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The Best City in the Country

[0:00] knowing where to move to in Denver can be really hard I mean maybe you visited once or twice you've only seen a few parts of the city you got some friends who live here maybe and tell you how awesome it is but you want to know where is going to match your lifestyle your budget how much the things cost you hear about how expensive Everything Is that real well that's why you're here on YouTube looking around digging for information and I've taken the last 15 years of experience and knowledge that I have in the Denver metro City and com piled it into this video I'm A transplant myself I'm from Chicago I moved here 25 years ago I've been in real estate for 15 years helping hundreds thousands of buyers moving here from a state and showing them around and helping them with the questions that we all have right what's the lifestyle like what are the schools like is this a good place to raise a family what's the crime like how close is this to what I really want to do and why I'm moving here hiking sking kayaking all of that stuff and that's what this video is you're going to see the chapters down below and they're going to cover all the different cities from DTC Greenwood Village Centennial Arvada Littleton is going to be a big one uh Parker Denver of course Highlands Ranch Castle Pines and the list goes on so feel free jump around and as always whatever questions you have you're going to have my contact information below you're going to have so many links to different properties around the different cities you can get direct access to and this is just a load of information that you can come back to and without further Ado are you thinking about moving to Aurora Colorado but not sure what you actually think about it and this video is for you and specifically we're going to go over the different feeling parts of Aurora which you really wouldn't know unless you've lived here for a long time we're going to cover the pros and cons of each of these different areas as well well as the big elephant in the room is Aurora Colorado the worst place to live in Colorado Aurora gets such a bad rap and I'm frankly not sure why I'm from Chicago originally I've been here in Denver for 20 years I come from a big city where there are real ghos now people that grew up and lived here must have a skewed view because they really think that there are bad parts of Aurora there's going to be bad parts in any city right places that you really just don't want to go in the middle of the night but honestly there's not a single part of Aurora that I wouldn't drive through at 2: a.m. so take it as you will because it's a great City in my opinion now where is Aurora first of all if you're not from here Aurora is just to the east of Denver now Denver proper has about 700,000 people in it roughly the population of Aurora is about 390,000 so it's about half the size of Denver and there's not really like a downtown feeling to Aurora it's really just an extension of Denver I'm not even going to call call it a suburb I'm going to call it an extension because really they're just kind of the same you're never going to know when you drive from Aurora to Denver like there's not a clear dividing line of when Denver starts when Aurora starts um and as we look on this map here we kind of have three different chunks of Aurora okay now you wouldn't know this unless you lived here unless you lived in Aurora for a long time uh and you've seen its growth over the years but we have this chunk here which is kind of on the east kfax area which now ansh's hospital is there with a huge renovation recently so this is typically the part that people consider the bad part of Aurora Aurora stand if you will it's what's given Aurora a bad name I would say East kfax has been cleaned up over the years uh because as Denver grows it just pushes out in every direction right and so as it grows and things get more expensive the neighborhoods clean up as you go outwards right this chunk of Aurora is going to be the older parts of Aurora these are going to be older homes built in the 1920s and 30s small brick ranches we'll take a look at a few of them here in a few but then as you go further east you start having more new construction into this area and then all the way up here you have Denver International Airport all these areas way out east here towards Watkins didn't even know they were in the official city of Aurora to be honest with you now as you go south Aurora kind of spans 225 and E470 E470 is the new toll road on the eastern part of the city it's kind of the second Loop so if you look at Denver from an overview you're going to have 225 which goes around the city then you're going to have 470 which is the bigger loop on the outside of the City built very much like other cities Chicago Dallas Fort Worth you know we kind of build in these Rings outward and Aurora is sandwiched in between these two highways now E470 here is a paid hole i225 is just a free Interstate um now this entire Central kind of chunk of Aurora is going to feel the same a lot of these houses were built in the 70s and 80s two stories more of your traditional style homes and then you're going to have way further down in the Southeast which it like makes a jump here you have Aurora and then you have I believe this is Centennial proper and then it makes a jump and now we're back in Aurora again some uh so kind of some funny dividing lines going on here but this entire chunk of Aurora are going to be new builds 700,000 plus okay these are going to be four five 6,000 ft homes that are Immaculate newb build communities so now going to our MLS when we look at active properties in the MLS for sale currently in Aurora there's only 8810 that are on the market today for that big of a population is not very many so when we start to zoom in here a little bit this is where ansh's hospital is so this is what's been really revitalizing over the last four or five years right as much higher paying jobs come into the area doctors nurses want to be much closer to the hospital because they work so much as it is that real estate prices have gone through the roof and what we're going to see in a lot of these properties here is we've got one here 500,000 for a 2,000 square foot four bedroom two bath home and looking through pictures this one's been fully updated 500,000 gets you a real home in this area now granted they're going to be on the older side so this one was built in 1949 okay so it's going to be an older home that's been revitalized if we go west a little bit further we have more inexpensive properties let's say this one at 285 built in 1921 now this one's been updated at some point obviously cuz this is not from the 20s and we can see it's moderately updated but this is on a smaller side two bedroom one bath 1200 ft with it's a beautiful kitchen but you're going to have some funky properties in this area because of how old the neighborhoods are then as we zoom out we can go further south into more of the central parts of Aurora okay now these neighborhoods are going to have you know more of your newer shopping centers with your grocery stores Home Depots and lows um targets and everything's going to be quite a bit newer in this chunk of Aurora where further on East kfax what we just looked at it's going to be much older shops right you're not going to have a lot of those strip malls with a lot of your big stores you're going to have to go much further east to get those bigger shopping centers now in this part of town you're going to span so if we start on the western side let's say on the other side of 225 in that 500 Mark you're going to have properties like this which are anywhere from 1,500 to about 2500 feet more your typical everyday ranches in the United States and they should be moderately updated within the 500 zone right maybe topping out around the 600,000 Mark for most of these areas around let's say 225 and in between like Mississippi and down to Yale is and a lot of these are going to be built roughly in the 60s to 7s area right as the city was expanding then this was the next neighborhoods outside of the East coold area to kind of get built up and so you're going to be able to get a moderately sized home for around that 500 Mark now if you go even further east into this chunk of Aurora you're going to have newer properties once again as the city expanded newer newer properties are further and further out for around the 600s now this is even a 3,000 ft home but this was built in the 2000s and you're going to see this is going to be a beautiful home it's going to be large enough for most families out there it's going to be not well well updated to today's standard cuz most of these were built 20 to 30 years ago so a lot of them haven't had you know the most recent flip updates to that then we've got something like this just around the corner built in 1998 for 595 now this is 2700 ft four bedrooms three baths now you are going to find a lot of HOAs in this part of central Aurora and then we can head all the way down to the Southeastern most part of Aurora now this is going to feel a little bit more like Parker which is just to the south of this chunk of Aurora lots of new builds yes most everything is going to be in an HOA but you're going to have big properties here that this one was built in 2016 they're at 795 over 4,000 square ft they should be fairly up to today's standards and we can see here beautiful home and a beautiful neighborhood brand new updated kitchen uh new Hardwoods throughout but you are up there in price close to 800,000 and we've got some new golf courses down here we've got some patio home communities down here uh and this is going to be more of what you would expect from new build communities and you're going to find that in southeast Aurora now what's really cool about this Southeastern part of Aurora is Aurora Reservoir here big body of water which we don't have many around the Denver metro area as you can see we've got Cherry Creek State Park we we've got Chatfield state park down to the bottom left of your screen but then we have Aurora Reservoir this Reservoir has been built out recently and it's really an awesome place to go paddle boarding they allow sailboats on here uh you've got a beach in Colorado which we don't have many beaches folks um and yes it does get busy on hotter weekends but to have a place like this is not very common around the Denver area and a lot of people take advantage of it so to have all of these amen ities golf courses the reservoir all the shopping that are going to be new shopping centers all around this area is a huge draw to Southeastern Aurora so pros and cons of these different areas you know if you're in the northern part of Aurora you're going to be a lot more plugged in to what the city is doing kfax is the main artery that runs straight through Denver so nightlife bars the music scene everything is going to be pretty much happening off of kfax so if you don't want the Denver prices just to the West here I mean once we get into South Park Hill area these prices shoot up into the millions real fast so you can be in Aurora further to the east by about a mile mile and a half and be under 500,000 have yourself 1,00 to 1500 ft 1920s Ranch Bungalow style home um and still have everything that Denver has to offer at a much much lower price you know the downside is going to be population density a lot of these houses are going to be tightly packed in the Lots sizes are going to be more like 3 to 4,000 squ ft versus 8,000 ft plus so you're going to be closer to your neighbors the streets are going to be more lined with cars neighbors parking in front of you the population density is going to be quite a bit more like what you're seeing on this street view going down the road right everything's close together you're going to have apartments and condos scattered throughout the neighborhoods okay so this feels more like being in the city lots of small houses a lot more close together in the central part of aurora on the upside you're going to get a lot more house for your dollar okay things are going to be a little bit more spread out it's going to be more of your traditional neighborhood feeling not in the city so kind of like a suburb but a little bit more of a populated suburb and just picking a random street here we can hop on to the Google Map views I love using this tool every single day and we can just see you know not as many cars on the road kids walking down the street uh it's a little bit more spaced out more of your everyday every sort of neighborhood feeling in the entire country so you're going to have 2,000t ranches try Levels by levels uh your dollar is going to go a little bit further and most of the lot sizes are going to be around that 7 to 10,000 squ foot range shopping you're going to have your own little hubs in each different neighborhood right and they're going to have you know your Walmarts and your targets and your king supers um and you're going to have all these little tiny hubs of shopping centers all around you there's not going to be a main downtown area that everybody goes to to shop at so on the downside you're a little bit further away from things you're on the way eastern part of the metro area of around Denver so if you have to get all the way to Lakewood it's going to be a long haul to get there if you've got to go to downtown Denver it's going to take you a solid 30 minutes even without any traffic okay cuz you're starting to get quite a bit away from most of the highways unless you're directly off of 225 or closer towards 470 uh it can take you 10 to 15 minutes even to get to the highway before you have to start getting to your destination and then as you head further south into the new Southeastern part of Aurora you know once again just picking a street here you're going to feel more like this okay lot smaller trees cuz they're all newer communities but you're going to be in these new home areas where they're going to have parks in each neighborhood uh for the most part you're going to have 3 to 4,000 ft homes a lot more HOAs uh not many cars on the street population density is scattered out even further but because of that you're even further away from everything in the city so if you don't have to go to Denver very often you don't have to work downtown this might be an ideal spot if your budget can afford it because when people think of Aurora they think Aurora is not a great place so therefore they assume that prices are cheap prices are not cheap in Southeastern Aurora I can tell you that it's a really nice part of town but you're going to have all your new shopping centers are going to be in Southeastern Aurora it's going to feel new throughout the entire area you're going to have access to a number of golf courses just in this part of town I mean we got four and those are going to be within oh a couple miles of each other each and they're all great brand new golf courses and then of course you're going to have a roar Reservoir as well which is going to be a great spot to go into the summertime and then just south of you you've got the Open Fields of Parker so getting into the outdoors here taking hikes is actually going to be close it's just not going to be hiking in the Foothills it's going to be more hiking in open Plains High Mesa High Desert sort of feel to it and on the con side the obvious is that you're far away from downtown Denver but if that doesn't matter to you you want more space maybe it's great for you but budget wise you better be able to afford Southeast Aurora cuz they start just about 700,000 so it is not a cheap part of town to live in but one of the biggest draws to Aurora is going to be the Cherry Creek School District it is rated number two in the entire Denver metro area I have a lot of friends that are actually moving into Aurora parts of the Cherry Creek School District just to have their kids go in through middle school and up through high school so say what you want about Aurora but I think it's a really great city to live in I have a lot of friends who live in Aurora I have a lot of colleagues who live in Aurora and it's funny how it gets this bad rap but unless you live there you really don't know what it's like now heading just south of Aurora is Parker and you've probably heard of it because they've been making a lot of top 10 lists over the last couple years on lots of magazines uh websites out there and there's a good reason for it you know me and the wife gosh we've been looking in Parker for the last handful of years and it's kind of a running joke if you've been watching me uh for any length of time now because we've been looking for a 5 acre property but our daughter's in high school and so we're kind of stuck where we are right now we love where we live in South Denver but our eyes are on more land in Parker and for lots of good reasons that you're about to see Parker Colorado has been rid number two in the best cities to live at in the country and we're going to take a deep dive into Parker today I love the town heck we've been looking for a place in Parker the last couple of years somewhere with land but we're going to take a deep dive through this video and look at what its lifestyle is like it's affordability and of course it's real estate and during this video we're going to compare Parker to the rest of the Denver suburbs to see how it Stacks up so if you're thinking of moving to Parker or just want to know more about the city then this video is for you cuz we're going to cover all things about Parker Colorado I've been living here in the Denver metro area for about 25 years now and I got to say even 10 15 years ago you didn't hear much about Parker Colorado and the reason is is because where it's actually located around the Denver area it's pretty far out there at least it was 20 years ago and the population has just soared over the last 30 years approximately I'll show you the numbers here in a few but it is wild to know how much Parker has grown there's a lot of new build communities there's a ton of properties that are four to 5 AC so you can have from new build construction all the way to larger ranches so it kind of fits most of the boxes of what people could be looking for you've got a great downtown little area so you kind of can stay in your own little bubble yet if you have to go to Denver it's about a 45-minute drive with traffic for the most part depending on what part of Parker you're coming from remember Parker takes up quite a bit of land further east you have four to 5 Acre Properties and more you have horse properties you'll go out there and it's not uncommon to see people with Highland cows and llamas and sheep and goats it feels like an interesting mix between urban and rural I would say and then you have all the new home communities built closer towards downtown Parker so it really checks all the boxes for what a lot of people are looking for and that's actually part of the reason why I do love the city of Parker its infrastructure is new a lot of its buildings are fairly new but yet they wanted to keep an Old Town sort of charm to it once again this Stacks up there with Littleton as far as being like a Hallmark feeling little downtown area and welcome by the way I'm Alex San I'm a local real estate agent here in the Denver metro area since 2010 and I've been helping hundreds of homeowners buyers relocating to or around the Denver metro area and if you're new here and you love great content about the Denver area hit the like And subscribe button give me your feedback let me know what cities you want to hear about but if you have any questions or anything specific feel free shoot me a call shoot me a text message I'm just a phone call email away nights days weekends I got you covered so back to Parker so Parker is located on the southeast part of the Denver metro area just outside the 470 Loop which is new as of about 20 years ago approximately so that's a toll road that goes around about 3/4 of the city and your access to most things outdoors from four-wheeling and horseback riding hiking is all relatively close and there's going to be pockets all around Parker so you're not going to have to drive very far for most outdoor activities so 10 15 minutes tops you're going to typically be to where you want to be for those outdoor activities now getting over to the mountains it is a little bit more of a drive because you are on the other side of I25 so to get to most of the Foothills you're going to have about a 40-minute drive West to get to most hiking biking and climbing and if you're heading north to get to the Cherry Creek State Park area it's about a 25-minute Drive North and if you're needing to head to downtown Denver from Parker around rush hour it's going to be anywhere from a 40 to 60 minute drive now other than that if you're commuting out of Parker to your job whether that's on the west side of Denver or the East Side really you've got a few ways to get there you've got Route 83 which runs north and south through Parker up to 470 now 470 here is a toll road from I25 all the way up and East which gets you over to DIA at the airport or you can head West first to get to I25 which goes north and south all the way through downtown Denver or you can continue heading up 8 3 to 225 which will get you to most of the eastern part of town Aurora all the way up into Brighton Commerce City if you need to head up that direction and if you are needing to head out of DIA even during rush hour you're looking at about a 35 to 40 minute drive through using 470 but remember that is a toll route if you want to avoid the tolls you're looking at a solid hour even at off peak times and if you're looking to a hike or a trail run you can head over to Hilltop Trail which is kind of a weave of a number of different Trails right outside of town or if you want to be a little bit more secluded you can head further down to the Southwest over to one of our favorite places Gateway Mesa now I will say if you go to Gateway Mesa have your bearings about you it's a lot of Rocky plateaus and so the trail is not always easy we've been there a couple of times in the last few years and we did get lost on the last time there ended up going for a f mile hike when we were thinking something like 2 and 1 half to three to start off with and there are Cactus around here cacti Cactus rattlesnakes can be a thing so just be aware of where you're going letting a dog off a leash in these areas you know expect them to probably step on a cactus um so just be prepared for that we do keep our dogs on leashes when we go in these areas just because you know it's a little bit more of a high desert feel to them and if you're a skier living in Parker and you want to get to the High Country during most times of the year it's a solid 2 hours without much traffic expect about 2 and 1 half hours with traffic and that two hours will get you to most places like brick and ridge copper Keystone or you can make drive a little bit shorter in about an hour and a half without any traffic you know you can get yourself to a Bas and in Loveland and on a bigger scale the median commute time in Parker for its residence is 23.7 minutes with 14% of people having a commute time of 45 minutes or longer and that's going to be mostly people that are commuting to you know the Denver area so Parker is what they consider a home rule municipality which basically means that they just kind of started the town at some point there's no real defined date stamped on it like a lot of cities out there part of the big draw to Parker many years ago 30 plus years ago was that it wasn't too terribly far from downtown Denver cuz if you come from a big city La San Francisco New York Chicago Houston Dallas Atlanta you know you know what a commute time looks like if you're going 20 miles to the other side of town that might take you 45 minutes to an hour on a good day now here it can be 20 mi from downtown Denver from downtown Parker and on a good day if there's not much traffic it could take you 20 to 30 minutes so there was a real appeal because there was space to spread out there was space to have 40 acres on a property with your own horse but in the year 1990 look at this graph of the population increase in 1990 there were about 5,000 people in the city of Parker as of 2021 there's over 60,000 people that is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States and for good reason it's somewhere that we've always been attracted to and we do hope to get out on one of those properties with land over the next few years and when covid hit a lot of people started taking to wanting more land realizing that maybe their condo or townhouse didn't provide them the freedom that they wanted to be able to do their own gardening grow any of their own food we've seen a huge increase in the amount of people that want to take care of themselves and really you need land to do it and so during 2020 and 2021 the amount of people that were flocking to areas like Parker like Castle Rock further down in Southwest parts of Denver with more land it was like a great migration out of the cities to areas with more land a lot of people could work from home and Parker was a big beneficiary of that movement and here's that money.com article and I'll actually have a link in the description below uh so you can check it out for yourself but basically they're listing Parker is the number two city to live in in the entire country and really it looks like most of their rating is based on economy and income and health and safety which of course is going to bring Parker to the top of that list but I also love heading over to niche.com I'll have a link in the description below as well for them you can look up anything you want any City any school around the country and they have basically report cards and detailed stats breakdown and it really helps to get to know a little bit of an area if you're unfamiliar with it so taking a look look at the report card offen niche.com we get an overall rating of an a not surprising most of the Denver metro area does get an A rating B is not very common but to break down each individual category a minus for the public schools they do have a great Public School System B minus for housing that's going to be because of where prices are at we're above the national averages for housing prices so we get stacked lower on rating housing a is good for families there's a ton of stuff to do in Parker from their new community Center to outdoor activities lots of people do own horses around here so doing things outside is extremely easy for families in the Parker area there's still lots of space there's tons of stuff to do it's really family oriented cost of living is a c once again housing prices are up there uh a for outdoor activities pretty obvious B minus for crime and safety we are the car theft capital of the world all over the Denver metro area no idea why I know I say this in every video but that's typically why we're rated low on crime and safety if we get that Peg down man we're going to be in A's in everything across the board B+ for nightlife you know this is a smaller town feel to it you're not going to have a lot of bars you're not going to have any clubs uh to go out to at 2: a.m. you know you're going to have some bars that have bands there but come 10 11:00 a lot of stuff is really starting to shut down so keep that in mind if you do want the NTI Parker probably isn't for you B+ for diversity B+ for weather it does get pretty windy in Parker I will say that I do love the weather all around Colorado I mean I'm from Chicago originally humidity is high heat is high cold is cold but here 30° is still Sweater Weather 95° if you go in the shade you're still cool because the humidity is 10 to 15% on average but Parker gets some serious wins and it's not uncommon to have 50 60 MPH gusts even during a regular day without a storm coming health and fitness word an a just like most of the Denver metro area is and B for commute you know there's no real direct arteries or highways that connect Parker to the rest of the city as for parks around Parker Colorado there's a couple dozen parks and they maintain about 380 Acres of developed Parkland with about 1,300 more Acres of just open space with about 38 Mi of Trail systems throughout the town of Parker and I can say that our favorite Park in Parker is actually a bayou Gulch on the southern part of this map just south of the Pinery which is a huge home Community but it's a combination dog park regular Park and mountain bike trail system that runs throughout it with a bunch of ramps built uh some features for mountain biking as well as some pump tracks like this is a really great Park and it's never busy so just don't take my word for it on the quality of Parker Colorado what you can do on niche.com scroll all the way to the bottom and you will actually see reviews written by the City by people that live there so Douglas County is the school district for Parker which consists of 90 schools with about 63,000 students and the student to teacher ratio sits it's 17 to1 on average and 100% of them have more than 3 years of teaching experience so I'll have a link down below actually for Great Schools which goes over all of the stats on the Douglas County School District CU being a real estate agent I can't talk too in depth about the details about the school district but feel free to check that out and hopefully it answers all of your questions now let's talk about something really important here which is going to be Parker real estate cuz whether you rent whether you own it does affect your quality of life so starting with a highlevel overview of real estate prices in Parker what have they done over the last 10 to 15 years well we can see here in 2010 the median sales price for Parker was 270,000 and fast forward into January of 2023 so a 13-year period we peaked out at 682,000 is the median sales price we're since then down to 66 3 but the entire country has adjusted a little bit over this last 12 months so Parker Colorado in the last 13 years has increased in value 192% versus the national average at about 95% so how does the median home price of 6 163,000 Stack Up in comparison to the rest of the Denver suburbs let's check it out we've got Castle Rock sitting at 655,000 and that's just to the West not truly a Denver suburb but it has a similar feel to it as Parker a little bit Morrison to the West is sitting at about 725,000 for its median sales price Denver sitting at 567,000 for its median sales price Lakewood at 535,000 and Aurora at 479 now let's take a look at reality and see what $663,000 can actually buy you in Parker today

