Is Colorado Affordable? By Walter Huff
R
ecently, Colorado seems to be the place for everyone! And it makes a lot of sense. The weather here is perfect for almost every outdoor activity, the mountains, the culture…. What’s there not to love about Colorado? Between 2010 and 2020, the state’s population has grown tremendously from 14.8% to 5.8 million residents. This makes Colorado one of the fastest-growing states in the country. However, one of the questions I keep getting is whether it’s expensive to live in Colorado. As more people come into the state, the cost of living is bound to go up. BUT LET’S BREAK THIS DOWN Housing in colorado is the biggest and main factor in why the cost of living in the state is so high. According to estimates by Zillow, the median price for a home in Colorado at the beginning of the year was $528,211 as at the
time of writing this article, the price had risen to $558,210. This figure is expected to continue rising in the next few years. If we break the housing costs further to focus on the three most popular cities in the state, the situation gets worse! Take Denver for example, one article by The Denver Post claimed that the home prices in Denver’s metro area were as high as 5 times the median household income! In simple terms, take your monthly income and divide it by 2.5! That’s how much you can afford in Denver. More worrying is the fact that housing prices in Denver will continue to rise as months go by. The average cost of a home in Denver is $580,678 an excess of $22,468 over the state’s average. The good news is that the city’s real estate prices are cooling off mainly because APRIL 2022 | 41
