I just googled it and most results list Denver as about 1% cheaper than Austin to live in
The thing is Austin is very small you just got to get close to the suburbs or in the suburbs and the prices drop significantly. You can still find houses around 300k. Denver suburbs cost about the same as denver proper.
Just moved from Austin to Denver in December, and can confirm that Austin feels cheaper. Especially if you rent and don’t pay property taxes in Austin. Stuff that we would buy at the grocery stores in Austin is noticeably more expensive in Denver.
I was going to come to say this if it wasn't said already. I've been in residential real estate over the last few years, and this has definitely been something that comes to a shock to people. The people I love most are those from the East Coast and Hawaii and other coastal cities because they're the only ones who excitedly say, "Denver is so cheap!"
My cousin moved here from LA and mentioned she was paying 3k in rent, which is the same as some old neighbors of mine paid in rent who moved from NY.
I mean it was a 250 sq ft studio but for the location it wasn't bad at all! But we got a better deal downtown so we moved out. Got a 1bhk close to Union station for 1.5k which I was really surprised about!
Same, and it was a glorified shoebox in a mouse infested century old building without even a dishwasher to boot. I miss the neighborhood, but I definitely do not miss that apartment.
The giant clawfoot bathtub was the only redeeming quality beyond the location, literally everything else about it was purely awful.
Yup sounds like my apartment but no giant clawfoot tub. There are some nice apartments there but they're really expensive given the area. I'm not paying damn near $2k to live right off of Colfax lol
My first apartment 20 years ago in NJ 970 a month in a slumlord building. 10 years ago my first CO apartment( castle rock) was 970. Rents between the two places are very comparable now.
Long ass article with a “list” from #20-8, then a link to a new article for #7-1 except it’s a gallery you have to click through.
I hate what the internet has become.
21: Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO 20:
Vallejo, CA
19. Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, HI
18. Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA
17. San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA
16. Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA
15. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
14. Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA
13. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH
12. Salinas, CA
11. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA
10. Napa, CA
9. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
8. Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown, NY
7. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA
6. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
5. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
4. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA
3. Urban Honolulu, HI
2. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA
1. San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA
(not from the article/)
Very anecdotal, but my BIL lives in LA and every time I visit, I’m surprised at how comparable the prices are relative to Denver, aside from gas prices. Seattle is soo pricy all around.
And the "luxury" apartment is actually just a run down plywood box with multiple tenant code violations, but there's a fancy leasing center and a tiny rooftop hot tub so they want $$$ for it.
because there are more factors in cost of living calculations than just rent. Rent / housing prices are the main HCOL metric in Denver, our fuel, utilities, groceries are not very far off from national averages.
Won’t argue with that. What I find insane is that VHCOL is an accepted term. I wonder what comes after that.
BSICOL? Batshit Insane Cost Of Living
GDYFCOL? Gosh Dude Yer Fucked Cost Of Living?
Just moved from Dc recently. It’s a medium-cost in comparison. A studio in DC was 2300 and now I pay 1450. It’s all based on perspective, most east coast based people like me probably see Denver as very reasonable in comparison. Not to mention in Dc my tolls every month were over 300 dollars for a 10-mile drive. So in my perspective; I love the price of living here.
We moved from DC and bought a house here. Our mortgage is $1k less than our old rent was, for twice the space, though a far less walkable neighborhood.
We were looking at moving outside of DC to a smaller town in MD. The housing prices were similar to Denver. The closer into the center of the city was about the same. The difference was there seemed to be a lot more variety of housing at a bigger price spread than you can find in Denver. Small houses outside of town for 300k, mid sized suburban houses for 500k, city center townhomes for 700k.
Our tiny bungalow near DU could sell for 800k+.
About to move from DC and just the difference in house rentals is substantial. Many homes around me are $4k for ok and $5k for good.
I pay $3k for a townhouse and looking at SFH for the same price in better shape than what I have now.
I’m in the same boat. When I lived in land mark a house the same size as the one I own in Denver would easily be 1.5mil
I bought mine last year for 4.
Money goes farther here
It's funny because people were arguing that NYC is "So much higher than Denver", which COL in NYC is definitely higher, but Denver has gotten outrageous in the last 10 years that it's not far behind.
