Moving to Denver From SF Bay Area - need help choosing where to live (Aurora: fit in, rent)

[bchamp28]

Hi,

My fiancé and I are relocating to Denver in early 2019 from the SF Bay Area. We are looking at new construction homes and have narrowed our search to Aurora and Thornton. I was previously employed at a large tech company in San Francisco and am now working remotely for a DC company. Proximity to the airport is important to me. My fiancé is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and will look for a job closer to when we know our move date. We are used to a high cost of living area and Denver is less expensive than our current situation. Our budget is ~500K. We are looking at Meritage Homes in Aurora, William Lyons in Aurora, Meritage in Thornton and Lennar in Thornton it appears the Aurora communities are in SE Aurora near Southshore. Having spent little time in Denver, we aren’t too familiar with either city. Here’s our priorities:

-School district both for resale and future children
-Proximity to airport
-proximity to a walkable downtown with restaurants, activities, etc
-close to outdoor recreational activities - hiking, dog park, mountain biking trails, etc
-Since we don’t know where my fiancé will work, we want to be within a 45 minute drive of Denver, Brookfield, Cemtennial, Denver Tech Center. If I decide to leave my job, it would be to join a tech company in the area so being close to any tech center hubs is important.

We’ll be going next week to look at the developments and decide which community to purchase in.

Thanks for the help and let me know if any questions!

[bluescreen73]

SE Aurora is a great location for quality schools, but it's a little further from the mountains. It adds 20-30 mins of driving versus living someplace west of I-25. Having to go that extra little bit doesn't bother me. YMMV. Castlewood Canyon State Park is close by if you just need to get out and do a little hiking.

We live in The Wheatlands neigborhood. It's just up the hill from Southshore. Keep in mind that some parts of Southshore and Blackstone sit in a bowl and don't have any views of the mountains.

CCSD schools are some of the best in the Denver metro area.

SE Aurora is only 20-25 minutes from DIA via E-470, but it's an expensive tollway and the cost can add up quickly.

Tech Center is 25-35 minutes straight down Arapahoe Road. I rarely take E-470 to or from work.

SE Aurora doesn't have a walkable downtown. Southlands is the closest thing, but it's a faux downtown-concept mall.

I threw together a quick blog on living in Denver on my way back from Seattle last week. It's by no means comprehensive, but I think it's a good starter.

Moving to Denver...A Primer on Living Life Where the Mountains Meet The Plains.

[davebarnes]

Originally Posted by bchamp28

We are looking at new construction homes ...
Proximity to the airport is important to me....
Here’re our priorities:
-School district both for resale and future children
-Proximity to airport
-proximity to a walkable downtown with restaurants, activities, etc
-close to outdoor recreational activities - hiking, dog park, mountain biking trails, etc
-Since we don’t know where my fiancé will work, we want to be within a 45 minute drive of Denver, Brookfield, Cemtennial, Denver Tech Center. If I decide to leave my job, it would be to join a tech company in the area so being close to any tech center hubs is important.

1. I would not buy new. I would buy 3-5 year old used. That way you are past the infant mortality stage.
2. Ignore school districts as you at least 10 years away from when it really matters.
3. Not many walkable downtowns here.
4. Everything is close to outdoor recreation.
5. Tech center hubs are scattered.
6. Rent first.

[brown_dog_us]

Since you don't have kids to enroll in a school, I'd follow Dave's advice and rent. Also, once your wife finds a job you might feel better about nudging the budget up a bit. Good schools, close to the mountains, with walkable retail is almost impossible for $500k. Can you list a few bay area neighborhoods you like? We might be able to suggest something similar.

There are 3 major tech centers: Denver Tech Center (DTC) to the south, downtown Denver (LoDo), and Boulder. They all attract slightly different types of tech companies.

The airport is NE of Denver, so you probably want to look either close to a light rail line with access to the airport (use google maps) or something close to E-470 (the toll road to the airport on the Northside).

[2bindenver]

People relocating often choose new communities to fit in better.

Also consider Reunion, Cooperleaf, tallgrass ...stay away from Parker, castle rock, sterling ranch as being out of the commute zone.

[bchamp28]

Thanks everyone. @bluescreen73 - thanks for the blog link as there’s lots of good info,

Renting is not something we’re considering but thanks for the input. Right now, we live in a small and affluent suburb about 20 miles from SF - San Rafael. It’s a bedroom community of the city with a farmers market every week, a small theater with independent films, and a walkable downtown with many family owned businesses - not inundated with large box chains.

I’m not naive enough to think we’ll get everything we want but our budget which we could increase if needed ( we pay $3k in rent now) so could afford a higher mortgage but don’t want to overextend ourselves. Any thoughts on Thornton - seems like our money goes a bit further there.

[bluescreen73]

Thornton is a less desirable area than Southeast Aurora. It's a little rougher around the edges, and the schools aren't as good. The areas up north are also closer to a lot of fracking activity.

