Colorado Springs, Longmont or Louisville? (Denver, Fort Collins: real estate, houses, to buy)
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Hi - I posted this on the main Colorado wall as well, but I thought I'd get more responses if I posted in here.
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Hi there!
My husband and I are planning a move to CO and we've narrowed it down to CS, Longmont or Louisville. I'm thinking most likely CS or Longmont, but I was hoping to get some opinions. I am a computer hardware technician and will need job opportunities in the IT field. My husband wants to go to school for Environmental Science/Sustainability/ Renewable Energy and would like to live in a city that offers good job placement in that field, as well. We are young, late 20's-early30's, but we don't care about night life (clubbing, etc.). We'd like a quiet place, but close to a small city. We LOVE being outdoors and need plenty of recreation - moutain biking, hiking, etc. close by. We would also like to live somewhere reasonably priced. If we were to buy a house, it would have to be under or around $200,000. Basically, as long as it's cheaper than the Philadelphia/NY area, we're Ok.
We just want to live a peaceful, simple live, with good Christian friends and lots of outdoor fun. We don't have kids, so right now our jobs, environment and cost of living are the most important thing in considering where we live. After doing some research, these 3 cities seem to be the best bet if we want to stay close to the Mtns. If anyone has ANY insight, please advise. I appreciate your help!!
Hi - I posted this on the main Colorado wall as well, but I thought I'd get more responses if I posted in here.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ______________
Hi there!
My husband and I are planning a move to CO and we've narrowed it down to CS, Longmont or Louisville. I'm thinking most likely CS or Longmont, but I was hoping to get some opinions. I am a computer hardware technician and will need job opportunities in the IT field. My husband wants to go to school for Environmental Science/Sustainability/ Renewable Energy and would like to live in a city that offers good job placement in that field, as well. We are young, late 20's-early30's, but we don't care about night life (clubbing, etc.). We'd like a quiet place, but close to a small city. We LOVE being outdoors and need plenty of recreation - moutain biking, hiking, etc. close by. We would also like to live somewhere reasonably priced. If we were to buy a house, it would have to be under or around $200,000. Basically, as long as it's cheaper than the Philadelphia/NY area, we're Ok.
We just want to live a peaceful, simple live, with good Christian friends and lots of outdoor fun. We don't have kids, so right now our jobs, environment and cost of living are the most important thing in considering where we live. After doing some research, these 3 cities seem to be the best bet if we want to stay close to the Mtns. If anyone has ANY insight, please advise. I appreciate your help!!
Hello there... My husband and I (in our mid 30s) live in Longmont (and have lived here for the last 7 years), but also spend time in the Louisville area. I've been to Colorado Springs several times for work and recreational purposes, so hopefully that helps to provide a bit of background on what is, of course, merely my opinion.
It seems as though you are looking for a variety of things, and I'm not sure that they will necessarily all coincide. It's not horribly expensive in any of those areas (Louisville being the most expensive of the three), but it will depend on the type of house you'd like to live in if you're looking for under $200k. In Longmont, there are several areas under that price range, some of which you likely wouldn't want to live in. Old Town Longmont has some adorable turn of the century houses, but they are smaller (let's say 700-1100 sq feet for your price range). If you need more space, there are other areas of town, not quite as charming though, that will fit the bill. From what I've seen (I'm an obsessive real estate hunter junkie), Co Springs has several areas for housing that would also fit the bill. Since I am certainly no expert on that area, I will leave that to someone else, but I will say that while visiting the area, there are areas I wouldn't really want to live.
Outdoor activities are abundant in all three areas, as none of them are far from the mountains, trails, rivers, lakes and so on. So, both winter and summer free time can easily be spent in the outdoors. Again, since I live in Longmont, I can more specifically speak to that area. There are several bicycle riders here and lots of trails to ride that take you throughout the city. The city has done an excellent job of creating these routes for both walkers and bicyclists, as well as having a variety of bike lanes on streets throughout the city. Mountain biking also isn't far away. While I'm more of a street rider, my husband loves mountain biking and goes just about every weekend and often during the week as well. Lyons (just slightly west of Longmont) has several trails for both hiking and biking, and of course, Boulder isn't far either.
Additionally, my husband is in IT (networking, management, etc) and has had no problem finding leads in the area. Now, by "in the area" I mean within a reasonable driving distance. Admittedly, most IT jobs (while there are some locally) are in the Denver, Boulder or Fort Collins area. All of these areas are within driving distance, but you have to be willing to commute the 30-60 minutes each way. I know that at one point he was also looking in Co Springs for jobs (we thought we might wander down that way), and he had no issue finding IT jobs available. Honestly, I think being more into the hardware side of computers, you might have better luck in this area than he has had in finding networking type jobs... but, I suppose that's always changing. Boulder is big on environmental issues (as are many other areas), and I know there are more than a couple of renewable energy type companies that are quite often hiring. I'm sure there are others around as well, but that isn't where our careers have lead us, so I'm not as familiar.
I will preface the following statement with the information that I am not a Christian, but as for religious beliefs, I would say that Longmont has a lot of practicing Christians, however, there are other faiths here as well. I believe the biggest thing is being tolerant of all beliefs. I have always felt more of a feeling that "it's okay to believe what you do, as long as you let me believe what I do" among the citizens. Again, from what I have read, not from personal knowledge, it seems that there are several Christians in the Co Springs area as well, so I don't think you'd have an issue in that area, at least in the religion aspect of things.
One of the best things (in my opinion) about Longmont is its smaller town feel, yet it's proximity to Denver. I love knowing that I can live in a smaller area and feel safe walking down the street, and still know that I can get to Denver in 30 minutes (which we do on a regular basis).
Hopefully, that provides you with a bit of information. If you have specific questions, I would be happy to answer as best I can. Good luck with your move and decision about which city suits you best!
Thank you, poeco, for your help; I appreciate your opinion. I seem to be finding more IT jobs (for what I do) in Denver and surrounding suburbs, although I have found some in CoS. Mainly Englewood, Broomfield, etc. I've researched some apts. in the Denver suburbs and they are reasonably priced, if that's where a job leads me. We're still going to keep CoS as our first option, but at this point, we're willing to go wherever we can gets jobs.
As we're doing research, I'm find a good amount of churches in most areas that we're interested in and I haven't heard anything bad about the areas. I think we'll be happy as long as we're in CO and not on the east coast anymore.
Thanks again!
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