Living in Aurora, CO

Living in Parker, CO

[30:29] [Music] he [Music] now by the time you're seeing this likely these houses aren't going to be available for sale anymore because the average time on the market is 2 weeks or under if you're priced right so what I'm going to do is I'm going to have a list of preferred Parker homes down in the description below you can click on that and see that list and you can also have that delivered to your inbox every day if you want so now is a perfect time to go over what your monthly mortgage payment is going to be at the median sales price of 663 th000 now if you're looking for from aate pay attention to this because there's something that most calculators don't utilize which is the sales property tax ours is extremely low in comparison to the rest of the country and in fact once again we are third lowest in the country for property taxes so make sure you take that into consideration you're not going to be paying $8 to $110,000 a year in property taxes it's going to be more like $3,000 a year so factor that into your payments so what we have here at $663,000 with a 20% down payment on a 30-year fixed mortgage at 7% which is what rates are currently at today figuring in property taxes of about $3,300 a year with home insurance being a $2,400 a year no condo or HOA fees calculated into this you're looking at just around $4,000 a month so beyond your mortgage what is the cost of living like in Parker Colorado so we can take a look here and we can see overall we're about 133% above the national average for our total cost of living that's fairly High housing is going to make up the biggest one of that at 37% above the national average but everything else is below or on par so minus 133% in utilities minus 6% in groceries and just at the national average for transportation now heading to the west of Parker we have Littleton now if me and the family were looking to stay within the metro area uh we would be looking in Littleton and we'd be looking hard right it's a very popular sub subb and there's a lot of good reasons for it between its downtown areas it's horse properties further south there's a lot of mid-century moderns and there is a number of segments on Littleton here three to be exact right the general overview of Littleton and then we've got a full Vlog tour where I'm down on the streets going through different neighborhoods doing Drive arounds um and then I pinpoint the top five neighborhoods in Littleton that you probably wouldn't even know are there unless you watch this video Littleton Colorado is one of my favorite suburbs around Denver and it is our featured city of the day we're going to take a look at its history as well as what it's like to actually live in Littleton Colorado and during this video we're going to take a deep dive into its lifestyle its affordability and Its Real Estate and during this we're going to compare Littleton to the rest of the Denver suburbs so if you've been thinking of moving to Littleton or just want to know more about the city of Littleton then this video is for you cuz we're going to cover all things about Littleton Colorado Littleton is probably one of the best definitions of what a true Denver suburb actually feels like this isn't one of the newer sprawling suburb Fields where you know you have all the new strip malls it's an older town and it has that charm and it has this cute little downtown area that during the Christmas season is actually one of me and my family's favorite place to go to cuz they do such an incredible job with decorating but you actually get this feeling that you're in your own little bubble you know which is what a lot of people are seeking when they're looking for for a specific neighborhood around Denver or to live in a suburb where I know there's a lot of places in this country where yeah you have a city you have a suburb feel to it but there's no real downtown is sort of feel and Littleton absolutely fills that Niche now when I was younger I didn't hear much about Littleton but as your kids start to grow older you know the whole city of Denver has the school choice in program so you don't necessarily just go to your home school wherever the bus is going to pick you up I mean that's how it was when we were kids but that's not how it is here you can literally choice in to just about anywhere you want around the city and yeah you have to go through the process of being accepted however the chances are generally fairly High to get your first one or two pick on the list of where you want to go to now during elementary schools all around the Denver metro area most elementary schools are rated extremely high once you get into Middle School they really start dropping off the map as far as the ratings go but however Litton has done an excellent job at Main maintaining their Middle School's rating as well as their high schools so what we've had you know as I'm in my young 40s here when our kids are starting to get into that middle school age is we've had a lot of our friends actually move to Littleton and now we truly understand why and it's located a little bit north of Highlands Ranch just to the west of Centennial and not too far off from the Foothills so you got about a 10 to 15 minute drive to get to most hiking biking trails climbing if you want it everything that the Foothills has to offer as well as Chatfield State Park is just to the southwest of Littleton now the access to Littleton it depends on where you are in the city of Littleton if you're on the southern end you're right by 470 now however this is the free part of 470 so from I25 to the West on 470 all the way up that's the free section of 470 470 on the Eastern side of I25 is the paid toll road so you have a great highway just to the south of you at 470 then you also have 85 otherwise known as Santa Fe which goes all the way from the southern part which goes all the way up into Denver and those are going to be your main access points and highways getting around Littleton now if you're looking to head to the High Country to go skiing from Littleton you're looking at about an hour and a half Drive which is pretty typical for around the Denver area and that's going to get you to Breen Ridge Keystone um but you can make your drive a little bit shorter if you want to go to a basin or levelin you're looking about an hour and 20 minute drive without any traffic remember that on Saturday mornings Sunday mornings it's going to take about 2 to 2 and 1/2 hours to get to most of the ski resorts depending on what time you leave and that is a very important thing to note 5:30 in the morning you're doing okay 5:45 in the morning you add about 30 minutes onto your drive just by that that 15minute difference and now if you're looking for some great hiking SL biking trails you can just head to the Southwest somewhere like Deer Creek Canyon and it's about a 20-minute drive if you're in the Center Littleton and if you're looking to catch a flight out of DIA you're going to be looking at about a 35 to 40-minute drive and once again I'm bringing up all these heavily trafficked routes because if you are thinking of moving to Littleton Colorado and want to enjoy everything that the Colorado lifestyle has to offer it's likely you're going to be going skiing hiking biking or catch a flight at some point now for the bigger perspective on what to expect for a commute time on your daily average commute for Littleton Colorado is 262 minutes the city of Littleton was actually founded in 1890 by Richard little and they've done an excellent job at maintaining that quaint little town feel from then up until now today you can go into downtown Littleton and you find a bunch of cute little Boutique shops some great restaurants some antique shops just an incredible little small town downtown sort of feel to it now the city really started to blow up in the 50s and 60s due to its proximity to the Martin Marietta facilities which produce the Titan rocket and other Aerospace products which then later became probably what you know of today as Lockheed Martin now a big draw to the city of Littleton is the proximity to the Foothills that are 15 minutes away to give you everything you could want out of the Colorado lifestyle from hiking biking cycling camping everything you want is just outside your door by a few minutes now you think that would draw in a huge population that would want to move to Littleton however there's not a ton of space to actually build in Littleton it's not a huge City and so the population hasn't expanded handed nearly as much as it has in let's say Denver Aurora or some of the northern suburbs and today with a population of just over 45,000 people it is on the smaller side of cities around Denver and now to break down some of the stats inside of Littleton from an outside thirdparty Source I love go to niche.com if you haven't been to their website go check them out I'll have the link in the description below you can check out Littleton or whatever city that you want but we can pull up a report card here and some specific stats about the city of Littleton and we can see that it's rated really really well overall we get an overall rating of an A A for public schools C+ for housing likely because we're above the national average for housing prices if you want to live in a great area you're going to pay a little bit more however that doesn't calculate in things like property taxes and the other cost of living in comparison to other places so you always want to calculate that out a as good for families it's a great spot Parks recck centers everything you could possibly want in little if you're moving your family here B+ for jobs overall the whole Denver Market is incredible for job opportunities now from DTC just being about 15 minutes to the east of Littleton and all the tech jobs here as well as the need for construction because we are a growing city overall it's really easy to get a good paying job in the Denver metro area cost of living has a c minus once again going back they primarily base that off a housing cost so take that with a grain of salt a for outdoor activities like I said 15 minutes to the west and you can have anything you possibly want for outdoor activities B minus for crime and safety you know over the last few years for some reason we have a ton of car thefts around the Denver metro area and we're one of the highest in the world for that most of those are just crimes of opportunity so just make sure you lock your doors don't keep any valuables in there uh but there's not a lot of violent crimes happening in Littleton a minus for nightlife they do have a very vibrant downtown area as I've stated before so you can stay within your own little bubble within Littleton and not have to drive you know 15 20 minutes away to head out to a bar or head out to a restaurant B+ for diversity B for weather that should be an A+ in my book we have all four seasons the Summers aren't nearly as hot as what they are in the South the winters aren't nearly as cold as what they are in the midwest this weather here is absolutely perfect in my opinion a for health and fitness you know we're just a healthy City in general and then a minus for commute so overall like we do really well on the rating system compared to a lot of places in the country that's why there's been such a huge draw to Colorado cuz our lifestyle is just incredible now I might be a little bit biased towards the city of Littleton I don't live here I live East in Denver but if you want some unbiased reviews on niche.com you can come here and you can look at reviews that other people have left for the city of Littleton now as for parks and open space they have more than 1,400 Acres within the small City limits as well as more than 200 M of trails and to the West just a little bit they have Clement Park which gosh I wish they had this sort of stuff when we were growing up it would have kept us out of a whole lot of trouble they have a huge skate park they have this water play area for kids all of this is free huge Fields soccer football whatever you want to do you've got access to it and it's buted up right against Johnson lake reservoire which is a beautiful little Lake that you can go fishing at and take a hike around and just to the southwest of Littleton you have the Chatfield State Park which you can go camping you can go hiking you can go paddle boarding fishing we go there often because the ease of access is incredible you can swim around cool off on a hot day and that Park alone has dozens of miles of biking and hiking trails and everything you could want right outside your door and then just outside of chadfield State Park you have one of our favorite places which is the Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield this is the Lesser known of the two Denver Botanic Gardens this is more of a far F kind of ranch feel to the botanic gardens we go there generally at least twice a year once during their fall festival and once at Christmas time because they do an incredible job lighting up these enormous trees and it's just a beautiful spot and it's way less busy than anything happening during the holidays in downtown Denver now let's talk about the schools in the city of Littleton because whether or not you have kids schools do affect you you're going to be paying property taxes and it does affect the resale value of your home and today there's 24 public schools in Littleton serving about 14,000 kids and today the city of Littleton School District is rated number six out of 180 school districts in the state of Colorado rated number nine with the best teachers out of 180 school districts in the state of Colorado and number 10 on the best places to teach and the student to teacher ratio is 16 to1 now being that I'm a real estate agent sharing the stats is all I can pretty much do so what I'm going to do is have a link below in the description that you can go and read reviews and check out everything you want about the city of Littleton School Districts if you're considering moving here now let's talk about something big that affects all of us cuz whether you rent whether you own real estate does affect our quality of lives all right so if we take a highlevel macro overview of Littleton real estate we can see here at the end of the first quarter in 2023 that the median price in the city of Littleton is 620,000 now that is up from the previous month of 582,000 now cyclically this is fairly normal because spring in Colorado is the best time to be a seller right before the summer months hit when lots of people put their house on the market we have a supply demand imbalance every single spring so if you're looking to sell your house spring is the best time to do it especially in Littleton now if you're wondering what real estate prices have done in the city of Littleton over the last decade we can look here going back to 2013 when the average price was 236,000 compared to today at 621,000 we've increased about 260 Plus % over the last decade in real estate prices and this is accounting for single family homes as well as condos and town homes and after looking at these numbers I got to say I'm not truly surprised by this because how desirable Littleton is in comparison to the rest of the Denver suburbs so now that we know that the median price in Littleton is 620,000 let's just compare it to some of the other cities around and see how it really Stacks up so looking around the map starting with Denver proper the median home price in Denver Colorado today at the end of the first quarter in 2023 is 565,000 and now if we go a little bit Northwest we can head up to Golden which is also a super desirable little suburb and their median home price is 730,000 today and heading a little bit east to Denver we can see Aurora at 475,000 as their median price today and heading to the southeast of Denver we've got Parker at 646000 and then heading up further north into the West Broomfield at 650,000 so we can see as we look around this map here Littleton just kind of Falls in line with a lot of the other cities around around the Denver metro area but let's go a little bit deeper here and find out what exactly does the median price in the city of Littleton at $620,000 by you today