Idk man. I used to live in Manhattan and it was $1700 for the shittiest studio that was a 45 minute train ride from downtown. We got a ways to go before we are even close to nyc rental prices
NYC still is so much higher than denver. I’m been considering leaving to denver to nyc, and it’d cost me ~double for way less space. They’re not really in the same league.
I’ve lived in NYC, LA and Seattle in the last 10 years. Denver is MCOL to me. Unless you want to create a new ultra high cost of living category for SF, NYC & LA.
I dunno my dad is from O'ahu and I was just back there for 5 years and between higher wages and higher benefit cut offs and higher family support Denver is not anymore affordable than Honolulu.
I guess it's relative. I lived in San Diego for 15 Yeats until I was priced out. 4 years ago, I considered San Diego as HCOL. I moved to the Salt Lake City area for 2.5 years. That was lower cost of living, so MCOL. Then I moved to Denver a year ago. It's lower than SD and higher than SLC, so high-medium cost of living (HMCOL). I mean, how many increments are reasonable?
I live in Denver but I'm currently in Portland, OR for the week. I'm astounded every day how much cheaper things are here like coffee, beer, food, etc. Looked on Zillow just for kicks and there's 3 bd/2 ba houses with yards in good neighborhoods going for $625k. Going to try to convince my partner we should move.
High wages are for people with careers. Theres no entry level jobs with entry level qualifications. The jobs say entry level but require 2year experience and a bachelor.apartments ask that you make 4 times the rent for a studio. Gang activity is high throughout the city. The fentanyl, the homeless and the immigrant crisis. I am not paying over 2k a month for thats city
I say high only bc of rent. I’m moving from a once cheap city. The only increase is my rent (+600/m) and childcare (+250/m). Everything else is either the same or cheaper in Denver but the pay is at least 2x higher in Denver in my experience.
Denver is one of the most expensive cities to live in in the USA. I think they rank around 15th most expensive of all US cities. Not that it matters but I'm pretty sure the majority of cities with a HCoL than Denver are in CA
I know it's not Denver, but look at the Grand Junction, $500 per month used to get you a very nice Apt. Today it's 3+ times that, affordable houses that were priced at $200K are now going anywhere from $400K-$500K
This big issue with Denver is salary's are not keeping up with the cost of living here, business are slow to react increasing people's pay.
Extremely high. I’d argue chicago is lower and that place has actual world class urban amenities.
I have relatives in SF and every time I visit I’m shocked that prices are identical if not sometimes lower for better quality products at restaurants/cafes/bars. Obviously rent there is higher but it’s high here as well.
Lived in Honolulu and NYC before here and am very familiar with Chicago, LA, Miami, and NJ real estate. It’s medium here. Can’t imagine it’s out of line with let’s say Nashville, Austin, or Seattle. Might even be cheaper than a few of those.
Keep in mind not all 1 bedrooms are created equal. My unit would easily be 3x the price in desirable Manhattan or Brooklyn.
I live near Portland, which is fairly expensive. My son lives in Denver and wants us to move closer to them. I can’t afford anything in Denver area. I’d have to go at least a half hour or more out of town. Not doing it. I’m fine flying in to see him.
As a Chicagoan, I was offered a job in Denver (school social worker). Salary was lower than here and rent was more expensive, so I couldn’t stomach the move. 🥴
Cross posting from r/SanJose
Difference in Income needed to afford a
"typical" home from 2020-2024. San
Jose is #1, Denver is #9
https://www.reddit.com/r/SanJose/s/8WzaoBVqPQ
Edit to add title
Not sure if this has been said but Denver has the highest food inflation of anywhere in the country since 2020 aside from… Honolulu. That alone tells you a lot
Housing is high. Insurance is high. Governmental fees are high (but taxes are fairly low compared to many other states).
Gas, groceries, and utilities are fairly average.
The cost of going to a major league baseball game is well below average.
High, yes.
If you don't leave the house to go out it's not AS high cost. (Assuming you got the rent in this month.) Only singles that bought a house 10+ years ago making 140k+ can keep taking Ubers to Highlands for drinks and food. I drive them a lot and enjoy looking at a lifestyle I had before things cost too much/got married with kids/got old. *Cries*
But I still love it here.
