Thinking to move to Boulder or Denver

Hi,

The Boulder area is a great place to work and live, but housing is VERY expensive. It's also quite pricey in the Denver area as well.

We moved here from New Mexico 10 months ago. Prices in Denver metro depend on where you are looking. Go to the Century 21 web site, type in Denver (or Boulder), and look at listings. That will give you some idea of what 's available. It is currently a buyers market - we offered $25k less than asking price on an empty home that needed upgrades and got it no questions asked.

Expensive? Depends on where you are relocating from. Compared to where we lived in Californians a few years ago, it's not bad at all. Folks from some other parts of the US might think it's pretty pricey. Prices have adjusted downward from where they were a year ago.

Lakewood, Wheat Ridge, most suburbs are good for families. Parts of Denver and Aurora have gang issues.

I saw something online in the last few days that makes me think he Denver housing market has struck bottom - they listed it as one of the top ten markets for sellers. There are quite a few homes on the market, though, so buyers are still doing well.

We rented a house for a while before buying. It let us decide what area of town we wanted to live in before making the commitment of buying a home. That worked GREAT for us, we are very happy with our decision and had plenty of time to do the homework required before buying. (Got lots of input from co-workers, etc.).

As the OP said, Boulder is more expensive. Not sure if this is a pro or con for you, but "the people's republic of Boulder" (local slang :)) is pretty liberal in their approach to politics and life in general. Denver (and the rest of the state overall) is more of a mix.

Good luck!!!