where homes are affordable in Colorado (Denver, Pueblo: real estate, renting, insurance)

[quis071]

Looking to start new with my family and maybe looking to move colorado. We are in Nashville, Tn right now and looking for a change. We are looking to move pretty soon but we need to find houses that are affordable but still worth buying...maybe 3-4 bedrooms and spacious yard.....We are a family of 3 and looking to expand in a couple of years...Anybody out there could help us narrow down the search???

[Mike from back east]

Much of COLO will be more expensive than TN.

Job is a key factor; care to tell us about that?

Cheapest homes are in/around Pueblo, or in farm towns out east on the prairie that covers at least 1/3 of COLO, from the KS border to I-25.

If you want some decent advice, you need to state a price range for buying or renting.

[jazzlover]

Compared to much of the US aside from the coasts, Colorado's affordability index (housing prices compared to local incomes) is pretty lousy. This is true in the extreme in the resort areas and much of "mountain" Colorado. Affordability is better in the metro area than in the mountains, but still is not great compared to, say, many smaller metro areas in the Midwest or South. Rural areas in Colorado away from the mountains have less costly real estate, but local incomes can be pitifully low, as well. In a lot of rural Colorado, a $10 per hour job is considered a high-paying job.

[CosmicWizard]

quis071....the lack of specifics in your question make it difficult to provide more than a most general response. With more information, we could be more helpful.

How do YOU define affordable?

For the sake of comaprison, what kind of home are you currently living in?

How many sf?

What year was it built?

How many bedrooms and baths?

What are comparable homes in your neighborhood selling for?

How much are you looking to spend on your next home purchase?

[Josseppie]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Compared to much of the US aside from the coasts, Colorado's affordability index (housing prices compared to local incomes) is pretty lousy. This is true in the extreme in the resort areas and much of "mountain" Colorado. Affordability is better in the metro area than in the mountains, but still is not great compared to, say, many smaller metro areas in the Midwest or South. Rural areas in Colorado away from the mountains have less costly real estate, but local incomes can be pitifully low, as well. In a lot of rural Colorado, a $10 per hour job is considered a high-paying job.

You forgot about Pueblo. It is one of the most affordable places to buy a home in the country.

[Lugnuts]

FWIW, Pueblo has made the top 5 affordable places to live in the US:

America's most affordable cities - Yahoo! Homes

[80skeys]

Define affordable

[jim9251]

Wow are you in for sticker shock. VISIT first, check out home prices where you might want to live. There's also going to be a HUGE increase in your car tags, insurance, gasoline. Oh there's no jobs here either.

Anyway, good luck to you.

[jwiley]

Originally Posted by Lugnuts

FWIW, Pueblo has made the top 5 affordable places to live in the US:

America's most affordable cities - Yahoo! Homes

Low cost of living is nice, except when you cannot find a job, everybody I know around Pueblo either works several part time jobs or have to travel around the state extensively for work.

[Antares45]

Originally Posted by jim9251

Wow are you in for sticker shock. VISIT first, check out home prices where you might want to live. There's also going to be a HUGE increase in your car tags, insurance, gasoline. Oh there's no jobs here either.

Anyway, good luck to you.

No argument on home prices, but I moved here from GA and there was no appreciable difference in the cost of my car tag, gasoline was even slightly less, and I've been saving over $200 every six months in auto insurance since moving out here (I'm a 28 y/o single white male; been living here for just over a year.) Regardless, you're probably still right about the car tags because in GA there is an ad valorem tax applied to tags.

The job situation in Denver is better than it was back in GA, so I'd say the same is roughly true for Tennessee as well. However, cost of living here is obviously higher, and salaries are lower than in Atlanta. I don't know if this is due to industry composition (ATL has a lot more IT, manufacturing, and engineering positions in general) or the commonly-held notion on the forums here that the desire to live in CO is so high that employers can effectively go with the "lowest bidder" so-to-speak.

On a related note, I still haven't abandoned the belief that employers prefer to hire locally whenever possible. This certainly isn't as true for professional positions requiring advanced degrees, but there's hardly an abundance of those in this town or anywhere else in the country for that matter, except for perhaps the oil industry in Houston and various pockets of healthcare, mining and manufacturing scattered wherever.