Living in Littleton, CO

[46:43] [Music] now the homes that you just saw were active and live as of today on the market however by the time you see this because our Market is pretty hyper in the spring as it is in 2023 as well those homes are likely not going to be for sale anymore but what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a link to our preferred Littleton homes in the description below that you can click on and you can actually get to your inbox every single day if you want now while looking at the median home price in Littleton maybe that's what you can afford maybe you can't but now's a good time to actually go over what your monthly mortgage payment would be on the median home price in Littleton and I want you to pay attention especially if you're coming here from out of state or looking at a house in Littleton from out of state and I really invite you to Crunch these numbers yourself so once again I'll have a link to our mortgage calculator in the description below because what you may find is that our property taxes are so much lower than anywhere else in the country except for literally two other states you might be surprised at how low your monthly payment is in comparison to where you currently live so let's break this down on a $620,000 house with a 20% down payment on a 30-year fixed it's 6.25% which is what rates are running today with $3,000 a year in property taxes that's the big one to calculate in from where you are now to here cuz we're only about half of a percent of the property value with $250 a month in home insurance calculates out to be about $3,300 a month on your mortgage payment and now this leads us into what the actual cost of living is like in Littleton Colorado so we can take a look at here and see overall it looks like we're about 6% above the national average for the cost of living with housing being the biggest expense being 23% over the national average however our utilities are 133% under groceries 6% under and transportation just being break even with the rest of the country now comparing the actual cost of living can be really tricky because if you lived in the same place your whole life you may not know how expensive or inexpensive somewhere else is compared to what the pay rate might be how much you are paying for housing what the taxes look like so there's a lot of variables so this is where I love to jump in and show this map from Red Fin's data center that shows the migration into Denver and the biggest places people are migrating here from are going to be Los Angeles the Bay Area and then Chicago Illinois so let's see Are we more or less expensive than these three areas in the first two you probably are thinking yeah you're going to be less expensive than LA or the bay area but Chicago Are we more or less expensive in general cuz I know a lot of people who live in Chicago in $300 to $400,000 houses that are magnificent but let's look at what the averages are so if you're looking to move here from out of state I'm going to invite you again go down in the description I'm going to have this calculator here for you by Forbes who allows you to punch in your numbers to see if your cost of living is actually going to be greater than or less than wherever you're moving here from so let's take a look at the first one La so if you made $100,000 in the city of Los Angeles and you were moving here what this States is that to maintain the same standard of living in Denver from La you would need to make approximately $773,000 so the cost of living is 36% lower in Denver than it is in LA and on another note the average household income around the Denver metro area household income is about $120,000 that's two income earners on average per household now if we look at the Bay Area this one is crazy so if you made $100,000 in San Francisco and you were moving to Denver the money needed to maintain your same cost of living would be $62,000 which is 62% lower than San Francisco to live in Denver so when people are complaining about all these people from California buying up these houses here because $600,000 is cheap in comparison well there's a reason why they think it's cheap because they know what happened to California prices I mean you can just look at Toronto as well at what's happened to their real estate market if you want to know how high prices can go you've got some two extremes there so let's take my old stomping grounds Chicago I was born and raised there I moved here in the year 200000 I believe for the first time and then I was here second time got hit with an iwatt curse but this is what was fascinating to me so I think it's Chicago and I think of $300,000 $400,000 nice houses when you calculate in everything else in the city particularly property taxes what you can see is that if you made $100,000 in Chicago it's actually less expensive to live here in Denver you'd have to make equivalently 92,000 and your cost of living would be 9% lower in Denver than it would be in Chicago so that's why this is such a fascinating tool to check out because this calculates in everything groceries Transportation property taxes rent everything that you could imagine and puts it in an easy to understand format now if you're still with me at this point and you're thinking to yourself man Littleton might be a great City for you to explore and possibly move to my cell phone number is here feel free to call me text me nights days weekends I got you covered with any questions that you

Littleton Full Vlog Tour

[52:39] [Music] have welcome to downtown Littleton [Music] this is literally one of my favorite downtown areas all around the Denver metro area which is why today we're going to do a full Vlog tour about Littleton we're going to show you the neighborhoods everything from the 400s and condos all the way up to higher end luxury at the 3 to 4 million Mark but this downtown area always kind of sets it apart and it's got kind of the hallm Marky feel to it and if I had to rate it I'd give it a 10 out of 10 this downtown feel is what a lot of suburbs Miss right and Littleton does not disappoint I mean you've got about six blocks here that's full of coffee shops taverns restaurants I mean cute awesome little Boutique shops um around every single corner so when you have people coming in from out of town like this is the place you want to go to when you think of things like small business support I mean this is the epitome of small business there's no big chains here there's no big franchises here it's literally all family-owned mom and pop shops for blocks in both directions I actually know these people here I've met them a few times Savory Spice and this is what I'm talking about Mom and Pop startup shops and they love being in downtown Littleton cuz the community supports them here we have the view house which has one of the best rooftop patios that you can have and you can't talk about downtown Littleton without talking about the melting pop behind me here which is one of the most fantastic fondue places in the world and here I am in front of pelen actually another place to really check out Incredible World Class views from the rooftop patio of the mountains and then as I cross the street we have the tavern again awesome restaurant bar place to hang out and I told you not going to disappoint walking past smoking fins here another incredible restaurant that you got to come visit and here we go with white oak Boutique another cute little Boutique shop great Christmas shopping and oh while I'm on the subject to Christmas um this is our favorite place to go downtown for Christmas every one of these trees behind me that you see is fully decked out in lights like decked out to the point where I'm surprised they can even get that many lights on it all the way up and down the street and so you can see me walking by all these little shops every single one of them I mean you can spend hours just on Main Street here coming up and down with your family checking out all these shops Stop in we've got black House Tavern here another incredible place to come eat and then of course across the street we have the Oldtown Tavern one of the older establishments in the downtown area so if having the community feel which is really what this downtown does is it pulls in the community right you have Mom and Pop owners you're going to get to know these business owners as you come into their shops year after year and it really pulls the community together which a lot of suburbs around the Denver metro area lack and I think that's what makes one of the biggest appeals to people coming to Littleton is that you have this city center where everybody comes together festivals art shows farmers markets like they've got it all down here and they do it really well we're going to check out mid-century moderns in the 2 to 4 million doll Zone and we're going to check out Parks we're going to check out Trails we're going to look at it all and really give you a good feel for what it's like to live in the city of Littleton let's go drive around a little bit now we're going to start off by actually heading north of downtown Littleton North of downtown is going to be some older properties mixed in with some commercial spaces some office spaces uh but most of the buildings here are going to be older we're talking 1920s 1930s and so what we've had a lot of is scrapes happening from houses that you know aren't being kept up uh and town homes and condos being put in with some commercial space around it and you can see you know down these streets we've got that mix we've got some newer condos sitting over here you know sitting next to some older looks like 1940s 1950s properties um we've got a new build happening right there you know sitting next to a couple properties that are probably from the 30s sitting right next to a bunch of town home so if nightlife things like that are important to you um having a coffee shop you know and Spa right outside your door you can come out here and two blocks away you've got on this corner you've got pliables for lunch you've got lavaka uh Meat Company you have some Office Buildings you got Jake's Beer Garden and that's all two blocks from you if you're living just north of downtown Littleton now we're going to start by driving West out of downtown down Littleton Boulevard towards Broadway and what we're going to have on a lot of these streets is going to be your 1960s 1950s ranches 1500 square ft 2000ish Square ft you know your standard three bedrooms two bathrooms uh you know nothing too glitzy nothing too glamory but you're going to be in about that 400 on the low end all the way up to about 600 for something that's been fully done up you know that's a bit on the nicer side and as we head down Littleton Boulevard we're going to have lots of your shopping you know we got Anytime Fitness Starbucks uh Ark thrift 7-Eleven so as we pull in here we're in one of the most Northeastern neighborhoods around Littleton and as you can see you know they're just going to be pretty much your standard brick ranches all around uh but fairly opened up streets you know nice old mature trees so it gives it you know a really good neighborhood vibe to it and so now we're just east of gallop Reservoir and this is where we get into some fantastic mid-century modern homes now these are going to be priced anywhere from about 1.2 up to about 2 million if they have been fully done up [Music] but don't let these mid-century moderns fool you they are not an easy thing to keep up there's a lot of funkiness to mid-century homes lots of people love them that's why they pull in you know really high dollar amounts for small square footages I mean look at that one if midcentury is your thing and you can afford north of 1.2 1.3 million it's a beautiful area for mid-century moderns buted up right against Gallop Reservoir which we're going to park and take a little peek at

[60:29] and they've got this place nestled into these houses like you wouldn't know this is here unless you lived here so if you're new to Littleton if you don't know about it you're welcome let me turn around boom there you go there is Gallup Reservoir in all its Glory surrounded by mid-century modern homes uh surrounded by a great Community blocks away from downtown Littleton you kind of get the appeal to living down here I mean if this was in my neighborhood I'd be taking walks here every single day not to mention the additional park that's around Gallup Reservoir which is couple hundred acres here we are we're on the trail around Gallup Reservoir and there's a bunch of little Trails kind of weaved in and out and there's lots of access from all the neighborhoods around here to kind of give everybody easy access to it now this is the first of many Vlogs that I want to do this is actually what I'm passionate about I love being out in the field I love talking to business owners and people that live in the communities so if you have a city that you want to know more about and you want the same style of tour just shoot a comment down below and I will make it a point to do deep research to get out to the community that you want to see to really show you what living in that city is like and you can see back behind me there that's the rest of the park here around Gallup Reservoir great place to go picnicking fly a kite just come here for a Sunday afternoon playing soccer but yet not feeling like you're in the city whatsoever I'll take this opportunity for a Shameless plug I'm Alex s I'm a local real estate agent here in Denver lived here for about 20 years I moved here from Chicago originally so anybody wanting to move here from out of state shoot me a call shoot me a text message love to chat with you talk to you about our great City uh and keep you informed onto what this Market is doing man I get why people live out here huh kind of hard not to like it now as we head south south of Gallup Reservoir you're going to see another chunk of homes that are all roughly those 60s 7s you know 2,000 square ft ranches and as we get a little further away from the city center oh look at that tiny house wonder what they're doing with that but as I was saying as we get further away from the city center the the newer homes you get uh the bigger homes you get um just like in most suburbs right uh downtown areas are usually older early 1900s homes that are small thousand square ft or so the further out you get you get 2,000 3,000 4,000 square ft and it's the same here in Littleton so something we really haven't talked about is the schools here in Littleton and if you don't know that's probably one of the biggest draws to Littleton and we're passing one of their schools here right now tons of activities uh the schools are really nice and upto-date uh great track Fields great activity programs and they're rated extremely high um you know we've got a 13-year-old daughter now who's in eighth grade and what I didn't know you know when it came down to looking at schools and things like that was that all of Denver pretty much wants to choice in to what they think is the best schools for them we had a lot of friends that were choicing into the Littleton School District um we had a lot of friends that were actually moving into the Littleton School District just to be guaranteed a spot so we're going to pass a few more spots but if you see this place right here on our left uh I'm in the middle of a small neighborhood this is a Park area but there's a trail that goes through here that actually weaves itself all throughout Littleton so we'll pass it a few more times as we kind of take our tour around the city we'll get out we'll walk it for a little bit so now as we head south we're actually heading south on elot uh which will take us past Ridge Road and all the way down to 470 but if you can see here what we start to have is we start to have bigger homes now most of these communities down here were built more in the 70s into the80s and so at that time you know a lot more people wanted some more space they wanted north of 2,000 square ft um still a lot of ranches but most of these are going to be 2500 ft all the way up to maybe 4,000 on the higher end and a lot of these homes are going to be in the 600 to 800 range throughout um so you're going to see a theme Here 2,000t ranches you know all sit at around the 4 to 600 you get north of that 2,000 square ft and you start getting into the 600s to 800s real fast but you're always going to see people out walking around walking their dogs big familyfriendly communities and that's what all of my clients have loved about moving to Littleton is they just they feel like it's a place that they grew up you know back when we were kids where kids would ride their bikes down block um you get a lot of that feel in Littleton cuz that's what people are moving here for and you really feel safe you have that sense of community here in Littleton so now I've just turned into the Highland Vista neighborhood um now this is going to be more of your 3,000 to 4,000 square ft twostory homes uh and these are mostly going to be built I believe in the late 80s to the '90s so everything is going to be quite a bit more updated uh they're sitting in about 7,000 ft Lots so not the biggest Lots out there but much easier to maintain and these range anywhere from I'd say about the mid sixs up until about the mid 8s depending on how much they've been updated and of course you know how big the house is but you have some beautiful homes in here well taken care of community big old mature trees and we're getting to be on the southeasternmost part of Littleton now not a ton of homes in this community sell every year maybe about 6 to 12 uh there's only a few hundred homes in this community um so once again if you want a home like this size and you want to be in Littleton and you you can't be at the $2 million Mark you know a community like this is a great option for you so as I popped out on the Broadway here heading south uh this is where a lot of the shopping is going to be you've got Advent Hospital right behind me there and we're approaching the southernmost part of Littleton and then this is where you're going to have grocery shopping Safeway down here Ace Hardware is down here um gas stations you know we've got a whole shopping center sitting here on this corner of Broadway and mineral now this is going to be even newer parts of Littleton that started getting built out similar to the time that Highlands Ranch started getting built out and so you're going to see and feel a lot of similarities between Highlands Ranch and this southern part of Littleton so now we're heading into the neighborhood called Southbridge this is a part of Littleton this community was pretty much built in the '90s and it's going to be similar to the last neighborhood that we saw except a little bit further away uh from the downtown Center little bit bigger houses so these start at around 4,000 ft they're mostly going to be two stories and these are going to range actually from about 8 to 850 on the low end all the way up to a little bit over 1 million but extremely well taken care of neighborhoods mostly brick homes built here uh in the '90s two to three car garages and what you don't see to my left oh there you go you got a little access point there is that trail once again it's plaguing us all throughout Littleton you can access it just to the left side of these homes here has the access to the trail that goes all throughout the city of Littleton and just keeps on going so now we're going to start working our way west into Littleton starting on the southernmost part and we're actually going to start at mlen Reservoir wait till you see this thing I mean when I say there's a lot of things to do in and around Littleton uh you know we're Colorado we don't get pegged for having a whole lot of water but uh I want to show you a bunch of water here take a look at these places we're at a community called the peninsula and I'm going to show you what's right on the other side of all these houses in just a second it is going to cost you about 900 to a million and they are condos SL Town Homes uh so they're not full single family properties here but they're still good sized and they're new newly built I believe these were built in the early 2000 now this is called riters Vista Park just north of mcla reservoir and now we're walking and I'm going to give you a little Glimpse here let me turn you let me turn you okay see you see see those condos back there that's what we were just driving through in the neighborhood out your back door you're going to have miles of walking trails in the morning in the evenings enjoy this beautiful weather here and if you don't live here H we haven't even talked about the weather yet uh so as stated before I'm from Chicago cold is cold hot is hot 30° there man when I go back I need just about a jacket 30° Here sweater weather oh Sweater Weather sweat weather Sweater Weather finally weather why cuz it's dry we live at 15 to 20% humidity it's probably about 90 93 degrees out right now I'm totally fine if I go in the shade feels like it's mid 80s right we just have the most incredible weather here you can ride a bicycle 12 months out of the year and if all the rest of the trails and hiking areas weren't enough for you we have connection to the Highline Canal check this thing out so the Highline Canal if you don't know goes throughout the entire city of Denver like it doesn't even show you here this is like southernish Denver uh this is down south of Chatfield where here in the middle this thing goes and goes and goes I forget how many miles it is I think it's like 60 some odd miles that weaves through the entire city that you can bike from one end to the other with only having to go over a few streets they do a really good job at making sure they have underpasses and overpasses on all these heavier Crossings so if you're a big Runner if you're a big biker this part of Littleton connecting to this trail system is just huge let's go get some food why have I never caught this before yep we're heading up jackass Hill Road now if you want some land if you want a big house if you don't want your neighbors to be on top of you looking for one to two acres uh Shady Croft acres is your place here these are fabulous homes all around 4,000 ft and above perched on 1 to 2 Acres hilly sides we've got Mountain views and some of these twostory homes and you can just see we've got new builds throughout the neighborhood because it is so exclusive there's not a ton of homes in these neighborhoods we've kind of got two sections here we've got this section South and then we've got another section north of us but I mean just look

