Moving to Denver (2015, wage, living)

[emm74]

love the Elvis! I can buy tickets for my son and me, and get him a kiddie combo of popcorn, a drink and some gummies for less than price of popcorn at a regular theater.

[newbee2]

Originally Posted by davidv

1. I am not a fan of Douglas County schools (do a search to find out why) and Lone Tree is in Douglas County.

2. Summers are consistently hot (highs in upper 80s - lower 90s) but not. The sun can make it seem hotter if you are in the sun. Winters are NOT consistently cold. It is as likely to be 45 - 55 degrees on any given day as it is to be below 40 degrees. The sun makes many days feel warmer, but the temps drop at night after the sun goes down.

3. Live EAST of work to avoid sun glare, not west. If you live west of work you will drive into the sunrise in the morning and into the sunset in the evening.

4. I recommend living further north near the Denver Tech Center. There is a decent-sized Indian community in the area, though it is not really concentrated. There are Indian shops and businesses further north around Parker Rd and Peoria St. Plus, Cherry Creek Schools are much better. There is a new temple built around Arapahoe Road and Peoria St. in Centennial.

5. Most museums and the zoo are in Denver and these areas are slightly closer. Cherry Creek reservoir is nearby, and it has a swim beach and trails. Most neighborhoods in the area have neighborhood swimming pools.

6. Houses in the are are not new, but nearly all of them have been renovated.

Thank you! Summers with 80s and 90s and low humidity sounds ok. Does it go from cold to hot really fast or there are couple of months of spring and fall with pleasant weather. Ideally I wouldn't mind a hot summer if it only lasts say 2 months.

When looking for homes near Denver Tech Center, which township / zip code shall we consider? I took a quick peek at few homes in Centennial on zillow and it seemed to have decent schools - willow creek elementary, campus middle, cherry creek high... all with ratings of 10 and 9.

[newbee2]

Originally Posted by Gorges

Love the weather here! We moved here from the DC area last summer and the weather has been one of the best things about the area. It was the mildest winter I've experienced in years. It does get hot in the summer but when you're in the shade it's so much more comfortable than back east. Most of the time I feel energized by the lack of humidity, even when it's hot.

If you're looking for a suburban area, there's also a sizable Indian community in SE Aurora. At least that's how it looks when the students pour out of Cherokee Trail HS at lunchtime and head over to the new King Soopers shopping center. Lots of newer construction in your price range, Cherry Creek schools, and about 30 mins from the specialized Indian shopping areas along Parker Rd. Do a search on zipcode 80016.

One of the things we've had to adjust to is the long distances. Sometime I miss the accessibility of the east-coast metropolitan areas and being able to drive to so many places in just a few hours.

Groceries seem about the same, movies may be a tad cheaper, water is very expensive, and the sales tax is high. We found the cost of housing to be cheaper than the DC area by about $100k on new construction when talking about homes around $500k.

Thanks! Glad you prefer weather in Denver over DC. Raleigh winters are slightly milder than DC.

Schools in Aurora had poor ratings 4 - 6 on zillow. Zip code 80016 returned both centennial and aurora addresses. Centennial looks much better in terms of schools on paper. Which are some of the popular new construction communities coming up in this area?

[Gorges]

Schools in Aurora had poor ratings 4 - 6 on zillow.

Very important. DO NOT use zillow for school ratings for the Denver area. Although zillow gets its school ratings from greatschools.com, those ratings currently DO NOT match what is on the Great Schools website. If you want to use these ratings, go to greatschools.com and get the ratings from the website itself. For my area, the actual ratings are 1 to 2 points higher than what zillow is posting. And in other areas, zillow is rating schools higher than what is on the website. When we were looking at homes last summer, the ratings synched up, but when zillow updated something around the first of the year, it all went haywire for this area, and in many cases, isn't in the ballpark at all.

Repeat. Zillow is crap. Go elsewhere for school ratings.

[newbee2]

Originally Posted by Gorges

Very important. DO NOT use zillow for school ratings for the Denver area. Although zillow gets its school ratings from greatschools.com, those ratings currently DO NOT match what is on the Great Schools website. If you want to use these ratings, go to greatschools.com and get the ratings from the website itself. For my area, the actual ratings are 1 to 2 points higher than what zillow is posting. And in other areas, zillow is rating schools higher than what is on the website. When we were looking at homes last summer, the ratings synched up, but when zillow updated something around the first of the year, it all went haywire for this area, and in many cases, isn't in the ballpark at all.