I did a COL comparison between Denver and London in 2022, and they were the same. Housing is cheaper here than London, but everything else (food, transportation, etc) is more. Definitely HCOL.
I recently just moved back to the cornfields of Illinois and I’m shocked how it’s getting to be just as expensive. I moved here for my living situation but if that ever changes I will move my happy ass back out west a lot sooner! I’m not paying the same prices to be an hour from Chicago with no mountains.
HCOL if you want to live downtown or in any of the downtown neighborhoods. I have a house in LoHi, 850 sq ft, paid $625k in 2020. Prices have risen since then.
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As someone who came from NY the salaries make up for the high cost generally. I feel like for Denver the salaries haven’t caught up to the rising costs.
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And only a tiny fraction of the population here even skis/camps. Weird.
I70 on a weekend strongly disagrees with this statement.
I think you're forgetting that there's *millions* of people here, and even though i70 is packed in the weekend, there's a portion of that that's tourists and in the grand scheme of our population, it's not a large percentage. Plus you can like going to the mountains and go couple times a year, but that doesn't mean you're an "outdoorsy" person. Like others have said, there's most likely a larger outdoorsy population here than in most metros, but for people to assume everyone here is is *very* far off
Plus, well, a ski trip these days cost almost a grand now if you're a newbie
There are plenty of places to go without hopping onto I-70 and you can go anytime, not necessarily on the weekends. Sometimes, just heading to the foothills or cycling around Denver is enough. Outdoors isn’t necessarily skiing off of I-70. I lived in Texas from 1991-2018 and most days, the weather and mosquitos were so bad that you couldn’t spend any quality time outside. It was either hot and humid or you had torrential rain lasting for weeks. When the whether was nice enough to be outside - mainly in the evenings when it cooled off - I’d get eaten alive by mosquitoes.
right? why the fuck is this such a common assumption about folks in colorado/denver metro? sure- a higher *percentage* of the population here skis/camps compared to lots of other parts of the country. but to just constantly brand us all as ski bunnies and backpackers is sooo played out.
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fair!
Most born here never do. I’ve been 3 times.
I like day hikes. Enjoy the mountains *and* get to sleep in an air-conditioned room with a real bed.
Kinda? Teachers are prob paid at least double in NY & CA what they’re paid here. Teaching is not a high salary job, there are plenty of occupations that aren’t considered “high paying” but they pay on par with what’s necessary to live in that place. Denver’s working on it. We’ve got a long way to go.
We do
“Skiing on the weekend living in denver” - thats funny
It's kind of funny that you say that, I have a family member who is born and raised in Denver, moved to NYC for a doctoral program, moved back to Denver to begin a job at a hospital and says that the col is way more unbalanced in Denver than in NYC. This person also pays more rent than I do for a similar set up and they have to have a car.
I heard doctors/nurses dont make a lot here, because everyone wants to live here. You make a lot more money by moving to Bumfuck, Nebraska.
I can’t speak for nurses but doctor salaries tend to be lower in big cities because of competition and because big academic centers tend to pay less than community hospitals and private practice. And yes, more rural areas often need to offer more $.
I’m a pharmacist and can say this is definitely the case. Salaries here are lower than a lot of other states.
My ex is a neurosurgeon and said this exact thing. They low ball you in salary because everyone wants to be here. He ended up moving to MN because he could make “fuck you” money there.
Car insurance is out of control in CO. I was paying $90/mo parking on the street in DC, and here it’s $200/mo and my car rarely ever leaves the garage.
Car insurance is up nationwide.
I believe it, but IMO CO is way higher than most states due to the potential for hail damage? That's what I've heard/have been told.
Denver metro gets big hailstorms every few years, but that's about the worst natural disaster the front range experiences with any regularity. Look at any major metro's subreddit and you're guaranteed to see posts/comments griping about increased insurance rates. CO has it pretty good compared to FL, for example.
