We're Making the Move to Denver! (Lakewood, Golden: apartments, rental, month to)
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I hope you don't mind yet another 'Relocating to Denver' thread.
A little about my husband and I:
We are both from San Diego and have been living in Tahoe the past couple of years. As much as we love being in close proximity to the mountains, we are finding the area a tad claustrophobic with very limited retail and dining options.
Why we are thinking of Denver?
The mountains and seasons! We love skiing and snowboarding in the winter, hiking and biking when the weather permits. We love staying in the West Coast and would do all we can to avoid the humidity in the East. Denver seems to have a nice balance of the great outdoors while not being remote as Tahoe is. Of all the cities I have surveyed on this forum, you Denverites seem to love where you live!
Upon perusing some threads in the Denver forum, I came across a particular one mentioning that it is close to impossible to find a job unless you have a local address and telephone number. I work as a legal secretary with minimal experience with a (rather useless) B.S. in Psychology, and my husband is in the F&B industry. Would you agree with the suggestion of taking a leap of faith to move, and then look for a job?
My major concern is where to live. Most of you suggest finding a place to live close to the work place. Since we probably will be moving without jobs, how should we go about doing this? Is it possible to secure a month to month rent before coming there, and then moving if our future work place is to far away? Also, the golden question is, where and which neighborhood?
How bad is the downtown area? Is it at all busy, noisy, overpriced and unsafe but where a lot of businesses are, as my vision of downtown areas are? How bad does traffic get travelling to and fro? We don't care at all for nightlife (despite being 23 and 29) and prefer quieter neighborhoods. Ideally, we prefer to live in a townhouse or any place with a touch of privacy. Our intended rent would be around $700 for a 1 bedroom. Also, we have 1 car to run errands, but I probably would need to rely on public transport to go to work, which I don't mind.
Thank you for taking your time to read my thread, and thank you very much in advance to everybody who is going to chime in.
Which season are you looking forward to here? Winter, Almost Winter, Still Winter and Summer? lol
There are not 4 distinct seasons, lots of people lately are posting about moving here for 4 Seasons and the weather here is not predicatable.
Depends on what you mean by remote, to me it is very remote and land locked. I am from the East Coast where in a hour or two I can be in a different city or state. Here I drive for 6 hours to get to SLC, 5 to ALB and etc.
$700 a month is not going to get you much in a good area.
If you are moving without jobs I cannot stress enough that you should have several thousand saved up in case it takes you months to obtain employment.
As far a skiing and snowboarding it is quite a drive from Denver, add in traffic or bad weather and your 2 hour trip takes 3 or 4.
If you both have some vacation time coming I would visit. Spend a few days, look around, if you like it apply for jobs while in town and see what happens.
I hope you don't mind yet another 'Relocating to Denver' thread.
A little about my husband and I:
We are both from San Diego and have been living in Tahoe the past couple of years. As much as we love being in close proximity to the mountains, we are finding the area a tad claustrophobic with very limited retail and dining options.
Why we are thinking of Denver?
The mountains and seasons! We love skiing and snowboarding in the winter, hiking and biking when the weather permits. We love staying in the West Coast and would do all we can to avoid the humidity in the East. Denver seems to have a nice balance of the great outdoors while not being remote as Tahoe is. Of all the cities I have surveyed on this forum, you Denverites seem to love where you live!
Upon perusing some threads in the Denver forum, I came across a particular one mentioning that it is close to impossible to find a job unless you have a local address and telephone number. I work as a legal secretary with minimal experience with a (rather useless) B.S. in Psychology, and my husband is in the F&B industry. Would you agree with the suggestion of taking a leap of faith to move, and then look for a job?
My major concern is where to live. Most of you suggest finding a place to live close to the work place. Since we probably will be moving without jobs, how should we go about doing this? Is it possible to secure a month to month rent before coming there, and then moving if our future work place is to far away? Also, the golden question is, where and which neighborhood?