[72:23] [Music] so we're going to pull in here and look at a few more of these masterpieces cuz that's the best way to describe it these are all custom homes uh there's not many of them there's only a couple hundred maybe hundred homes in this area uh so when they do come up for sale they're highly sought after and you're going to pay for it but man look at that mid-century modern [Music] like there's a very good chance that these homes are in magazines somewhere uh but you're going to pay for them you know $2 to4 million is about the norm for most of these homes on land in the city of Littleton horse properties custom build beautiful properties [Music] and now as we head north back towards the city center we're going to start seeing houses get a little bit smaller a little bit older and a little bit cheaper now we still do have some pockets coming up here that are you know 900 to a million uh but then as we go even further north you know we're going to start seeing that5 $600,000 price range again some beautiful little new builds stuck in here some midc centuries kind of smattered throughout a lot of these neighborhoods randomly and here we are we're probably about a half a mile from downtown Littleton just south but I mean we've got some really cute character in a lot of these neighborhoods you know it's not like when these were built it was just all Cookie Cutter at that time you know um and so you have a lot of funky siiz Lots you can have 10,000 squ ft Lots in some of these neighborhoods mixed in with a bunch of you know four five 6,000 ft Lots you can have a 4,000 squ foot home mixed in with tht ranches but yet on the southern end of town you've got a lot of the new builds that you know are up to the standards of what a lot of people want in this day and age but if you're looking for character littleton's got you covered if you're looking for charm littleton's got you covered if you're looking for an old 1920s Victorian downtown littleton's got you covered if you're looking for a 4,000 ft house that's not on a big lot so you don't have a to take care of littleton's got you covered if you're looking for a condo on the more inexpensive side townhouse waterfront properties we've covered littleton's got you covered and if you're looking for a horse property sitting on Acres littleton's got you covered I mean it's really hard to beat everything that Littleton has to offer and now we're pulling back into downtown Littleton and man I've been talking about food but it's finally time to go stop somewhere [Music] you got anything up on the roof available [Music] sweet oh my God if you come to B you got to try their Bia tacos holy cow thank you too let's do this now what we're going to do is we're going to go north of downtown we're going to check some stuff out so you guys know I'm a fan of Christmas right right I hope so it's

[76:37] s this is my happy place okay okay there's something a little strange about going to a Christmas store in August so let's quit screwing around let's get back to it so we're here on the other side of 85 across from downtown Littleton there's a few other communities to stay within Littleton proper and they're really going to be similar to the stuff that's south of downtown Littleton they're going to be pretty much your 1960s 7s uh 2,000 ft brick ranches all falling within that you know5 to $600,000 zone now we've just pulled into another pretty exclusive area over by BS Lake um again we have some really fascinating architecture and design around this neighborhood uh these are going to be about half Acre Properties but the houses here are just incredible um and again we're probably in that 2 to 4 million range uh a few up to 5 to 6 million but check out this neighborhood as we drive around such a nice quiet community large houses but older large houses a lot of these were built in the' 60s and 7s not a whole lot of new builds not a whole lot of scrapes uh the houses have just been renovated brought up to today's standards just impeccable so not your large acreage horse properties like we saw further to the South and to the [Music] East and if you're a resident here they actually have their own little private beach too [Music]

[79:21] he [Music] now that's a mid-century modern if I've ever seen one holy [Music] cow now down here on the southern end of town you have the new Aspen Grove shopping center now this isn't going to be your daily shopping sort of place this is going to be where you come you know once every few months uh clothes shopping things like that but tons of stores in here between Tim Buck toys Lane Bryant you've got the tattered covered bookstore you've got Lulu Lemon you've got coffee shops in here we've got Banana Republic Eddie Bower Ulta and of course we can't forget about the Alamo Draft House Cinema which if you've never been man it might be one of the best experiences on catching a movie and it's going to ruin all of movie theaters for you got William Sonoma Pottery Barn so this is like your upscale shopping center almost like a mall except all Outdoors super popular all the time and like I said you know this is another main shopping Hub especially if you're in the southern part of Littleton and I can't believe we're not even going to have time to cover it but H we might have to do a part two but wave as we go by to the brick and Ridge Brewery hello brick and Ridge Brewery goodbye brick and Ridge Brewery if you've never go it's a fabulous Brewery it's such a cool place they got cornhole outside they got games you can play and the space there is just incredible even for big events and that's on 83 kind of in the central part of Littleton and we can't forget about Cornerstone Park man there is so much to pack into this city huge soccer fields Galore they got a skate park here they got a bike park here they've got a miniature golf course here uh they pretty much have it all just walking into the Cornerstone Park here and behind me are the splash pads for the kids new playground setup and the views just behind me absolutely incredible don't know if those are coming through but you got all the Foothills and the mountains behind me and back over behind me there don't know if you can quite see they got a ton of pickle ball courts and then as I turn around dude look at the skate park behind me I mean I wish we had this stuff when we were kids but we didn't and now that they do so kids can come here stay out of trouble hang out as long as they want in this beautiful Park and just right across the street I don't even think I mentioned it his Pirates Cove right on the other side of bellw here which is a great alternative from going to eliches which is going to be crazy busy and a lot more expensive a lot more laid-back atmosphere at Pirates Cove come here just take a seat let the kids run around do the thing for hours on end in the summer and they got a roller hockey rink of course now we're at bellw in Santa Fe and so most of your shopping if you live towards downtown Littleton or a big chunk of it is going to be done in this area this is where your Home Depot is king supers Walgreens CVS and it's all super convenient just right here I mean it takes about 2 minutes to get here from the downtown Littleton area and you've got everything you

[82:49] need now we just pulled into the Riverside down shopping center going to have more great restaurants everything's pretty much new here we've got toast behind me we've got the Pint Room behind me over here great place to grab a beer grab burger and the best part is we have access to the Riverside trail which goes along with Plat River all the way from the north side of town all the way down to the southern part of Middleton check this trail out now this Trail sits right next to the river I'm about oh 20 30 yards away or so most of it's going to be right up next against it you can go fishing down through here but if you're a big biker Runner I mean you've got miles and miles of uninterrupted Trail here that you can just go as far as you want man listen are those cices right now hardest summer folks it's a little toasty but it's not that bad Littleton just has everything you want out of a town you've got your small downtown cutesy Charmy area with a Hallmark score of a 10 out of 10 you've got the new build so if you're looking for that you've got it you got the old 1920s Victoria in houses you've got horse properties you've got all the new shopping that you could ever want in a community F where you're part of the Denver metro but you don't necessarily feel like you're a part of Denver Metro the mountains are 15 minutes to the west of us I mean you just can't get any better than this folks for families for night life the school system it's just all pretty much a 10 out of a 10 so if you're thinking of moving to Littleton and you're struggling with knowing what the top neighborhoods are that you should be looking looking at or we're going to go over the top five neighborhoods in Littleton today that you really want to explore we're going to have some incredible midcentury modern some horse property just some really downto Earth incredible homes in a great location Littleton is one of the top suburbs in the Denver metro area but when you look at it on a map you might be a little bit confused because you're going to see Littleton proper and then you're also going to see kind of these vast areas to the west of Littleton that all the way even to the Foothills and so it might be a little bit confusing but we're going to dig deep into these neighborhoods show you what's available what sort of price ranges you're looking at so you can make the best decision for you and your family so the first neighborhood we're going to start with is west of downtown it is aapo Hills now most people have never heard of this neighborhood why because it's within another neighborhood and it's only 56 homes now these are crazy wild mid-century modern homes and if you are looking to be in Oro Hills you might have to wait a couple of years cuz even in the last 10 years there's only been a good handful of properties that have sold these are handed down from generation to generation because they are so unique now when it comes to mid-century modern homes you either love them or you hate them myself I'm a little on the fence about them I can really appreciate the architecture I love the feeling of them but a lot of times the furniture kind of turns me off a little bit and it doesn't seem as inviting as I want my home to feel but like I said it's a very particular taste and if you love mid-century modern homes aapo Hills is a great place to look now price-wise this is really goofy so there's 56 homes and there's only been a handful to sell in the last 5 to 10 years so when you look back at the historic numbers what are they worth today no idea you can probably expect to spend when I look at other mid-century modern neighborhoods in Denver probably around that $600 to $900 per square foot most mid-century modern homes are not big they're 1,000 to, 1500 square ft and so I know in other neighborhoods in Denver that are particularly mid-century modern homes million bucks for about you know 1 12200 1300 ft is not abnormal but I mean look at these things this pulls you back to being in the Jetson you know with this furniture with these light fixtures like there's a real appeal to them but you might have to be put on a wait list if you want to be in a rapo Hills number two on our list for Littleton is actually I'm combining two areas here which is Ridgewood and Golden West Park so these fall just south of downtown Littleton by about half a mile handful of blocks or so now what makes this such an appealing first of allc Beyond being close to downtown is access to the trail right north of you which is Lee Gul Trail so you can take that trail for miles in either direction hop on a bike go for a walk with your dogs like it is literally out your back door and now housing wise what you're going to find in these neighborhoods is good size houses two three even up to 4,000 square foot houses so they work for most families lots of TW stories lots of ranches but when you drive drive through this neighborhood like the lots are a good size the trees are old and mature and give a ton of shade and it's just what you're really looking for out of most neighborhoods and price range wise it's not terrible I mean you can get into this neighborhood for around the 700s but you can spend up to about a million for something that is fully updated and completely ready to go that is decked out now most of these homes were built in the 60s and the' 70s so if you like the qual quality of the construction then you get a lot of brick a lot of brick ranches and they're on 12,000 ft lots for the majority of the homes so older just a more mature neighborhood this is definitely kind of your move up category uh you're going to have a little bit of an older population that lives here we're talking people in their 40s to 50s not going to be a lot of young folks here so it's going to be a little bit quieter and with its location and the trail just right above you just south of downtown Littleton like there's a huge draw to people to want to be in a good solid neighborhood and Ridgewood and Golden West neighborhoods they just check all those boxes number three on our list I combined two neighborhoods cuz they're right next to each other Mountain Range View in Shady Croft Acres this is probably my favorite part of Littleton it's a segment of about 100 houses or so between these two neighborhoods now these just fall east of the last neighborhoods we looked at and just a little bit South so again you're just south of downtown Littleton by a little bit so ease of access is great now these properties are bigger on the smaller side it's about 3/4 of an acre up to about 2 Acres on the bigger size now when you compare Mountain Range View and Shady Croft Acres dollar for dollar in comparison to the rest of the Denver metro area for the size of the Lots size of the homes and quality of the homes it's one of the best values in the Denver metro area in my opinion if you're looking for land now yes you do have to spend some money they started about 1.5 and I think they top out in the 3 million Zone but look at some of these houses they are just incredible high level of quality workmanship Big Lots laid out really really well you don't get a lot of through traffic coming down your streets like if you don't live in the neighborhood you're not just driving around there unless you've heard of them and you're wondering if a property is for sale and in the last 4 years there's been approximately 17 properties between these two neighborhoods that have sold so you're only going to see a handful every single year so this these are the neighborhoods that you really just kind of put on a wait list you have a search running you're ready to jump you don't need to move you don't have to move but if something came up in these neighborhoods like you'd be ready to jump and pounce as soon as they did next up on our list at number four is the neighborhood of Southbridge so we're going a little bit further south a little bit further east than the other neighborhoods we were just looking at now the appeal to this neighborhood is that it was built in the 80s and '90s so you get a larger home with a little bit smaller Lots so these are more on the 8 to 10,000 ft lot sizes not as much as the Ridgewood Park area but you have good-sized homes 2500 to 4,000 square ft and the price range ranges here range from anywhere from about 650 up to about 1.2 for the newer stuff built in the 9s that is well more updated and coming in at number five on our list is the Columbine Country Club Now location wise this is on the other side of 85 or Santa Fe and it's still close to downtown Littleton but this is right on the golf course world renowned golf course you do have to have a membership uh or have someone a member and be their guest to golf here it's not a public course but these homes are remarkable again not a ton of these sell every single year and you're talking houses that are 3,000 up to 8,000 square ft uh starting gosh mid 1 million would be inexpensive to get into this neighborhood up to about 4 million so this community was actually originally built in the early 60s so you get a lot of the sprawling ranches are 4,000 square ft and maybe not updated so if you're going to get into it you might have to be willing to do a big renovation because like I said not many homes in this neighborhood sell almost all of them back up to one of the holes on the golf course it's a 27 hole golf course they have a walking only nine-hole threep par course it's a great little Community here some of the homes have been built in the 80s or 90s and those are going to be the ones that you really see stand out at the 2 and2 to $4 million range now jumping Northeast of Littleton is Englewood so if you're looking to be closer to Denver but you don't want to be in Denver but you want something affordable this is your place today we're talking Anglewood Colorado and that is going to be our featured city of the day where we're going to go over all things Englewood its lifestyle what it's like to actually live here its history affordability and of course it's real estate and in this video we're going to compare Ang wood and how it Stacks up to the other cities around the Denver metro area so if you've been thinking about moving to Anglewood or just want to know more about it this video is for you when thinking about the city of Englewood I would honestly say it's really just kind of an extension of Denver I have a lot of friends who live in Englewood I go through Englewood almost every day but it is a small footprint because of where it's located it's kind of located in between both sides of Denver and as you go south down from Broadway you're just in Englewood you wouldn't never know it there's no distinct boundaries or lines for the city of Englewood so it really just kind of feels like a more inexpensive Denver I would say overall you know something else that I kind of hear thrown around a lot is that there's less regulations on things in Englewood but that's kind of what I hear from my friends is that Englewood doesn't care as much as Denver or maybe other surrounding suburbs englewood's located on the southern part of the Denver metro area buts up right against Denver in between Cherry Hills Village and this little town of Sheridan that no one actually knows exists but what's nice about it is Access wise it's not that far off from the Foothills So within a 10 to 15 minute drive to the West you can have all the hiking and biking trails glore that you could ever want now getting two and from Anglewood of course is going to depend on where you're coming from but let's say if you wanted to go downtown you really have to take 85 North to connect with I25 there are no major highways that connect directly to Englewood you're quite a bit north of the 470 Loop and you're about a 10-minute drive to the east to get to I25 now if you're looking to head to the High Country to go skiing to either Breen Ridge or Keystone most of the time that drive is going to take anywhere from an hour and 45 minutes without a ton of traffic all the way up to about 2 and 1/2 hours if you're going on Saturday or Sunday morning or you can make the drive a bit less and head over to Loveland which is going to make your drive about an hour to an hour and 15 minute on average without a ton of traffic and if you live in Anglewood and you're looking to go for a nice hike you can go to the Southwest here to the South Valley Park trail head which even during the busiest of times is about a 25-minute drive without traffic 10 to 15 minutes and if you're needing to head to the airport over a DIA to get there during most times it's going to take you about 45 minutes to get to the airport now I always bring up these highly trafficked routes because if you are going to move to Englewood and you do want that Colorado lifestyle there's a very good chance you're going to be going hiking skiing or have to fly out of DIA and if you're wondering what the average commute time is for Englewood residents it falls at 25 minutes the recorded history in Englewood began in 1858 for the very reason that all these towns in Colorado seem to pop up gold but the biggest period of change happened in about 1948 when the city decided to purchase about 2500 acres to create mclen Reservoir which then was able to ensure that the city of Englewood had independence from the powerful Denver water at the time and now Anglewood actually supplies a lot of water due to those early water rights to a lot of the South Metro area now a big draw to the city of Englewood is going to be its location which it's kind of nestled in between Denver except you can get more house for your buck now the median prices are about the same but you can get about 50% more house for the same amount of money that you can in Denver and you're also a bit closer to most hiking and biking trails so you kind of have this nice mix of Both Worlds for a great lifestyle now because of that you would think that the population of the city of Englewood would be growing vastly however it is a small footprint and since it was an older City established closer to the beginning of Denver you actually don't have this massive amount of room to build like you do on the further out suburbs so the population for the city of Englewood has remained almost flat for about the last 30 years sitting at around 33,000 population now at this point I'm going to head over to niche.com and if you've never been to their website to check things out I would highly recommend it I'll have the link in the description below but you can look up anything you want from schools neighborhoods different towns cities states whatever and they rate everything that you could possibly want so looking at the overall report card and breaking down the different little segments we have a B minus for the public schools C for housing B good for families B for jobs which that one really should be an A+ it is is so easy to find work in the whole Denver metro area it's kind of ridiculous C minus for cost of living you know yeah we are more expensive because well frankly we're better than a lot of parts in the country in my opinion a for outdoor activities that's obvious C for crime and safety we have a lot of car thefts here and so that always kind of skews the numbers I'm not sure exactly why um but that falls for most of the Denver metro area a plus for nightlife a minus for diversity B for weather once again that should be an A+ we have the best weather in the world a for health and fitness and a minus for commute now don't just take my word for it what you can do on niche.com is head down on that page and you can actually go look at reviews for Englewood to see what residents have written themselves about the city and within the city limits of Englewood they are home to about eight Parks so not a ton but remember it's not a very big footprint and two of the biggest parks are going to be one Centennial Park which is a great place to take a hike around or go fishing and then you have Cornerstone Park which is a massive park with a bunch of soccer fields football fields baseball fields a miniature golf course stuck in the corner of it as well as Pirates Cove as a part of it too which is a great affordable option and a good way to avoid all the crowds that are going up to eliches in Denver now let's talk about schools for a minute because whether or not you have children the schools do affect you greatly it does affect the quality of life it does affect effect resale value of the property you're going to be paying property taxes and a big chunk of that does go to the school system now I will have the link below for niche.com and for grad schools.org so you can look into the schools yourself because as being a real estate agent I can't go into too many details however I would say overall in the Denver metro area as you can see by this map here 10 being the best rating you can get not many of the schools in Anglewood which there are only eight of rank VAR high on this scale unfortunately now let's talk about something really important and that's going to be real estate because whether you rent whether you own it does once again affect our quality of life and to start off from a high level overview we can take a look and as of April in 2023 the median home price in the entire city of Englewood was 560,000 and now that's down for March of 2022 but that's the entire country due to interest rates Rising we all kind of had a 10% adjustment across the board and if you're wondering what real estate prices have done over the last decade going back to May of 2013 the median home price was $235,000 in the city of Englewood and fast forward to today and we're sitting at $560,000 so you're looking at a cool 138% increase in the last 10 years in appreciation now looking at the median sales price I was actually a little surprised that it's pretty much on par with where Denver is at today the median sales price doesn't tell you that size home on average that you're getting for that dollar amount and I can say overall you do get more bang for your buck in Anglewood but now that we know that the median sales price in Englewood is 560,000 today how does that stack up to the rest of the Denver metro area today in sentennial the median sales price is 610,000 in Lakewood we're sitting at about 550,000 for the median sales price Denver is at 542,000 Aurora's median sales price is 480,000 today and Westminster is about 533,000 but let's take this one step further what is $560,000 going to be able to buy you today in the city of Englewood