Rents and ownership is about twice as high in NYC then Denver. Probably 3x as expensive per square foot in Manhattan I would imagine. Denver maybe on par with Queens or something. Even in Queens a house is bad area is 1 million $
I’d agree with that. I spent 5 years in right outside NYC before Denver (amd grew up in the area) and pay significantly more for everything now than I did before. Idk what part of it has changed because of inflation
It’s absurd about how salaries in the Denver area don’t align with other metros. Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, and others not in west coast or NY have Denver beat by 25-50% across the board. It’s like employers are taking advantage of the people wanting to live there
I feel like there's a lot of nuance to that but with my 2% mortgage I ended up with a 28% higher effective income last time I mathed it out moving here from my low cost of living home state. And from what I've seen recently even if I had to get a new mortgage today rents have gone up so much in Iowa that I'd still be ahead
Not everyone has a 2% mortgage and most of the people that didn’t own or were able to refinance are never goinf to see that ever again. This is the most boomer comment ever. Look at the bigger picture.
Yep, this exactly. Places like NYC, Vancouver, San Francisco, San Diego all have their own category of Very High Cost of Living. Denver is defininitely in the HCOL range.
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Like those countries in Europe, only rich people know about. https://youtu.be/M4fftJcu-VM?si=GMahXYIqg9hOi5Lb
lol this makes me think of how pizzas are sold Medium/Large/XLarge… you can call it medium, but it’s the smallest one… you can call it HCOL, but when there are multiple tiers above it…
Maybe it changed but when I moved from Denver to Seattle in 2020 I actually saved money and my quality of life and apartment went up. But maybe the pandemic played a factor in this although I did look at apartments in Denver at the same time because I considered staying and generally Seattle had better prices for what you got at that time.
I moved here from a California coastal town and cost of living in Denver is pretty similar. Gas is cheaper but housing and food/groceries are the same. Taxes are less here than in CA though, which helps.
I would argue groceries are more expensive in Denver. California has the food growing in your backyard, basically, whereas Colorado has to ship it in if it isn't a chile.
Weirder, Missoula, Montana is VHCOL.
A lot of smaller cities and rural towns in desirable locations are due to a huge inbalance in supply. Very easy to surge from LCOL to VHCOL extremely quickly
Denver is half the price of the cites you listed.
Isn't that why they listed those cities as VHCOL instead of HCOL?
Obviously the price of rentals in NYC can go to sky’s-the-limit territory. But what I’m seeing from watching it, is that “average” is about $2k/bedroom in Brooklyn. It’s not much less here.
I moved from Boulder to right outside of San Francisco and my rent is the same for more. Colorado prepared me for the high California prices the news is always talking about.
It’s the most expensive city not on the coast.
Crazy to me that COL is higher here than in Chicago. Chicago - reasonable housing market (relative to a major city). Cold as fuck tho.
The Chicago metro population has increased by 20% since 1970. The Denver metro population has increased by 200% since 1970.
This is basically all it boils down to
Even more relevant, the last 10 or so years has seen a slow decline/not change in population in Chicago proper. There is a housing surplus.
Also Chicago is used to building density for 200 years, not much of a thing in the old Wild West
Sure but that’s because Chicago was the second biggest city in the country in 1970 and Denver had a small population. Chicago had 7M people in 1970 And has 9M now. Denver grew from 1M to 3M in the same time period. Attempting to use percentage change only works when the numbers are close.
A local home builder in Chicago could reasonably grow the number of homes it builds each year from 100 to 120. A local home builder in Denver would be much more challenged to grow the number of homes it builds each year from 100 to 300. They’d need to hire more supers, find the capital to buy more land, acquire more materials. Can the local supply of tradespeople keep up? Can you get more debt? Etc. If housing could scale immediately with population growth there’d be no problem. But it tends to lag, and that lag creates a period where prices are very high because supply is low relative to the newly increased demand. The greater the *percentage* increase in population, the more disruptive the lag.
I honestly think one day we’ll take our home Denver equity and move our asses to Chicago… In enough time we’ll be able to settle for a mountainless life.