How bad is the downtown area? Is it at all busy, noisy, overpriced and unsafe but where a lot of businesses are, as my vision of downtown areas are? How bad does traffic get travelling to and fro? We don't care at all for nightlife (despite being 23 and 29) and prefer quieter neighborhoods. Ideally, we prefer to live in a townhouse or any place with a touch of privacy. Our intended rent would be around $700 for a 1 bedroom. Also, we have 1 car to run errands, but I probably would need to rely on public transport to go to work, which I don't mind.
Thank you for taking your time to read my thread, and thank you very much in advance to everybody who is going to chime in.
Have a beautiful day
I moved here without a job. I tried to find one before moving, but no luck. I found one pretty quickly once I was here and settled with a local address. I had plenty of money saved to last me for several months though.
I live up north right now, but I've been looking for apartments closer to the city. I really don't think you'll find anything very nice for 700 dollars. Especially not in the city. Maybe further out, but even nice complexes are usually 800 or 900 dollars. Inside of the city you'll easily pay over 1000 dollars. If you want access to public transportation you have the light rail down south or the bus system pretty much anywhere.
I really like our downtown area. I think it's clean and overall I feel pretty safe even walking around at night. Depends on the area of course. Some better than others. I think it's busy, but not ridiculous. Lots of nice restaurants and bars, we have museums, the theater, pretty much everything you could want in a small city. And Denver is small.
Traffic can suck. It takes me almost an hour to get 20 miles sometimes. But you know, it really depends what you're used to. People in DC or LA would probably this was nothing, but I'm from a small town and I'm not used to any major traffic.
Overall, I do like it here, but I wouldn't say it's as amazing to me as others seem to feel it is. The weather is both awesome and horrible sometimes. Awesome because it's sunny quite a bit, but horrible in that it can snow in April and last year it seemed to go from winter to summer, altogether skipping spring. It's isolated as well. It's a very long drive to get to another big city. Of course, we have DIA which can get you anywhere you need to go pretty efficiently. Lots of outdoor activities, but like someone else mentioned getting up to the mountain can be a PITA. Lots of traffic, it can be crowded, and quite expensive to go skiing or snowboarding.
Like any place there are ups and downs. Unless you have enough money to pay bills for awhile it's a pretty big risk to come here without a job. Would you be willing to wait tables or bar tend until you found a full time gig? That's what I did.
I get a sense the OP may not really like it here. The mountains aren't too far away, but this is the big city. You won't in any way shape or form feel like you are in the mountains or nature unless you live up in the mountains or at least the foothills. They serve as a nice backdrop on the horizon, but you can find mountains on the horizon in a lot of western cities.
I think Reno would be a good fit for you, and it's right in your backyard, and it sounds like it would have everything you might need (other than employment... which you didn't say anything about). Housing is cheaper there compared to Denver.
Yes, we do love the Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Summer seasons lol. It snowed here in June last year and it's not the snow that makes us want to pack up and leave. In Tahoe, there are 2 seasons: winter and road construction season. Blimey, the road constructions create worse traffic than San Diego at peak hours (think of a couple 15-30 minutes stops as they convert two way lanes into one way, on a 10 miles trip), especially since there are no detour you can take around them. On top of it, they have been working on a particular 2 year project for the past 4 years, entering their 5th year this summer with no sign of completion.
By remote I was referring to typical amenities that cities like Denver provide (not how far it is to drive to the next metro). Over here, the nearest Imax movie theater is in Sacramento (3 hours away), and nearest airport and shopping malls are down in Reno (almost 2 hours away). And no, we do not like Reno. Did you know that Carson City and Reno are respectively the number 1 and 2 cities worst hit by the recession? The housing markets show no sign of bottoming out and are still on their way down.
Willy702, I am fully aware that Denver is a big city and I really don't recall saying that it's small. And no, we do not mind living in the big city so long as we have access to the mountains. I do wonder though, how far away are these foothills from the city? Would Golden count as one of them?
