Denver apartments, signs of poor economy? (Thornton, Craig: rentals, how much, neighborhoods)

[WeenerDog]

I noticed you can get very nice apartments in downtown denver for 600-700. Then I see that the total number of available rentals in Denver is probably 100x that of Seattle. Usually wage is a function of housing cost and demand but the nice apartments here are so cheap that it kind of indicates that everyone is making minimum wage o_O

[vegaspilgrim]

Stay in Seattle. We have enough complaining Seattleites here as it is.

[Luke9686]

Ok, so?? Do you have anything else to add, or do you just point out pointless observations that have no basis. What are you the expert on housing and supply and demand.

Stay in Seattle, everyone knows it's so great. (I live in Tacoma)

[WeenerDog]

Stay in Seattle? I don't live in Seattle or Washington. Where do all these angsty moron posters come from? I'm not even going to mention where I'm from because some fool will post some ridiculous stereotype like the above two posters. I was just looking at possible job locations.

[wankel7]

Maybe folk don't want to live downtown. They want to live further west nearer the hills.

And what is wrong with having affordable rental units? Do you have to have rental units that are stratospherically priced to indicate just how well an area is doing?

Or maybe the rent is so high in Seattle for this reason. It costs that much extra to have that many clouds in one place for so long.

[steveindenver]

I'm not aware of any of these 6-700 dollar nice places in Denver.

There is of course quite a bit of subjectivity in the matter and then you need to ensure you are comparing apples to apples or neighborhoods as it is here to the correct corresponding neighborhood.

I think the correlation you are attempting to make between wages and apartment prices is simplistic.

[Dorthy]

Keep in mind if you are looking on craigslist that a lot of those really nice cheap downtown apartments are either misleading and aren't anywhere near downtown, or are scams. Also a lot of people are renting their downtown apartments for $600-$700 a night or for the week of the DNC.

[2bindenver]

Vacancy rates are low. in general, around the metro area.

Is Seattle underbuilt? Are there more people than available housing?

I think supply and demand has more to do with housing prices that average or median salary.

[vegaspilgrim]

My apologies. I thought you were complaining that Denver's apartments were too inexpensive, as if that's a problem. We've had several threads the last people days in which people from Seattle have gone on here saying how much they hate Denver-- I thought you were another one of "those." But I guess I was wrong.

Three answers to your question:
1. I agree with steveindenver that your theory is way too simplistic.
2. Nice apartments in downtown Denver are NOT that cheap. Unless if you're flexible as to the word "nice." Are you looking at Capitol Hill?
3. Seattle is a more expensive city to live in than Denver, and it's been that way for quite some time.

[DenverLawGal]

I'm with Steve. A few months ago we just looked at moving back downtown or at least very close to it and we couldn't find much --- most of what is considered "nice" was plenty over our mortgage, so we decided to stay put. We wanted a two bedroom with some amenities. A pool was what we wanted but not required, and at least one parking space and a gym.

What we found were tiny places that were old running for around $1200-1400 and the spots we really liked were more like $1600. I think that's just outrageous. Five years ago, we lived downtown and had a one bedroom that was really big, about 900 sq. ft., a huge balcony that ran the whole length of the apt., a pool, parking and a gym. We paid $800. Man things have changed.

And like Steve said, if you look in the burbs out where I am (Thornton) you get a lot more for the buck. Denver is pretty sprawly. And yeah, like the other poster said, what you see on Craigslist is not really the absolute truth.

Originally Posted by steveindenver

I'm not aware of any of these 6-700 dollar nice places in Denver.

There is of course quite a bit of subjectivity in the matter and then you need to ensure you are comparing apples to apples or neighborhoods as it is here to the correct corresponding neighborhood.

I think the correlation you are attempting to make between wages and apartment prices is simplistic.