Littleton's Secret Neighborhoods

Living in Englewood, CO

[101:36] [Music] now by the time you see this video there's a very good chance that none of those homes are actually going to be available for sale anymore I mean the average days on Market is about 14 right now for the entire Denver metro area you got to be ready you got to move quick but I'll do you one better I'll put a link in the description below that you can get a preferred list of Englewood City Homes delivered straight to you and you can get those into your email inbox every day if you want now while looking at the median home price of 560,000 in Englewood maybe that's something you can afford Maybe it's not but it's a great time to look at what the cost of living would actually be in the city of Englewood so I've pulled up a mortgage calculator in which I will have a link in the description below once again and this States at 560,000 with a down payment of 20% or $2,000 on a 30-year fixed loan at 65% interest which is what they're running today which property taxes at 2800 a year this is what you really need to calculate in especially if you're looking from another state we are some of the cheapest property taxes in the entire country we're actually the third cheapest state for property taxes and that has a huge impact on what your monthly payment will end up being now also calculating in $2,400 a year on homeowners insurance comes out with a monthly payment of just over $3,200 a month and housing is always going to be our biggest expense when it comes to our cost of living but what about everything else well check this out because all you naysayers out there talking about how expensive Denver is and compared to everywhere look at this chart here overall we in Englewood are at the national average housing is a little bit more expensive than the national average utilities are down by 133% groceries are down by 6% and we pay just the national average for our transportation so there you go if you want a good feel for Englewood all you got to do is drive south on Broadway from Denver you're going to be passing a ton of shops and it's going to have its own unique little feel to it I love the city of Englewood like I said I have a number of friends who live there and it just feels a little less regulated I would say than a lot of the rest of the Denver suburbs it's not pretentious you don't have multi-million homes everywhere it's just everyday Middle America people that live in the city of Englewood I would say overall you're close to shopping you're close to the Foothills you've got most things that you want affordably Wise It's more affordable than a lot of the Denver suburbs now we're going to hop over West over to Golden where if mountain biking hiking uh kaying access to I70 and skiing is the tippy top of your priority list look no further than golden golden Colorado it's a city that wishes it wasn't a part of the Denver metro area but it is and that gives me the great pleasure of making it our featured city of the day we're going to take a deep dive into golden which is a smaller Community buted right up against the Foothills we're going to take a look at its light lifestyle it's affordability and of course it's real estate if there was an award for most improved City around the Denver metro area golden would be the winner hands down I've lived in Denver for I don't know 8 years approximately or so prior to that I lived in Boulder for 10 12 years now why is that important well both of these towns golden and Boulder sit right against the Foothills C so they tend to attract a lot of the same type of people that want to do mountain biking climbing hiking and have that all right outside their back door so there almost seemed to be this rivalry between Golden and Boulder but Boulder has see you and so naturally the incomes were quite a bit higher you had lots of million doll Plus Homes and golden just kind of everything sat around the 300's mark and it really didn't do much and as silly as it sounds to say it's almost like golden was kind of referred to as the slums of Boulder even though they're far away on a map and they're not even close to to being the same town I mean they're a 20-minute drive from each other but that's how it was referred to now fast forward 10 to 15 years and golden is the hot spot to be if you want to be close to everything outdoors and golden is stacking up there for me compared to Littleton and Parker in the Denver metro area as one of my favorite suburbs to be in and what are some things that put them on my list for being one of the best suburbs around Denver well it comes down to Christmas okay I can't help it I am a huge fan of Christmas it's my favorite time of year and downtown Golden has the Hallmark fi to it okay there's only a few suburbs around Denver that have that feel it's going to be Littleton it's going to be Parker it's going to be Arvada and it's going to be golden and dang it I just can't help it so it puts it on the top of my list for one of the best Denver suburbs where is Golden located well golden is located on the western most part of the Denver metro area and I mean the access to everything outdoors is literally in your backyard you want to be on some world class climbing in 5 minutes golden your place you want to be in some worldclass mountain biking in 5 minutes golden is your place and as far as access around the city it's actually really really convenient because this is where Route 6 I70 and 470 all combined so if you need to go south into DTC or south of 470 off of I25 there you've got 470 which wraps around the city there's not usually a lot of traffic in that area you need to go south of Denver well you can hop on six you need to go into the heart of downtown you got I70 you need to go north into Boulder you've got 93 like you are at the Gateway to the Rockies from Denver now if you do need to commute into downtown Denver from Golden you're looking at about a 25 to 30 minute drive with traffic if you're needing to commute to the tech center during the heaviest peak times at about 5:00 p.m. you're looking at about a solid 45-minute drive if you're looking to head to the High Country to go skiing let's say to Breen Ridge about an hour and 20 minute drive with traffic you're probably looking at more like an hour and 45 to 2 hours so it's still going to be quicker than most of the Denver metro area you're going to save yourself about 15 to 30 minute drive at 5 5:30 in the morning compared to the rest of the Denver metro area or you can save yourself about 20 to 30 minutes head over to a basin you're looking at about a solid hour without much traffic and if you do need to head up to Boulder you're looking at about a 30-minute Drive of one of the prettiest drives in the Front Range and what's great is even if you need to head over to DIA you're looking at about a 45-minute drive and that's going to be during your heaviest peak times so it's pretty comparable to most rest of the city and we can't talk about Golden without talking about Red Rocks Red Rocks is literally outside your back door 15-minute Drive South with the most incredible concerts in the country arguably it's always in the top three list but as we all know it's really number one but what most people don't actually know about Red Rocks is that even on days that they have an event the amphitheater and the surrounding areas are open until I believe 2:00 so you can go park there and they have an incredible hiking trail system all around Red Rocks you can go into the amphitheater they have yoga on the Rocks uh Sunday morning services on the Rocks uh movies on the Rocks they have all sorts of events going on there that are not just concerts when ever I have someone come in from out of town it's literally on my top list of things to do with them cuz they're easy hikes it's some of the most beautiful landscape in the Front Range and it's Red Rocks I mean everybody's heard of red rocks and if you're looking for an overall commute time if you live in Golden it's on average 252 minutes so Golden Colorado was founded in 1859 for the same reason that I feel like all these towns were started gold now this one makes a little bit more sense it's literally the Gateway to the West where most the gold mining was done and it separated out the Foothills and all the harshness out there to the eastern part which is PLS all the way from Golden until shoot Pennsylvania just about and it was originally called Golden City and it was the capital of the entire Colorado territory at the time now since then golden really hasn't expanded into this big Metropolis area it's got a small footprint they don't like a whole ton of building there so the population hasn't really exploded like the rest of Denver but that's actually made prices go up quite a bit more because there's not a whole lot of building that's going on so if you want to be in Golden you got to pay golden prices and now golden is of course Infamous for having the Kors Brewery which of course you can go to and take a full tour of which is fantastic now you've been taking my word on why I think Golden Colorado is such an incredible City but this is where I love to head over to niche.com and I'll have a link in the description below that you can check it out and check out any stat for any City around the Denver metro area for that fact to see how they rate the different cities and the quality of life so let's take a look at what niche.com has for Golden's report card starting with Public Schools a minus for public schools overall they're rated extremely well there now C for housing which as we know the reason for that is because real estate prices are going to be up there we haven't covered it yet but we will here in a minute so hang tight a minus good for families which is not uncommon they have a ton of outdoor activities lots of new stuff that has gone in for Parks and Recreation for around golden so not a surprise they rank really high there B minus for jobs you know the the jobs in Golden are not that vast it's mostly going to be touristy restaurant retail sort of work in the golden area most of the tech jobs things like that most of the white collar high paying jobs are going to be more towards the Denver area C minus for cost of living it's expensive to live in Golden because of the quality of life P for outdoor activities I mean you literally can't get any better you can't get any closer you can't get any more high quality of outdoor activities anywhere in the world than you can in Golden Colorado B minus for crime and safety we cover this on every single video the Denver metro area has a high crime rate for vehicle thefts a for nightlife there actually is a bunch of bars and restaurants that are open fairly late and they're all down in that little down Town Hub B+ for diversity B+ for weather I mean yeah we do get a lot of hail here on the Front Range so you know even though we do have all four seasons and we are a dry climate so cold isn't as cold hot isn't as hot yeah we got hail but we don't have hurricanes alligators earthquakes a for health and fitness pretty self-explanatory and a minus for commute and that gives us an overall rating of a in Golden Colorado I'm not very surprised by this report card as for parks and recreational around Golden Colorado that can be an entire 4-Hour video just covering that but within the city limits the Golden Colorado Park system has 253 Acres of parks 24 Mi of trails and over 400 Acres of open space and the amount of hiking right outside your back door is just a little ridiculous I mean starting up north you've got North Table Mountain Park getting into the heart of golden you have Lookout Mountain which is a great place to go especially if you're from out of town The View of Denver from there is incredible you've got the chimney Gul Trail and then heading south you've got Dinosaur Ridge which is one of our favorite places to go mountain biking but it's not for the faint of heart okay so what I would highly suggest if you're from out of town heck even if you're in town and you're not used to hiking mountain biking climbing is to really dig into reviews on these places so there are some extreme Trails there are some extreme cliff drop offs that if you're not comfortable with might be outside of your comfort zone so make sure you look at a ton of reviews we're in Colorado remember we all have that friend who says yeah no it's not too bad of a hike 20 mil later 16 hours later you know 12,000 ft of elevation gain later you've just done two 14ers that you didn't realize was going to be what it was you should have brought two gallons of water and you brought a 32 o Nene with you like we all have those people in our lives that may not fully understand other people's capabilities so just make sure you look into reviews deeply and get a good assessment for what the terrain is like cuz there is some dangerous stuff out here now onto the school system for Golden Colorado which does affect everybody cuz whether or not you have kids you're going to be paying property taxes and that does go into our school system which affects resale value and quality of life now Golden Colorado is a part of Jefferson County School District and it's rated extremely high and I'll have a link in the description for niche.com and greatschools.org that you can look into all the details and stats of the different schools as being a real estate agent as you might be aware of I can't go into too many details about the schooling system but hopefully this information gives you everything that you need to know now what I can say personally is that I do have a lot of friends that are moving to the western suburbs for the school districts as most of them have kids that are getting into the middle school age you know the middle schools around more Denver proper struggle a little bit more in the ratings but the further west you go just like Littleton and into golden they rate really well in the Middle School ages so let's now dig into Golden Colorado and Its Real Estate because whether you rent whether you own it does affect your quality of life now to start with the high level overview of real estate prices in Golden back in 2013 January the median home price in Golden Colorado was 402,000 and now fast forward to today July of 2023 the median home price in Golden Colorado is $815,000 that's the median price folks the average price is actually $945,000 that's an increase in price by over 100% in the last decade and the median price already started at 400,000 most of the rest of the Denver metro area at that time was maybe around 250 to 300,000 so being that it was already at 400,000 and then increased to over 800,000 is pretty extreme growth now how does that stack back up to the rest of the Denver metro area well let's break it down we've got Denver sitting at 570,000 we've got arv sitting at 655,000 is the median price there's Littleton at 644,000 and Aurora at 480,000 and popping up to Boulder we've got it topping out at $983,000 is the median sales price now the median sales price being $815,000 is all fine and dandy but let's look at what you can buy today in the city of golden for that median sales price