If we were to raise our rent budget to around $900-$1000, would you be able to suggest some decent (not looking for luxury, just not ghetto) areas? I neglected to mention that we do have enough stashed for the next year or so for rent & bills with that budget, but we prefer not to exhaust it... I guess $700 is lowballing lol. Good to know!
How long does commuting take on average? Say, if I want to live 30 minutes or less to the heart of the city (or wherever the business areas may be), what neighborhoods should I be looking at?
Davebarnes, thanks for the comparison of Gaslight ~ LoDo.
Thanks again for your time and comments, everyone. Greatly appreciate it!
Upon perusing some threads in the Denver forum, I came across a particular one mentioning that it is close to impossible to find a job unless you have a local address and telephone number.
My major concern is where to live. Most of you suggest finding a place to live close to the work place. Since we probably will be moving without jobs, how should we go about doing this? Is it possible to secure a month to month rent before coming there, and then moving if our future work place is to far away? Also, the golden question is, where and which neighborhood?
It's like a Catch-22 situation. It is difficult to get a job unless you are local and it is difficult to secure a place to rent without having a job - since the landlord will want to see proof that you can pay every month.
Do you have a family/relatives (however distant) in the area ? You can use their address as a temporary address while you apply for jobs.
Yes, we do love the Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Summer seasons lol. It snowed here in June last year and it's not the snow that makes us want to pack up and leave. In Tahoe, there are 2 seasons: winter and road construction season. Blimey, the road constructions create worse traffic than San Diego at peak hours (think of a couple 15-30 minutes stops as they convert two way lanes into one way, on a 10 miles trip), especially since there are no detour you can take around them. On top of it, they have been working on a particular 2 year project for the past 4 years, entering their 5th year this summer with no sign of completion.
By remote I was referring to typical amenities that cities like Denver provide (not how far it is to drive to the next metro). Over here, the nearest Imax movie theater is in Sacramento (3 hours away), and nearest airport and shopping malls are down in Reno (almost 2 hours away). And no, we do not like Reno. Did you know that Carson City and Reno are respectively the number 1 and 2 cities worst hit by the recession? The housing markets show no sign of bottoming out and are still on their way down.
Willy702, I am fully aware that Denver is a big city and I really don't recall saying that it's small. And no, we do not mind living in the big city so long as we have access to the mountains. I do wonder though, how far away are these foothills from the city? Would Golden count as one of them?
If we were to raise our rent budget to around $900-$1000, would you be able to suggest some decent (not looking for luxury, just not ghetto) areas? I neglected to mention that we do have enough stashed for the next year or so for rent & bills with that budget, but we prefer not to exhaust it... I guess $700 is lowballing lol. Good to know!
How long does commuting take on average? Say, if I want to live 30 minutes or less to the heart of the city (or wherever the business areas may be), what neighborhoods should I be looking at?
Davebarnes, thanks for the comparison of Gaslight ~ LoDo.
Thanks again for your time and comments, everyone. Greatly appreciate it!
Foothills is like Evergreen or Conifer and points west of that. Golden is a nice place and right next to the beginning of the foothills, but it doesn't feel too much like nature unless you are one of the lucky few up on Lookout Mountain.
Mountain access comes with high prices. You might run into a place closer to your budgets if you are lucky and come across an older place lacking size and comforts. Your best bet probably would be western side of Lakewood where the $900 might be possible for a smaller and older place.
I'd suggest you make your move October-February. Rents are rising and quite high, but they don't make a frenzied push upwards in the non-moving season. You might run into landlords caught in a time with few new residents searching for a place.
The previous post had a good idea about western Lakewood. The area near Red Rocks Community College seems to have lots of apartments and the new light rail under construction is within walking distance. I'm not sure about the rents but they are definitely cheaper than downtown. Downtown is the most expensive rental area of all, although you can probably find a 1 BR for around 800 - 900 in Capitol Hill.
It's true about needing a local address for jobs, although you can find mailbox places that will give you a "street address" as well as buying a temporary cell phone with a local number. That's what I did before I moved here. It sounds like you would love Denver.
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