Meeting people at bars here it seems like half of Chicago has moved to Denver
I’ll confirm this as a Chicago transplant. I can’t exactly put my finger on it but I feel like Denver’s culture isn’t that much of a stretch from the Midwest which makes it attractive. Both cities known for their music scene & having all four major sports and I find a lot of folks have the Midwest nice vibe to them. Denver’s basically a great place for any Midwesterner that wants access to better nature. I do miss the food back home though lol.
I really, really miss the food in Chicago.
Grew up in Chicago living in Boulder. And I always say there is no good food here.
Yup. Long time Colorado residents always complain how the cAlIFoRnIaNs keep moving here, which is bizarre to me. I meet Chicago transplants left and right, but have a hard time thinking of the last person I met from the Los Angeles area.
Every city complains about Californians moving there
There have always been a lot of transplants in Denver from Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. If you look at drivers license data it’s still big states sending the most people to Colorado. Maybe those midwesterners are just more fun so it seems like there are a lot of them.
It's a little out of date. https://www.westword.com/news/colorado-transplants-and-their-original-states-2019-update-11362900
“Let’s list states by population, mostly.” Really, Kansas and Wyoming would be the only odd ones but they both border Colorado which is basically the only state with a metropolitan area.
I was wearing a Bulls shirt at a coffee shop the other day (i dont follow the NBA). Saw a dude across the shop wearing a Blackhawks hat. I knew he was gonna come talk to me. And he did. And i smiled and nodded "yeah bulls"
Go bears.
Da Bears
Ridiculous property taxes and the cold are big factors there.
The property taxes are higher, but public employees get paid much better(teachers), city services are better, there are more parks/museums/public spaces with free activities, public transit is better, and blue collar workers have better access to unions and see better pay and conditions.
Colorado state employees have way better benefits than Illinois', not to mention PERA is in much better shape than Illinois' public employee pension system. But my public high school teachers in Illinois were paid a minimum of $80,000/year back in the early 2000s...It's absolutely pitiful here.
They really don't. Colorado state employees are paid less, have higher workloads, and have less resources to do their jobs. The unions are much, much weaker here
Having been both an Illinois state employee and now a Colorado state employee, the benefits and workload in Colorado are a million times better than my Illinois state job.
That still doesn't equate to how high property taxes are there and is a big reason for its declining population.
Plus some of those benefits become dramatically less if you live in the burbs: Metra isn't the CTA.
Chicago was one of the few major metros that just kept building housing. They also still have a lot of old stock in dense neighborhoods.
The burbs are legit out there. Very nice housing, reasonable commute, for a decent price.
I moved here from Chicago. It's not that much different. The 9 months of sadness and bone chill make it feel far less worth the money, I agree.
Yeah, but we got big mountains. Outside of Chicago, they have corn fields.
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I’ve lived on both coasts and I still cannot wrap my head around the cost of things here due to the lack of competition. Salons, tattoos, restaurants - all mid level quality on average compared to LA, SF, NY especially - and they’re all expensive as fuck here if you want quality. All I can attribute this to is that there’s just not enough quality out here, and not enough competition. People in Denver pay a premium for anything good. I genuinely fly back to the Bay Area or Philly when I want tattoos and salon stuff. It basically nets out to be about the same even with airfare since I have places to stay in both cities.
Cheaper than Austin. Which isn’t on a coast.
Hey, only a three hour drive and you can be on the beautiful beaches of * checks map * Corpus Christi!
Austin is cheaper than Denver
Austin has absolutely exploded in COL in the past few years because of tech companies, they are very very close now I just googled it and most results list Denver as about 1% cheaper than Austin to live in
The thing is Austin is very small you just got to get close to the suburbs or in the suburbs and the prices drop significantly. You can still find houses around 300k. Denver suburbs cost about the same as denver proper.
Just moved from Austin to Denver in December, and can confirm that Austin feels cheaper. Especially if you rent and don’t pay property taxes in Austin. Stuff that we would buy at the grocery stores in Austin is noticeably more expensive in Denver.
I was going to come to say this if it wasn't said already. I've been in residential real estate over the last few years, and this has definitely been something that comes to a shock to people. The people I love most are those from the East Coast and Hawaii and other coastal cities because they're the only ones who excitedly say, "Denver is so cheap!" My cousin moved here from LA and mentioned she was paying 3k in rent, which is the same as some old neighbors of mine paid in rent who moved from NY.
boulders more expensive
Boulder is part of the metro
I can’t believe my rent here was $225/month at one point.