Living in Golden, CO

[117:37] [Music] now by the time you see this video it's very likely that those homes are not going to be on the market I mean average days on Market is well under 2 weeks for the city of golden right now but what I'll have is a link in the description below of our preferred gold homes that you can check out you can get into your inbox every single day if you want so now is the perfect time to go over what the cost of living would actually be like if you were to buy the median home price of $815,000 get a conventional 30-year loan and by the way I'll have a link in the description below for our mortgage calculator that you can plug in and kind of look and see what your own limits are now not everything's going to be 800,000 we've got plenty of homes here around that 500 to 600 mark But if you were looking at the median home price of $5,000 and you were to put down 20% or 163,000 on a 30-year fixed loan at 7% interest rate figuring in property taxes which are going to be lower than your national average byy a lot we're actually the third lowest for property taxes in the country figuring in home insurance of about $2,400 a year that puts your monthly mortgage payment at about $4,900 a month so it's definitely not on the cheap side now beyond your mortgage what does the rest of cost of living look like well we are higher than the national average and overall we're 15% more than the national average when you get all categories involved but housing is 60% above the national average utilities 133% under the national average groceries 6% under in transportation we're just at about Break Even so the moral of the story is if you want the high quality of life that golden can offer you do have to pay more to be here now if large properties we're talking north of 5 6,000 ft F feet on acreage potential to have horse properties be close to the city and you have a healthy budget of a few Million Dollar Plus Greenwood Village is not going to disappoint today ladies and gentlemen we are going to be talking about the amazing Greenwood Village it's our featured city of the day in the Denver metro area and it's one of the more fascinating cities as you could call it around the Denver area we're going to talk about everything Greenwood Village which is an amazingly small footprint in the Denver metro area with some of the most expensive homes Greenwood Village is known Nationwide and around the world as being one of the most exclusive neighborhoods and cities to live in we're going to check out everything about its lifestyle it's affordability and of course it's real estate so if you're looking to move to Greenwood villager you just want to know more about this fascinating City this video is for you I've been here in the Denver metro area for about 20 years and I pass through Greenwood Village almost daily as a lot of us do that live in the Denver metro area because of where it's located and it has this amazing draw to the wealthiest people in the world I mean pton Manning lives here anybody who's anybody has a house in Greenwood Village because the lots are big the houses are big there's lots of horse properties and with where it's located it's so convenient to get throughout the city just makes this a really amazing location amenities hiking the trail system that goes throughout here it's just as exclusive as you can possibly get and I can't wait to show you all about it so starting off with where is Greenwood Village cuz even people who live here don't really understand the borders of Greenwood Village because Cherry Hills which is another exclusive neighborhood borders and actually overlaps part of Greenwood Village so it makes it really unclear as to where Greenwood Village is but if we look at a map here we can see that Greenwood Village encompasses part of the Denver Tech Center all the way over to almost Englewood and further south down to Centennial but really when you zoom in and you look north to south it's only about a mile or two north to south so it's really not that big of a footprint and so it's located kind of in the middle of the southern part of the Denver metro area making access to everything from downtown all the way further south down south of 470 really easy to get to so what about getting around if you live in Greenwood Village well starting from the center of Greenwood Village if you were to head over to Cherry Creek State Park you're looking at about a 14-minute drive and if you're looking to head to downtown you just got to hop on the I25 go north and it's about 24 25 minutes even with traffic then when you got a flight out at DIA you're looking at about a 36-minute drive and then if you're going to head over to Veil or Beaver Creek cuz let's be real if you live in Greenwood Village you're probably not going to Keystone a base and or Lovin but I actually joke they're all ridiculously expensive to go to these days but to get to Veil you're about an hour and 45 minutes without any traffic in the off seon with traffic you're probably at about 2 and a half hours now overall we're going to talk about some stats here about Greenwood Village but keep in mind everything is completely skewed because the people who live in Greenwood Village aren't your typical 9 to5 sort of people that potentially work at a bank but according to this stat the average commute time for someone that lives in Greenwood Village is about 21 minutes so really to get around the Denver metro area if you live in Greenwood Village you're going to be finding yourself doing just a few things you're going to be heading over to the east to get to I25 which is going to be you know the main artery that runs through Denver north and south or you're going to find yourself going south towards Highland Ranch to catch 470 to maybe get around to I70 to head up to the high country or you're going to head over West to 85 which is Santa Fe that also runs north and south from downtown further down into the Littleton area and those are really going to be your main arteries that you're going to get to to get around if you live in Greenwood Village now I do also love to take myself out of the equation from my biases about how I like or don't like some of the cities around the Denver metro area so I love going to niche.com and looking up what their report cards are because they rank everything from schools to cost of living to the commute times all on their site real easily and I'll have a link down below for you as well that you can look up any details that you want but going over this report card some things stand out some things are kind of a no-brainer so starting off with the public schools they get rated at an A+ which is because they're in the Cherry Creek School Districts Cherry Creek School districts are one of the highest rated school districts in in the state they always outperform and Greenwood Village is a part of that school district now housing we get a C+ for housing why because things are extremely expensive here a couple of million dollars does not get you very far in Greenwood Village yes I said a couple of million dollars I'll show you some Stats today there's only 31 houses for sale in the entire Greenwood Village City A+ good for families it's a great area where there's a lot of hiking trails around Big Lots lots of horse properties so it ranks really high for being good for families a minus for jobs not really sure how they get that ranking to be honest with you Greenwood Village actually doesn't have any Services they don't have any business centers there because it is such a small area all of the city's income comes from the residents that live in Greenwood Village C minus for cost of living you might want to just give this an F right upfront you're not moving to Greenwood Village to save money we'll just put it that way and you'll see why in a few a for outdoor activities it's located in a great spot to get to tons of stuff to do outside like I said there's lots of horse properties around here and there are trails that you can take your horses on Greenwood Village gets a B minus for crime and safety this is going to be the same throughout the entire Denver metro area we are extremely high for some reason for auto thefts and no one is immune to it no area is immune to it especially Greenwood Village and so because of those Auto thefts unfortunately a lot of the neighborhoods do rank high on crime and safety but on a positive note violent crimes are actually not very high across the entire Denver metro area nightlife is an a I don't know how they get that ranking I don't know what anybody's doing in Greenwood Village uh night LifeWise I guess there's some things to do in DTC but there's not a whole lot to do but again just surrounding Greenwood Village there's a ton of stuff to do we get a B for diversity niche.com has given us a B+ for weather which should be an A+ in my opinion I'm from the Midwest as you might know where hot is hot and cold is really cold here 30° of Sweater Weather and 90° you can still go outside and do whatever you want because our humidity is so extremely low that our extremes are not that extreme I love the weather here I love having all four seasons and if you do too there is no better place to be than right here in Colorado A+ for health and fitness that's going to follow you all around the Denver metro areas we're one of the healthiest cities in the country and then an a for commute again I don't exactly know how they rank this but maybe it's because so many people don't actually commute to work if they live in Greenwood Village most people are probably working from home and now you don't even have to take my word for it at how awesome of a Place Greenwood Village is on niche.com you can go there and see the ratings from residents who have lived there now and in the past to get a feel for what Greenwood Village has offered them now outdoor activities things to do to stay active what's amazing about Greenwood Village is that because it is such a small footprint it really only goes from hamen down to bellw which is only about a mile apart from each other mile and a half or so and you have this trail system that runs throughout it we go there multiple times a month to walk our dogs the Highline Canal goes through Greenwood Village which if you can see here around Kent Denver school which is a private school it has this trail system that goes all the way up through Denver but then you can take it from three Pond Park which is where a lot of people take horses and take that all the way down throughout there's multiple Lakes throughout Greenwood Village and so you can feel like you're in the middle of a big prairie forested area yet surrounded by these magnificent homes so now before we get on to some prices here and some of these homes I get asked a lot you know what are people like in Greenwood Village and you know it's a pretty simple answer a lot of people keep to themselves a lot of these properties are multiple acres in size but you will see people walking their dogs all throughout Greenwood Village a Cherry Hills neighborhood uh but a lot of people do keep to themselves because there is quite a bit of money there's a lot of CEOs there's a lot of wealthy uh famous people that live in these neighborhoods that do want their privacy uh the Greenwood Village Police make their presence known um and overall it's an extremely friendly area we go down there all the time like I said walking our dogs we have a great experience now we're not going door to door trying to sell anything maybe that would be a different thing but overall it's extremely quiet a lot of people keep to themselves a little bit older of a population just because of how expensive things are it's not a whole lot of Millennials that live in Greenwood Village to be honest with you um and it just makes for a really nice quiet feel you can drive down just about any Street and get out walk down the street and there's no hustle and bustle uh people that are there when they are in their houses cuz these are a lot of second homes um it just stays really quiet there are a lot of new builds that happen and so there is some construction that goes around uh you'll see 5 6 10,000 foot houses being torn down for another 10,000 ft house to be built there uh just because people that live there want what they want and they can afford it now how does Greenwood Village prices stack up to the rest of Denver you know Greenwood Village has some extremely wild swings in their median prices why because not a lot of stuff sells here so you could have one month where your median sales price is $3 million and another where it's $800,000 why because maybe only a couple of houses actually closed in that month so you got to take some of these numbers with a grain of salt because when there's not a whole lot of activity happening the numbers are really skewed but let's go ahead and break down where Greenwood Village is at today so we can take a look here and see that the median price currently for Greenwood Village is just under 1.4 million now last month in December of 2023 it was down at just over 1 million that's a 40% difference then we can see a couple of months prior we were all the way up to almost 2 million so huge fluctuations just depending on what price point homes have sold that's it now since back in 2009 looking at a 15-year window median prices were around $550,000 in Greenwood Village compared to today so in the last 15 years we've gone up by about 300% or so in appreciation so now how does the Greenwood Village medium price stack up with the rest of the Denver metro area well Greenwood Village once again is sitting just at about 1.4 million for the median sales price if we head down to Highlands Ranch we're at about 665,000 for the median sales price if we go further down to the southeast to Parker we're at about 631 th000 for the median sales price if we go west over to Littleton the median sales price is 61,000 and heading into Denver proper we're sitting at about 525,000 for the median sales price and heading over to Aurora we're at 478,000 for the median sales price now what can you actually buy if you were shopping in Greenwood Village today normally I show you what you can buy for the median sales price but that's no fun we want to look at the good stuff we want to look at the big stuff the stuff that we dream about owning and if we look today on the entire Greenwood Village footprint from 15,000 people there are only 31 properties for sale today in Greenwood Village that is extremely low they're extremely coveted neighborhoods houses pop up sometimes prices don't even matter location is more important and somebody jumps on it but let's take a look at what the incredible Greenwood Village has to offer today [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now what about the affordability in Greenwood Village woo let's just talk about what your price would be in the event you were not paying cash for your median sales price in Greenwood Village well at 1.4 million with a down payment of about 700,000 remembering that you can only take out a loan for a certain amount unless you're getting a jumbo loan and then the rates are even higher there but let's just pretend for a second you're taking out a loan on a $1.4 million property for 700,000 on a 30-year fixed 7% interest with about half of a % in property taxes every year figuring in about $6,000 a month in home insurance that comes out to just under $66,000 a month for that $1.4 million home with putting 50% down and then continuing onto our cost of living you know most stuff is going to be all right except for housing which is usually your biggest expense in life but we can look here the cost of living is rated at a 195 compared to the rest of Colorado at a 111 compared to nationally which is a 100 so they rate this based off the national averages and we can see Greenwood Village is far above and beyond everything else but not in goods and services or groceries Healthcare is actually a little bit cheaper it all happens under housing for obvious reasons we're looking at 10 12 million properties here that are just to die for and because of that our cost of living is pretty poor in Greenwood Village but that's not why you moved to Greenwood Village ladies and gentlemen now if you are just looking for the classic two-story home with a basement 2500 to 3500 ft kind of in the middle of price ranges from 600 to 800,000 Centennial is your place to be and you're kind of in the middle of all of it right you've got Parker just to your South you've got DTC kind of just to your West and just to your South just a little bit you've got 225 you've got I25 you're kind of in the middle of all of it Centennial Colorado is our Fe featured city of the day and today we're going to go through what it's actually like to live in Centennial Colorado and during this video we're going to check out its lifestyle its affordability and of course Its Real Estate and during this we're actually going to take Centennial and we're going to compare it to the rest of the cities in the Denver metro area so if you've been thinking of moving to Centennial or just want to know more about this incredible City this video is for you cuz we're going to cover everything that you actually want to know about the city a centennial Centennial is actually quite an interesting City especially if you look at a map of it from above it's kind of wonky looking on the western side we have kind of a big normal block of what you would expect to see a city and then as you head east over I25 it just kind of looks a little bit convoluted but Centennial you know 30 40 50 years ago was really a way far out suburb that not many people really knew much about and so it's kind of been pieced together and NEX is kind of coming together to make what is currently Centennial but what is amazing about Centennial I love Centennial it is just kind of in the center of everything just to the West you have Littleton which is one of my favorite suburbs in the Denver metro area just to the north you have DTC so you are super close just to the South you have E470 which runs all around the city access to Highlands Ranch bunch of hiking trails uh Ken Carl the Foothills going to the west and just to the southeast another one of my favorite suburbs witches Parker more horse properties things like that and so you really get this incredible mix of everything and at the same time because you're right at DTC you've got some incredible restaurants there and you're surrounded by so many incredible outdoor activities golfing Galore including of course Top Golf which is I just love it uh can't help it you have number of other golf courses around the city and then you have all these hiking tra Trails through they have one of the top parks at the city of Centennial Building uh which has its own little Amphitheater there and just one of the most up-to-date cities infrastructure wise that we have around the Denver metro area and Centennial housing wise has what most people are looking for when they're looking to move into the suburbs a little bit further away from the city you're looking for a larger lot you're looking for a home north of 22500 ft or you might be looking for a little bit of rage but not too big like you're going to find down in Parker you're not going to find a whole lots that are north of about an acre in size and I would say overall most of Centennial ranges anywhere from that 5 to 600 range on the lower side up to about a million and that's going to Encompass about 90% of Centennial and then of course you do have a few communities that are in the larger sizes up to couple2 $3 million so where is sentennial and how are you getting around if you want to live in Centennial well it's on the southern part of the Denver metro area but not all the way to the South like Highlands Ranch and Parker would be but you're surrounded by the biggest arteries in the Denver metro area being 470 to your South I25 runs north and south directly through it then just a little bit to the north you have 225 which is kind of the smaller ring around the Denver metro area the 470 Loop being the larger one then over to your East you have 83 which is kind of a route but not many stop lights there to get north and south on the eastern part of town now as far as getting to everything you want to get to when you live in Centennial for our Colorado lifestyle if you were to go skiing to the High Country let's say Winter Park you're looking about an hour and a half to an hour 45 minute drive depending on what time you leave on Saturday morning remember 5:45 is kind of The Sweet Spot much later and it's probably going to take you about 2 and 1/2 hours to get there if you're looking to go to Golden where we have world class climbing mountain biking hiking uh river rafting kaying it's going to take you about 35 minutes if you need to head to downtown even during traffic you're looking at about a 25-minute drive and if you'll want to get out to diaa to catch a flight you're going to be looking at about a 25-minute drive if you take the toll road on 470 or about a 35-minute drive if you head up to 225 and a round now just in general though the average overall commute time if you were to live in Centennial Colorado it's about 26 minutes now overall Centennial isn't one of those cities you hear a whole lot about around the Denver metro area like you would for Littleton or parker that's been rated in magazines as one of the top cities in the country or golden or Boulder but it's really just a well-rounded very convenient place to be uh you know with its location like I stated earlier you're so close to DTC and a lot of the communities here were built in the 70s and 80s and so they were built with shopping in mind so you've got shopping centers at all kind of your major through streets around the city of Centennial and it just makes it extremely convenient overall lifestyle-wise you're going to find Centennial to be a lot like the rest of Denver people place a value on being outdoors by going biking by going hiking uh by heading over to the Foothills just to the West Highlands rants just south of there has a ton of hiking and biking Trails so if you were going to live in Centennial you'd find yourself heading down there just like we do we live a little bit north of Centennial but we pass through it on a daily basis when we take the dogs to dog park or anything we tend to go south through Centennial but I would say the thing that Centennial is kind of missing is that downtown sort of feel where Littleton Parker uh Arvada have all these Nooks where you have like old buildings there that had give you this downtown cutesy Boutique shop feel to it Centennial really doesn't have that so if that's something you're looking for Centennial might not be the spot for you now everybody knows that the Denver metro area is extremely popular for people to move to from the Midwest the West Coast but Centennial has already been built out for quite a few years so there's not a whole lot of new construction or land available to build a lot of new properties and because of that our population has just kind of hovered between 100 to 110,000 over the the last 20 years so this is always where I like to head over to niche.com which compiles all the data for the city gives it this amazing report card and just has such a wealth of information I'm going to highly suggest checking it out in the description below I'll have a link you can do your own research but looking at their full report card and the different categories we can see here that the city of Centennial gets an overall rating of an A+ not surprising it's an incredible City most of the cities around Denver get an incredible high score because we have a great quality of life here now A+ for public schools we're rated really well have a lot of great schools in the Centennial City B for housing probably because we're on the more expensive side than the national averages are kind of makes sense you live in a great place it's going to be more expensive A+ good for families there's tons of parks around the city of Centennial there's lots to do and it's just really familyfriendly overall a minus for jobs great job market overall too with d TC just to the north of you some of the highest paying jobs in the tech industry that you can get C for cost of living well we kind of went over that it's kind of expensive to live here in Colorado overall a for outdoor activities plenty to do real close to you B minus for crime and safety we talk about this one a lot the whole state of Colorado has really high vehicle thefts now they're not violent crimes which is good we rank really really low for violent crimes actually in comparison to most cities and states but vehicle thefts for whatever reason are just on the high side so that's why we rank lower on crime and safety a minus for nightlife with DTC being so close there's lots of bars and restaurants to go to B+ for diversity B+ for weather that should be an A+ if you know me you know I'm from Chicago originally where hot is hot and cold is cold here with the dry climates it's just so mild in comparison you can be outside in 95° weather doing your thing and be comfortable you can be outside in 25 5° and it's kind of Sweater Weather A+ for health and fitness pretty standard around the Denver metro area we one of the healthier places in the country and then B+ for commute you know overall public transportation things like that around Denver are not topnotch almost everybody has a car because that's just how we're built and now you don't have to take my word for it cuz niche.com has done it all and they actually have reviews from people who live in the city again I'll have the link in the description below for you to check out now to dig into the Parks and Recreation in Centennial it's going to be on the high side there are dozens and dozens of parks in the city of Centennial but really the highlights are going to be Centennial Center Park which is a beautiful newly built park that is just huge it's acres big I don't know exactly how big but it is huge they have this awesome water park for little ones in the summertime all free that's the park with the amphitheater and then just to the north of you you have Cherry Creek State Park paddle boarding fishing huge State Park just outside your back door and then there's tons of parks just littered throughout the rest of sentennial so you're never going to be too far if you're living in Centennial now what about schools for the city of Centennial cuz let's face it whether or not you have kids schools do affect things like property value and the quality of the neighborhoods well I'm pleased to share with you that Centennial is actually split between the Littleton School District and the Cherry Creek School District more on the western side more on Littleton the Eastern side more on Cherry Creek School Districts and really these are the two top ranked school districts around the city and in Colorado so we have lots of friends with kids that go to both and they're both extremely good District so it's almost hard to go wrong and I'll also have a link below to greatschools.org which is my trusted source for digging into different individual schools so you can dive deep to whatever suture needs now my favorite topic of course real estate what has real estate been doing in the city of Centennial well currently today the beginning of 2024 our median sales price in Centennial is about 650,000 now that's down just a little bit from the peak in April of 2022 which is very much the same for most places around this country which was about 675 so down just a little bit from the Hypermarket we had just a couple coup years ago but holding pretty good and we might break all-time highs this year in 2024 now when we look back in time to the prices in Centennial paints a similar picture to what we see in most of the Denver metro area and in 2014 we were in the low 300 so we' more than doubled in the last decade in value so now how does the city of Centennial Stack Up pricing wise compared to other cities around the Denver metro area well once again Centennial we're sitting at about 648,000 for the median close price in Denver we're sitting at 600,000 in Highlands Ranch we're at 68,000 in Aurora we're at 487 th000 in Parker we're at 66200 and in Arvada we're at 645,000 so you can really see we're just kind of on par with the rest of the surrounding Denver Metro areas for the medium price [Music]