Depending on where you live in Thornton the commute to the airport isn't as easy as it is down here, either.

[alloo66]

I like Reunion, Stapleton, and Green Valley Ranch!

[Augie Daugie]

If you want a walkable downtown, you will not find anything like that in Aurora. I would consider Stapleton. While it may cost a bit more than some of these other neighborhoods, you will have better proximity to both DIA and Downtown Denver. Stapleton also has walkable amenities and shops.

[mic111]

Originally Posted by bchamp28

Any thoughts on Thornton - seems like our money goes a bit further there.

Overall I like Thornton and SE Aurora. I currently live next to Thornton and am very familiar with the area. For schools there are plenty of choice/charter schools if you don't like your neighborhood ones but there are some nice neighborhood ones to. I think it is comparable to SE Aurora with some better than others. I don't find there to be any difference in niceness/roughness between the two areas. I would not describe either as rough.

What I do like is the newer infrastructure in northern Thornton (vs. other areas of Denver metro suburbs - SE Aurora also has newer infrastructure). I also like the Eastlake area which should have a rail line to downtown opening in the next year or two. Here is a map. They are opening the line up to 124th with the other part unscheduled.
RTD

The area has a very nice trail system that goes all over and Eastlake is lovely to walk around. You also have very easy access to Adams County (now Riverdale?) park which had lots of trails along the Platt River and around some smaller reservoirs. The street layout allows for more distributed traffic than what I find in SE Aurora which is more similar to a planned suburban development with large parkways.

One thing I really like about the northern suburbs area is the access to independent or small chain but very high quality restaurants. I have to eat gluten free so it is important to have good ethnic or made from scratch places. I haven't found any other area that has the great variety that I have here. I think it is because most of the places are newer and thus on trend with what is popular. But these restaurants are not mixed into north Thornton as it is mostly suburbs with retail/restaurants along I-25 and 120th.

What I don't like is the potential for any open space to be fracked. But this is the possibility in SE Aurora also. They are over the same oil and gas basin. It has made it very hard to look for a retirement house as we wanted to be on open space. And now I look at all of them suspiciously. Anything that is 500 ft from a inhabitable structure could have an application put on it tomorrow and the oil and gas commission has never turned one down. We actually have a house on acreage with full mountain view in Thornton that we are planning to look at later in the week when the snow clears. Our hesitation is it is a good 15 min. drive to restaurants and shopping. We like to be in what I call walkable suburbs where we can get to anything in 5 min. or walk to in under a mile.

There is no cute downtown. To get that you can drive to Lafayette, Louisville and Longmont (all of which have great restaurants and festivals). For Denver downtown and admittedly pretty good restaurants around Union Station there will soon be a rail stop.

There is an very popular outdoor shopping mall called Orchard Town Center in Northern Westminster that I like quite a bit. It has a different flavor (smaller and easier to navigate) than the similar one in Aurora. However both north Thornton and SE Aurora are fairly ubiquitous suburbs that you have to drive a small amount to get to shopping. I think they are very similar in this aspect.

We have looked at SE Aurora and the part that I didn't like was the large feeder parkway system. But that being said I wouldn't hesitate to move there if that aspect didn't bother me. There isn't anything really wrong with either other than the fracking potential. But as far as we can tell that is a problem for the whole metro area as it is all over the same basin.
Here is a map of where the basin extends. The gray area shows where they will be moving to eventually with the red and green showing where they are now.
https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/ene...ce/petroleum-0

The cities have been attempting to ban fracking but there is a state law that doesn't allow them to do so. Maybe the new democrat government will figure out a way for the cities to do so.

We were both in tech and have worked in the DTC, along the 36 corridor, up to Longmont and over toward Boulder. We found that living and working in DTC was the only way to make the DTC work because it was too arduous to cross Denver every day. We also found more and diverse employment opportunity living in the north suburbs because there is a huge tech presence along 36 toward Boulder. Living north has allowed us to live in the same house for 20 years and it has always been easy to find employment within a 20 min. drive. Don't get me wrong Denver Tech Center is a great area to live. I loved it down there. But the name doesn't mean it is the "Tech Center" for the Denver metro area.

The 36 corridor between Denver and Boulder attracts alot of tech companies as does Boulder and the northern suburbs up to Longmont. You will find STEM schools strong and popular up here because of the parents being in tech. I call it the Denver Boulder Longmont triangle. And with the soon to be opened RTD line to Denver the area may see appreciation due to opening it up to Denver commuters. That may be why you are seeing your $ go farther here but that may not be the case in a couple of years when it gets discovered. To me Eastlake is a future Wash Park like area with a rail stop but tons of trails, a beautiful lake with mountain views to walk around and great housing options.

Edit: I'm not sure why Bluescreen said the commute to the airport was better in SE Aurora. We also have the 470 toll road which is super easy. Most often we take 104th over. Also super easy but maybe 5 min. longer. The buses also go over fairly easily and many people do that for long trips.