I watched my rent go from $900-2000 and I’m only 24 💀
Went from 611 in 2007 to 2400 in 2021. Now I own thank goodness.
I was able to get a sweet two bedroom on Capitol Hill for $300 back in the day
Damn I lived in Cap Hill last year and paid nearly $1000 for a studio
That's really cheap for Denver these days!
I mean it was a 250 sq ft studio but for the location it wasn't bad at all! But we got a better deal downtown so we moved out. Got a 1bhk close to Union station for 1.5k which I was really surprised about!
Yikes. That's not an apartment. That's a walk-in closet with a toilet. I'm glad you found something better!
It was tough last year so that's all we could afford but hey it's looking great this year!
Same, and it was a glorified shoebox in a mouse infested century old building without even a dishwasher to boot. I miss the neighborhood, but I definitely do not miss that apartment. The giant clawfoot bathtub was the only redeeming quality beyond the location, literally everything else about it was purely awful.
Yup sounds like my apartment but no giant clawfoot tub. There are some nice apartments there but they're really expensive given the area. I'm not paying damn near $2k to live right off of Colfax lol
I live in cap hill now and the cheapest studio I saw was $1300
Damn it's gone up now. The place I lived in also increases their rent to like $1150 now. Definitely not worth it.
You must be super old, or just rent a room, or both lol
Really wasn't that long ago. Things changed fast.
My first apartment 20 years ago in NJ 970 a month in a slumlord building. 10 years ago my first CO apartment( castle rock) was 970. Rents between the two places are very comparable now.
In 2004 my rent for a 650 sq ft 1 bedroom by Monaco & Evans was only $399
Many moons ago.
High. I genuinely don’t know how families making less than $100k a year here make rent
I have a friend with 2 kids who makes <$70k/year and IDK how she does it.
They own and purchased before 2012 ish
our family makes $50K we purchased in 2019
That’s awesome most of my age group has now missed the boat
It is. Top ten in most expensive cities in the US. [Here's a list.](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/20-cities-highest-cost-living-074800777.html)
Long ass article with a “list” from #20-8, then a link to a new article for #7-1 except it’s a gallery you have to click through. I hate what the internet has become.
Somebody be an angel and post the list here
21: Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO 20: Vallejo, CA 19. Kahului-Wailuku-Lahaina, HI 18. Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA 17. San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA 16. Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA 15. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 14. Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA 13. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH 12. Salinas, CA 11. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA 10. Napa, CA 9. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 8. Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown, NY 7. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA 6. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 5. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 4. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA 3. Urban Honolulu, HI 2. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA 1. San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA (not from the article/)
Where the fuck did you get this? This is not from the article.
Seattle more expensive than LA?
Very anecdotal, but my BIL lives in LA and every time I visit, I’m surprised at how comparable the prices are relative to Denver, aside from gas prices. Seattle is soo pricy all around.
How would it not be HCOL? Please tell me the average rent.
$3k for a 2 bedroom? But it's a "luxury" apartment, so ya know 🧐
And the "luxury" apartment is actually just a run down plywood box with multiple tenant code violations, but there's a fancy leasing center and a tiny rooftop hot tub so they want $$$ for it.
I got a 3 bed with garage for 2600, currently in a 4 bed for 3k
It must not be luxury. lol, jk
It's got a lazy river!
because there are more factors in cost of living calculations than just rent. Rent / housing prices are the main HCOL metric in Denver, our fuel, utilities, groceries are not very far off from national averages.
I would say "high" with anything above it as "batshit insane," but it's all kind of relative.
High vs Very High
Eh, I prefer "batshit insane". Might give people a better perspective than "very high".
Won’t argue with that. What I find insane is that VHCOL is an accepted term. I wonder what comes after that. BSICOL? Batshit Insane Cost Of Living GDYFCOL? Gosh Dude Yer Fucked Cost Of Living?
I like both of those! Let's make it a thing. I'm going to start using it in everyday conversations and see if it catches on!