Living in Greenwood Village, CO

Living in Centennial, CO

[148:16] now by the time you see this it's very likely that these houses will no longer be on the market because average days on Market is about 2 weeks right now but I will have a link in the description below for a preferred list of homes in sentennial Colorado just click on it it'll take you to all the active listings today and so now is the perfect time to talk about affordability in Centennial Colorado well taking the median price of about 650,000 if you were to get a mortgage on a property putting 20% down at a current 7% interest rate now this is where it gets interesting because depending on where your from our property taxes are very very likely to be way less than where you live because Colorado is the third cheapest state in the country for property taxes so on average you can assume about half of a percent of your property's value to be property taxes so after calculating in property taxes with homeowners insurance of about $2,400 a year you're looking at just under $4,000 a month for your current mortgage payment so then with that being said where does that leave us for our overall cost of living in Centennial well looking over here we can see that overall we are about 24% more than the typical cost of living in the country primarily because of housing right that's that's the same story for most of Colorado these days but on another note we are much less than utilities groceries are below average and transportation is just at about the median price across the country do you love the California Vibe well well Highlands Ranch has you covered but it's also surrounded by some of the best hiking around the Denver metro area as the Denver metro area has expanded Highlands Ranch borders the southern side of the Denver metro area and they've made it a really good point to block off a lot of Open Spaces to give way for a ton of trails so again if mountain biking hiking is your priority and you want a newer built home check out Highlands Ranch Highlands Ranch is one of the most searched for cities around the Denver metro area that people are considering moving to so in this video today we're going to take a deep dive through everything that you want to know about Highlands Ranch so if you've been thinking about moving here or you want to relocate around the Denver area this video is for you and during this video it's going to give us a chance to really dig into what the lifestyle is actually like in Highlands Ranch it's affordability and of course it's real estate and then we're going to compare Highlands Ranch to the rest of the Denver metro area to really see how it Stacks up so first off the appeal to Highlands Ranch right this really wasn't developed as a city until I believe about the 80s or so and so this community here which has been growing rapidly as it's on the southernmost edge of Denver so you have land that you can continue to build South right it was all developed in the '90s or so so most of the houses are pretty darn new and this community is going to give you the feeling that you would expect in most newer built communities except it is large right it is a city unto itself and all the shopping centers are new so if you want that little quaint downtown feeling like maybe Arvada offers or Littleton or perker you're not really going to find it in Highlands Ranch now if you want a newer home 4,000 plus Square ft there's a lot of options in Highlands Ranch if your lifestyle is golfing if you work in the Denver Tech Center you know this is a place that attracts a lot of people from out of state considering this part of the Denver metro of course it is a part of the Denver metro but it really kind of sits outside of that 470 Loop so you really feel like you're in your own pocket I wouldn't say it feels like you are living like you would in the rest of Denver that Aurora feels like or Arvada feels like um or north of there North Glennon Thorton like it does feel like its own pocket of different style houses the streets are different they're all kind of curvy it's not built in this grid pattern that most of Denver of course is going to be built in so if you're looking to move here or you already live here and your priorities are things like newer house larger square footage close to hiking gosh right just south of Highlands Ranch got you covered if you want to be close to Chatfield Reservoir just to your West got you covered if you want to be close to an interstate 470 that works around it they got you covered so if those are on the upper level of what you're looking for in a home like Highlands Ranch has got you covered so starting off with where is Highlands Ranch and how do you get around well Highlands Ranch is located on the southern part of the Denver metro area and just north of it you have the highway 470 that's going to Loop all the way around the city so ease of access is great now remember going east on 470 towards I25 I25 is the cut off before it turns into the E470 which is the toll road which will get you all the way around up to DIA though and then you can see the 470 Loop goes over to the west and goes north to Boulder but then you can see the 470 loop as you go west Goes West towards golden and I70 so if you're looking up to head to the High Country that's one way to access it but you can also access it from 285 which is more in the Ken Carl area to go kind of South towards fair play now if you're looking to go hiking and you want to get over to the Foothills you're looking at about a 23-minute drive to get over to Deer Creek Canyon Trail and to get over to Chatfield State Park which is a huge Reservoir with tons of paddle boarding and fishing uh that's just going to take you about 15 minutes even with traffic and if you got to commute into DTC you're looking at about a 20-minute drive not that big of a deal and then to get to downtown Denver you're looking at about a 37-minute drive up 85 which is another throughway to kind of get you to the western part of the suburbs and downtown Den and if you're looking to catch a flight out of DIA you're looking at about 42 minutes on the E470 Loop however be warned it's going to cost you 8 to 12 bucks in tolls to get there and then if you want to take the 225 route you're looking at about 10 to 15 minutes more than that to get through the city and then of course if you're looking to go skiing from Highlands Ranch it's going to be about the same from just about anywhere in the Denver metro area and you're looking about an hour and 45 minutes without much traffic remember I know I say this all the time but on Saturdays and Sundays you got to get your butt up early it's probably going to take you about 2 and 1 half to 3 hours depending on what time you leave after about 6:00 a.m. in the morning expect about 3 hours to get to most of the ski resorts but on average if you're looking for the general commute time that people make in Highlands Ranch it's about 25 1/2 minute to get to and from work and now this is where I love heading over to niche.com which has a report card about all the different cities that you could possibly want to know and I will actually have link below so you can kind of check it out check out different areas things like schools to see what really works for you but let's run over this report card it actually doesn't disappoint so Highlands Ranch overall gets an A+ rating not many of the cities around the Denver metro area get this high of a rating usually we're at a or a minus um usually because of crime and safety and they State weather and if you've been watching any of my videos you know my stance on the weather here best weather in the world hands down dry climate Winters are gorgeous summers are beautiful and no one can change my mind otherwise but let's get to the card so a for public schools overall the public schools in Highlands Ranch are very desirable large draw to lots of people there with families and the schools just do extremely well B for housing so if you know the Denver metro area most of our areas get like a c c minus because for the fact that things are just so darn expensive around the Denver area on the surface but remember our property taxes are so low so if you're questioning what you can afford I will have a mortgage calculator in the description below now our property taxes are much lower than where you live and I can say that confidently because we're the third cheapest in the country for property taxes so don't cut yourself short if everything's selling in your area for 500,000 you well for the same monthly payment could afford about 700 here in the Denver metro area so don't sell yourself short do the numbers reach out to a professional if you need someone let me know I got you handled A+ good for families tons of parks tons of outdoor activities lots of families live in Highlands Ranch and they place a priority on that A+ for jobs location wise like there's just a ton of jobs around Highlands Ranch it's a growing community so jobs are always being sought after and it's a really healthy job job market C+ for cost of living well here you go it's expensive yeah it is what it is you want to live in the best city in the country you got to pay for it a for outdoor activities tons to do we'll take a look at some more hiking trails here in a few that are right outside your back door in Highlands Ranch and for the first time we don't have a rating on crime and safety so I will preface it as most of the other cities around the Denver metro area have a higher than normal crime rating the reason is for vehicle thefts Denver for whatever reason has large amounts of vehicle thefts crimes of opportunities the further out in the suburbs you get the less it becomes we're very low on violent crimes but for some reason like there's just a lot of car thefts here I'm not exactly sure why lock your doors B+ for nightlife I mean this isn't going to be your nightlife Central Hub you know you're going to go to Denver uh you might go to Littleton you know Highlands Ranch is going to have newer shopping centers with strip malls and you know bars and breweries and stuff like that but if you're looking to party at 1 2 a.m. like Highlands Ranch isn't going to have a ton for you to do B for diversity B for weather should be an a you know my stance on this best weather in the world a plus for health and fitness pretty standard across the Denver metro area we one of the healthiest cities in the world and then B+ for commute but you also don't have to take my word for it and how great of a city Highlands Ranch is all you have to do is check out the reviews on on niche.com to see what people who live in Highlands Ranch are saying about Highlands Ranch so what about parks around the Highlands Ranch area if you're just looking to get away for a few minutes well Highlands Ranch has about 26 Parks four of which are also dog parks as you know everybody owns a dog here I mean it's more than 50% of the population quite literally so dog parks are a necessity and when you look around this map what you're going to see is that they're really well spaced out all the different Parks why because it was a newer built City so they were able to plan for people's current needs versus trying to smack a park somewhere just because you have to now something that that map doesn't show us just south of Highlands Ranch if you are a mountain biker a hiker a trail Runner you're going to want to check out Highlands points trail system it is enormous miles and miles and miles of trails that connect actually to several of the neighborhoods on the southern end of Highlands Ranch and you could come here quite literally every single weekend take a different route and never have to double back on yourself the system is that big and protected it is absolutely amazing so now how about the schools in Highlands ran well as we said earlier they are rated really high and let's be fair whether you buy here or whether you're going to rent the school system does affect the quality of life now if we head over back to niche.com we can see that the overall rating for Douglas County School District is an a minus and to break down the individual pieces on their school district according to niche.com they get an A minus for academics B+ for teachers a minus for clubs and activities a for sports B for resources B minus for diversity a minus for college prep B for admin and B+ for food overall it's just a great school district and the student to teacher ratio is about 18 to1 so now how about their real estate that's what you all really want to know well let's take a highlevel overview of where Highlands Ranch was and where we are today so we can see here that 10 years ago as of 2014 the median sales price in Highlands Ranch was $330,000 now fast forward to today in 2024 the median sales price is 660,000 it has doubled which is pretty common for the whole Denver metro area I'd say it's probably on par with everybody else so now how does that median price a 660 actually stack up to the rest of the Denver metro area is it way higher is it out of whack is it way lower well let's go ahead and take a look so comparing it to Denver today is at 599,000 is the median sales price going over to Parker Colorado they're at about 67200 for their median sales price Arvada is about 642 th000 for their median sales price Aurora sitting at 489,000 for their median sales price and then heading up to Boulder at an astounding 970,000 for their median sales price so you can see we're kind of in line with other attractive areas in the Denver area not as inexpensive as Aurora would be but definitely not as expensive as what you're going to find in Boulder