Repeat. Zillow is crap. Go elsewhere for school ratings.

Ok, thanks for clarifying.

[DenverBound41]

Originally Posted by newbee2

Thank you! Summers with 80s and 90s and low humidity sounds ok. Does it go from cold to hot really fast or there are couple of months of spring and fall with pleasant weather. Ideally I wouldn't mind a hot summer if it only lasts say 2 months.

When looking for homes near Denver Tech Center, which township / zip code shall we consider? I took a quick peek at few homes in Centennial on zillow and it seemed to have decent schools - willow creek elementary, campus middle, cherry creek high... all with ratings of 10 and 9.

It's Colorado, which means the weather is very unpredictable. In Denver high temps can be below zero or near 70 in January, sometimes both in the span of a few days. Late July/August can have 10 days in a row above 100 or 10 days in a row where it never gets above 80. It can snow in May and/or September and be absolutely gorgeous a day later.

As an example, this past February had 10 days of 28 where the high temp was over 60, but we also had the most snow of any February on record...and there wasn't one big storm supplying a crazy amount of snow.

All in all, the weather is pretty damn nice. You get all 4 seasons and while temperature swings can be extreme, it is neither overly cold nor overly hot for long periods of time and you get plenty of sun.

[davidv]

Originally Posted by newbee2

Thanks! Glad you prefer weather in Denver over DC. Raleigh winters are slightly milder than DC.

Schools in Aurora had poor ratings 4 - 6 on zillow. Zip code 80016 returned both centennial and aurora addresses. Centennial looks much better in terms of schools on paper. Which are some of the popular new construction communities coming up in this area?

Originally Posted by Gorges

Very important. DO NOT use zillow for school ratings for the Denver area. Although zillow gets its school ratings from greatschools.com, those ratings currently DO NOT match what is on the Great Schools website. If you want to use these ratings, go to greatschools.com and get the ratings from the website itself. For my area, the actual ratings are 1 to 2 points higher than what zillow is posting. And in other areas, zillow is rating schools higher than what is on the website. When we were looking at homes last summer, the ratings synched up, but when zillow updated something around the first of the year, it all went haywire for this area, and in many cases, isn't in the ballpark at all.

Repeat. Zillow is crap. Go elsewhere for school ratings.

Districts in Colorado are not set according to townships.

The low scores for Aurora schools reflects the Aurora Public School District. This district is in the northern part of the city of Aurora.

The southern portion of Aurora is in the Cherry Creek School District. CCSD comprises of areas that include the eastern parts of Greenwood Village and Centennial, southern Aurora, and parts of unincorporated Arapahoe County (these often have Englewood addresses).

Zip codes that you'll want to look in are: 80111, 80112 (north of County Line Rd), 80113 (east of Clarkson St.), 80015, 80016, and parts of 80121.

[step33]

I will only note that I LOVE living west of work. Yeah, part of the year I drive in to the sun "both ways" (though that really doesn't happen - I don't get that much sleep), but hey, that's what sunglasses are for Not much would make me give up my west side location. I really like it over here.

That said, if the OP is working near Park Meadows, then going west has to be a choice made because of their lifestyle. The sun isn't the issue, it's the traffic on C470 from Santa Fe to I-25. It can be pretty brutal. I get off at either Lucent or Broadway so it's not bad, but I wouldn't want to to sit in that line all the way to a place like Schwab every day.

[newbee2]

Originally Posted by step33

The sun isn't the issue, it's the traffic on C470 from Santa Fe to I-25. It can be pretty brutal. I get off at either Lucent or Broadway so it's not bad, but I wouldn't want to to sit in that line all the way to a place like Schwab every day.

You bring up a great point which I hadn't given much thought into. Where we live currently, everything is 15-20 minutes away and traffic is not a concern. Researching a bit, I read somewhere that Denver has some of the worst traffic in the nation only second to LA. Is that true?

[ayoitzrimz]

Originally Posted by newbee2

You bring up a great point which I hadn't given much thought into. Where we live currently, everything is 15-20 minutes away and traffic is not a concern. Researching a bit, I read somewhere that Denver has some of the worst traffic in the nation only second to LA. Is that true?

I wouldn't go that far. SF, NYC, LA, MI, CH all have worse traffic. It does get pretty bad but not tier 1 city bad. From the tier 2 cities I am willing to bet Denver has some of the worst traffic.