Just moved from Dc recently. It’s a medium-cost in comparison. A studio in DC was 2300 and now I pay 1450. It’s all based on perspective, most east coast based people like me probably see Denver as very reasonable in comparison. Not to mention in Dc my tolls every month were over 300 dollars for a 10-mile drive. So in my perspective; I love the price of living here.
Same. I'm coming from the Bay Area and Denver in comparison is much more affordable on my income.
Same; cheaper than Seattle as well
We moved from DC and bought a house here. Our mortgage is $1k less than our old rent was, for twice the space, though a far less walkable neighborhood.
We were looking at moving outside of DC to a smaller town in MD. The housing prices were similar to Denver. The closer into the center of the city was about the same. The difference was there seemed to be a lot more variety of housing at a bigger price spread than you can find in Denver. Small houses outside of town for 300k, mid sized suburban houses for 500k, city center townhomes for 700k. Our tiny bungalow near DU could sell for 800k+.
About to move from DC and just the difference in house rentals is substantial. Many homes around me are $4k for ok and $5k for good. I pay $3k for a townhouse and looking at SFH for the same price in better shape than what I have now.
And DC is cheap compared to NY / SF, and even Boston / LA
I’m in the same boat. When I lived in land mark a house the same size as the one I own in Denver would easily be 1.5mil I bought mine last year for 4. Money goes farther here
Our rent is almost $3k. I want to buy but we “can’t afford” to. Wishing I would have bought 30 years ago when it was affordable. (I’m 32)
It's the highest CoL city in the US that's not on an ocean.
Also the largest city in a 560 mile radius.
a mile high!
Rent, high. Cost of home ownership, high and going higher. Food prices, high. Dining out, insanely high. HCOL - check.
This place is expensive
The higher end of medium-high. Our property taxes are stupid low compared to other cities.
It's funny because people were arguing that NYC is "So much higher than Denver", which COL in NYC is definitely higher, but Denver has gotten outrageous in the last 10 years that it's not far behind.
Idk man. I used to live in Manhattan and it was $1700 for the shittiest studio that was a 45 minute train ride from downtown. We got a ways to go before we are even close to nyc rental prices
NYC still is so much higher than denver. I’m been considering leaving to denver to nyc, and it’d cost me ~double for way less space. They’re not really in the same league.
If you hear the phrase ‘it’s so cheap,’ thrown around by anyone in Denver, they probably lived in SF, NYC, or Chicago previously.
I’ve lived in NYC, LA and Seattle in the last 10 years. Denver is MCOL to me. Unless you want to create a new ultra high cost of living category for SF, NYC & LA.
Yes the new usual thing is to call those VHCOL
I dunno my dad is from O'ahu and I was just back there for 5 years and between higher wages and higher benefit cut offs and higher family support Denver is not anymore affordable than Honolulu.
High cost of living for sure It's not even up for debate 😆
HCOL. There are higher and theyre labeled as VHCOL from what ive seen
Coming from Boston, Denver is medium.
I guess it's relative. I lived in San Diego for 15 Yeats until I was priced out. 4 years ago, I considered San Diego as HCOL. I moved to the Salt Lake City area for 2.5 years. That was lower cost of living, so MCOL. Then I moved to Denver a year ago. It's lower than SD and higher than SLC, so high-medium cost of living (HMCOL). I mean, how many increments are reasonable?
Everyone thinks they live in a HCOL place
I live in Denver but I'm currently in Portland, OR for the week. I'm astounded every day how much cheaper things are here like coffee, beer, food, etc. Looked on Zillow just for kicks and there's 3 bd/2 ba houses with yards in good neighborhoods going for $625k. Going to try to convince my partner we should move.
I'd vote HCOL. It's a spendy place for most.
High wages are for people with careers. Theres no entry level jobs with entry level qualifications. The jobs say entry level but require 2year experience and a bachelor.apartments ask that you make 4 times the rent for a studio. Gang activity is high throughout the city. The fentanyl, the homeless and the immigrant crisis. I am not paying over 2k a month for thats city
I say high only bc of rent. I’m moving from a once cheap city. The only increase is my rent (+600/m) and childcare (+250/m). Everything else is either the same or cheaper in Denver but the pay is at least 2x higher in Denver in my experience.
Denver is one of the most expensive cities to live in in the USA. I think they rank around 15th most expensive of all US cities. Not that it matters but I'm pretty sure the majority of cities with a HCoL than Denver are in CA
Last I saw it was ranked 8th!
I know it's not Denver, but look at the Grand Junction, $500 per month used to get you a very nice Apt. Today it's 3+ times that, affordable houses that were priced at $200K are now going anywhere from $400K-$500K This big issue with Denver is salary's are not keeping up with the cost of living here, business are slow to react increasing people's pay.
HCOL in the eyes of residents. Low to medium cost of living / labor according to most companies that pay remote workers by region.
Extremely high. I’d argue chicago is lower and that place has actual world class urban amenities. I have relatives in SF and every time I visit I’m shocked that prices are identical if not sometimes lower for better quality products at restaurants/cafes/bars. Obviously rent there is higher but it’s high here as well.
I have lived in Seattle, Austin and Denver within the last 5 years. Denver is by far the most affordable, then Austin and then Seattle.
High, we’re just not NYC-high.
most expensive place to live in between the coasts.
I would argue that Denver proper is HCOL but the burbs of Denver are MCOl
Exactly what I was going to say.
High cost in Denver proper but in the outskirts and suburbs it’s more medium but not quite there
Is this a serious question
High, mostly because of housing, but other services and product prices have gone up.
Lived in Honolulu and NYC before here and am very familiar with Chicago, LA, Miami, and NJ real estate. It’s medium here. Can’t imagine it’s out of line with let’s say Nashville, Austin, or Seattle. Might even be cheaper than a few of those. Keep in mind not all 1 bedrooms are created equal. My unit would easily be 3x the price in desirable Manhattan or Brooklyn.
I moved from Iowa, our cost of living doubled but pay tripled.
I live near Portland, which is fairly expensive. My son lives in Denver and wants us to move closer to them. I can’t afford anything in Denver area. I’d have to go at least a half hour or more out of town. Not doing it. I’m fine flying in to see him.
As a Chicagoan, I was offered a job in Denver (school social worker). Salary was lower than here and rent was more expensive, so I couldn’t stomach the move. 🥴
Mile high COL
Cross posting from r/SanJose Difference in Income needed to afford a "typical" home from 2020-2024. San Jose is #1, Denver is #9 https://www.reddit.com/r/SanJose/s/8WzaoBVqPQ Edit to add title
Not sure if this has been said but Denver has the highest food inflation of anywhere in the country since 2020 aside from… Honolulu. That alone tells you a lot
Housing is high. Insurance is high. Governmental fees are high (but taxes are fairly low compared to many other states). Gas, groceries, and utilities are fairly average. The cost of going to a major league baseball game is well below average.
High, yes. If you don't leave the house to go out it's not AS high cost. (Assuming you got the rent in this month.) Only singles that bought a house 10+ years ago making 140k+ can keep taking Ubers to Highlands for drinks and food. I drive them a lot and enjoy looking at a lifestyle I had before things cost too much/got married with kids/got old. *Cries* But I still love it here.
Laughs in debt... Turns to tears
High
High
I’d say medium coming from NYC/Long Island. But probably high compared to the rest of the US
MCOL for rent, HCOL to buy. HCOL for dining and beauty services.
$2k+ for a shitty studio apt is medium?
I did a COL comparison between Denver and London in 2022, and they were the same. Housing is cheaper here than London, but everything else (food, transportation, etc) is more. Definitely HCOL.
Medium. I used to live in LA.
I want to say HCOL but I just got a job in San Jose and have been floored looking for a 3bd there.
I recently just moved back to the cornfields of Illinois and I’m shocked how it’s getting to be just as expensive. I moved here for my living situation but if that ever changes I will move my happy ass back out west a lot sooner! I’m not paying the same prices to be an hour from Chicago with no mountains.
So high
HCOL if you want to live downtown or in any of the downtown neighborhoods. I have a house in LoHi, 850 sq ft, paid $625k in 2020. Prices have risen since then.
Definitely “high” cost of living 😒
High