Living in Highlands Ranch, CO

[162:11] [Music] so those homes that you saw very likely aren't going to be on the market anymore by the time you're seeing this video I mean the average days on market right now is just about 2 weeks so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a link in the description below so you can get your preferred list of Highlands Ranch homes and you can get those sent to you every day if you want and now there's a perfect chance to go over what your monthly mortgage payment would be if you were to buy the median priced house in Highlands Ranch so if we take a look here we can see if you were to buy a home at 660,000 putting 5% down which is generally the minimum down payment unless you're going FHA which is 32% down calculating in a 7% interest rate with property taxes remember number folks this is where we are cheap in comparison it's about half of a percent of the property's value per year in property taxes roughly it's a little bit less than that some special taxing districts that are brand new communities are going to be a little bit more but on average that's a good rule of thumb half of a percent of the price of the house per year and then we calculated in homeowners insurance we can see here that you've got a monthly payment of just about $4,600 a month and now if we calculate in a 20% down pay to avoid PMI so that way it makes it even cheaper you're looking at just under $4,000 a month for the medium priced home in Highlands Ranch so now let's tie that into the overall affordability of Highlands Ranch and what that looks like well we can look at this report card here that overall with the national average being metric at 100 we can see we score a 143 so we are definitely quite a bit higher than your National averages for the cost of living and then to break it down though groceries are just about on average with the rest of the country healthc care is quite a bit lower than the rest of the country we scored an 83 out of 100 where the rest of the country would be at so we live healthy housing 227 so more than double the national average for housing expenses not super surprised there utilities were actually under the national average by about 94% so we're paying 6% less than most places of the Country Transportation 115 so a little bit more I mean our public transportation system here isn't great um so vehicles on average and insurance there our costs are going to be a little bit higher and then just miscellaneous don't know what that really entails but we rank 156 so quite a bit more than the rest of the country now heading just to the West of Denver we've got Lakewood and this spans everything from entrylevel homes all the way up to multi-million dollar properties but you're close to the city but you're on the western side so it makes access to things like skiing just that much stronger Lakewood Colorado it's a city you don't hear much about in the Denver metro area but it's our featured city of the day and we're going to go through and look at everything there is to know about Lakewood Colorado it's affordability its lifestyle and of course it's real estate and we're also going to dig into their schools a bit so you know what to expect if you're planning on moving here and we're also going to look at its general cost of living and then we're going to take Lakewood and we're going to compare it to the rest of the city surrounding the Denver metro area to really see how it Stacks up so if you've been thinking of moving to Lakewood Colorado or just want to know more about it then this video is for you so Lakewood overall like I said isn't something you hear much about I can't say many people just go out there and say Hey I want to move to Lakewood Colorado unlike you know Littleton has a huge draw Parker has a huge draw Boulder like those are the places you think of when you think of the Denver metro area not so much lwood now Lakewood does have kind of a smaller footprint doesn't have a huge population but location wise and kind of AAL to Lakewood is actually really awesome I mean where it's located you're kind of in between Denver and golden but you don't have the golden prices you don't have the Denver prices and you have two of the more popular areas that I love looking at homes and you get a lot of mid-century moderns in Lakewood and you have Applewood Estates and you have Green Mountain so access to things like hiking skiing is going to be better than most other areas around the Denver metro area and it's really something you should kind of look at if you're thinking of moving here so let's start with where Lakewood is located well as I said it's located to the west side of Denver but located to the east of golden so location that's kind of smack dab on the western side of the Denver metro area making access to the Foothills really easy making access to downtown Denver really easy and the highways going around it are incredible like you have this Junction of 470 which is the loop that'll feed you over to Southern Denver into Highlands Ranch and all the way over to Parker and I25 down there then you have Route Six which is kind of right in the center and that'll feed you to the west to Golden as well as directly east over to downtown Denver then you have I70 which kind of goes north a little bit and then goes up through Arvada also feeds you directly in to downtown Denver so location wise it's pretty easy to get around now North and South you have a few bigger throughways like Wadsworth and Sheridan that will get you going up and down in throughout the city if you're heading up to Arvada or you know thoron or anything like that uh Westminster you know you do have some big routes or if you're heading directly south into Littleton really easy to get around if you're in the middle of Lakewood now if you're looking to head up to the High Country to head out skiing CU let's be real I mean that's part of the reason why you live in Denver is access to the mountains well a basin without traffic will take you a little bit over an hour but remember traffic can get pretty extreme on the weekend so Saturday you're probably looking at about a 2-hour drive but it's still one of the closer locations in Denver to get to the ski resorts and if you're looking to hit some big back balls and heading over to Vil it's going to take you about an hour and a half again without traffic more like 2 and 1/2 with solid traffic on the weekends and if you're looking for some worldclass climbing all you got to do is head around the corner to Golden and depending on what parts of Lakewood that you live in it's only about 7 minutes away up to about 30 minutes max with traffic for the golden Cliff's climbing area which is just incredible climbing with remarkable views and if mountain biking is your thing and you're feeling confident about yourself head over to Apex Park moderately tough mountain biking even for Colorado and that's going to take you 10 minutes on the quick end depending on where you are in Lakewood up to about 30 minutes maximum to get to some of the best mountain biking in the country and if you're needing to head over to DIA to catch a flight your average times are going to be about 45 to 60 Minutes even during traffic to get to DIA so I share how long it's going to take to get to all these amazing places because that's what we do right here in Denver we live this lifestyle it's very likely a you're going to need to catch a flight like most people do at some point or you're going to want to go hiking mountain biking climbing skiing that's what we do here in Denver but to give you what the average commute time is like in Lakewood it's about 27 minutes on average and hey everyone my name is Alex s I've been a local Denver real estate agent since 2010 helping homeowners buyers get their questions answered about the Denver metro area so if you have any questions of course feel free reach out give me a call shoot me a text message anytime I've got you covered now in general because of the big draw to Denver over the last 20 30 years lakewood's population is no difference and we've seen a steady increase since 1990 that we've grown about 30,000 people so about 25% over the last 25 to 35 years or so and now to get rid of my biases over well how great the Denver metro area is in general I like to head over to niche.com and go over the report card which kind of ranks everything that you really want to know about Lakewood and I'm also going to have a link in the description below so you can check this out so you can take a deeper dive into demographics things like that so you can see if lakewood's the right place for you but let's check out this report card and we start with the overall rating Lakewood gets a B+ for its overall Niche grade now that's not uncommon you know a minus B+ for most of the cities around Denver our quality of life is extremely high and we're really healthy job market is really strong income is really strong housing is really strong like we're just an incredible City overall and Lakewood is a part of that but let's break down each one of these Cate ories just a little bit for you so starting off with Public Schools we get rated as a B+ overall for the public schools and we'll look a little bit more in the numbers here in a few then for housing who we get to see it's expensive in Denver metro overall in comparison but there's a lot of factors that work in our benefits that aren't nearly as high as most other cities which I don't think this number accounts for IE property taxes I hammer in on this one but dang it it is such an important thing we are the Third cheapest for property taxes in the country so where most other cities you know you've got anywhere between $8 to $15,000 in yearly property taxes for houses that are around $500,000 or like $2,500 a year for that $500,000 home so you got to take that into account and I don't believe that this number does B+ good for families overall lots of parks lots of good stuff to do very friendly very familyfriendly communities in Lakewood C+ for jobs a little bit surprised on that now Lakewood isn't a huge footprint as far as a Denver Metro is concerned uh but the job market I'd say all around the Denver metro is extremely strong but maybe in Lakewood there's just not as much activity right there but it's real easy to get to places like Arvada or golden or Denver um where there may be more jobs C minus for cost of living it's expensive here in Denver overall quality of life comes with more money it's as simple as that folks a for outdoor activities no surprise uh we're surrounded by some of the most worldclass everything that you can want to do from whitewater rafting mountain biking climbing hiking skydiving you name it Paras sailing we got it C for crime and safety this one typically comes up because of all the car thefts here in Denver for whatever reason we rank really high on car thefts but we rank really low on violent crimes so once we get that nipped we're going to be doing a lot better in the crime and safety department but we rank as a c overall according to niche.com a for nightlife you know with access to 6 and I70 um there's a lot of shopping centers there's a lot of nightlife that happens around the Lakewood area uh not somewhere I would kind of Peg as hey let's go out to downtown Lakewood or anything um but there are several communities there that do have kind of newly built up places like belmare is a great example we go there all the time during the holidays it's a great Shopping Center so just ranks high on Niche for its nightlife a minus for diversity it's actually more Diversified in Lakewood than a lot of the other cities around the Denver metro area B+ for weather they did this one wrong it's supposed to be A+ because we have the best weather in the world we have all four seasons hot isn't hot cold isn't cold it's typically sweater weather here in the winter time it's just the most beautiful weather you could possibly have uh I'm a little biased there I'll admit that but yeah they just they just did this wrong I'll I'll write them an email here to fix it a for health and fitness similar to everywhere else in the Denver metro area very healthy very fit place and then B+ for commute and now you don't have to take my word for it you can actually head over to niche.com and they have real reviews from a real people who have lived here in Lakewood and you can see they rate pretty darn strong so feel free to check that out so what about parks and open space if you want to get away but you want to stay within the city limits lakewood's got you covered they have over 114 different parks and 7,400 Acres of open space with the Highlight being Bear Creek Lake Park and just Bear Creek Lake Park alone has dozens of miles of hiking trails biking views galores the lake is there fishing paddle boarding kayaking you name it lakewood's got you covered so now how about the schools in Lakewood Colorado Cuz let's be real whether or not you rent or own schools do play an impact on your community we pay property taxes which go into the school system the better the schools are the better the communities tend to be but overall the student to teacher ratio in Lakewood and in Jefferson County is about 165 to one which is a tiny bit above the state average and overall in Jefferson County which does have several cities in it like Arvada and further down south you're going to have about 75,000 students in total and I would say overall there's schools are rated really well the theme you're going to see is Elementary and high schools rated as an eight or a 9 or even a 10 on greatschools and niche.com in which I will have a link in the description below so you can dig into each School more in detail as you wish but you're also going to see the trend that middle schools in general only rate like a five six maybe seven on the highend but I would say that's pretty much the theme for the entire Denver metro area all right so on to the fun stuff now real estate what is Lakewoods real estate like well let's take a 10,000 ft view here and what we can see in 2024 the median sales price in Lakewood Colorado for everything on the MLS whether it's single family condo and everything in between is 583 th000 now looking back 10 years we can see that the median sales price is 237,000 so well more than doubled its value in the last decade it's not uncommon for most most of the Denver metro to be like that but Lakewood is actually on the higher end they've had more appreciation here in Lakewood than we have in most other parts of the city now knowing the median sales price is all well and good but what can you buy today in Lakewood for that median sales price and then let's look at some of the stuff on the higher end and what that's going to get you and then let's take a look at some more inexpensive stuff just to give you a good feel for what Lakewood real estate has to offer [Music]

Living in Lakewood, CO

[177:39] [Music] so now those homes that you just looked at likely aren't going to be on the market by the time you're seeing this video so what I'm going to do is I'm going to have a link in the description below for your preferred list of Lakewood homes you can click on that and actually get all the listings in Lakewood deliver to your inbox every day if you'd like now let's take a look at how Lakewood compares to the rest of the Denver metro areas far as the median price goes so once again we can see in Lakewood 58300 is the current median sales price if we head over to Golden we can see that it's $927,000 for the median sales price going down to Highlands Ranch we're looking at about 660,000 for the median sales price over to Aurora 489,000 is its current median sales price and Denver today coming in at 595,000 so you can really see that it's just kind of middle of the boat as far as the median price goes around the Denver metro area but you can get really expensive properties and you can get a lot more affordable condo town home sort of situation so kind of has everything and everything in between for everybody so now is a great time to talk about the cost of living and affordability in Lakewood Colorado so if we start with the affordability side if you were to buy a home at the median sales price in Lakewood today of 583 th000 and you were putting down 20% at a 7% interest rate for a 30-year mortgage remember our property taxes are cheap so putting in half of a percent of the property's value as far as property taxes concerned figuring in about $2,400 a year for homeowners insurance brings you to a monthly payment of just at about $3,500 a month now if you were to use let's say the minimum down payment of 5% that would make your monthly payment just a little bit over $400 a month and now what about the big picture view of what cost of living is like in the different categories so we can see here overall we're rated at 132 which the national average is 100 so we're about 30% % higher than the national average for cost of living a lot of that I'm sure falls under housing the rest of Colorado is ranked at 120 so still above the average for all of Colorado so looking at the categories we can see groceries are just in line we're at about 101 health is actually lower 83% so we're actually cheaper for health care than most other places are housing of course 186 so we're quite a bit more expensive than the national average for housing goes that just comes with being in the Denver metro area and Colorado in general utilities under the national average were 95% which is great then Transportation a little bit above the national average at 117 and miscellaneous which is just everything else you need in life is 154 so still a little bit higher there and now I am here to answer all of your questions so again here's my direct cell phone number if you got questions text me call me uh anytime I got you covered and hop into the northwest of Lakewood we have our V which again butts up against the Foothills so if access to the mountains hiking mountain biking is your thing our V is worth checking into welcome back ladies and gentlemen today we're talking Arvada Arvada is a great little city in the Denver metro area so if you've been thinking about moving here and you're wondering about Arvada or you're thinking of relocating around the Denver metro area and just want to know a bit more about what makes Arvada such a great City you're going to want to tune into this video and we're going to go over everything that you want to know lifestyle affordability of course it's real estate it's schools and we're also going to compare our Veta to the rest of the Denver metro cities kind of see how it Stacks up if you're thinking about actually moving here so what's the appeal and why do people want to live in ourv and what makes it such a cool little town well it's on the western side of the Denver metro area so it automatically puts you close to the footh hills and Arvada has one of likely three downtown areas that I would put on kind of my hallmarking list right I joke about it all the time but kind of Hallmark at Christmas um it just has place in my heart and Arvada fits that bill its downtown area is really cute uh it's similar to Littleton not as big uh similar to Parkers as well and those are really your suburbs around town that give you your own little downtown feeling in addition to all the rest of the shopping and restaurants and stuff like that that you would have scattered throughout the rest of the town but that's really one of the big appeals to it and then proximity to the Foothills right just to your West um few-minute drive and even the borders of Arvada do butt up against the Foothills there you've got more horse properties more bigger properties with some acreage on the Western and the northern part real easy to get around up to Boulder down to Golden skiing like that's what the appeal to our Vada is so starting off with where is our Vada location commute times things like that well as I said it's located on the western part of the Denver metro area just north of I70 south of 36 and it butts up against the Foothills so when you look at getting around Arvada depending on how far you've got to go going north to south you have Wadsworth which is 121 that's going to get you most of your North and South routes depending on if you've got to go down to Lakewood um or even down to Route Six which will get you over into Denver now just to the South you have I I70 okay so i7 is going to be your main Highway going east to west so if you're going to end up going up to the Foothills or the mountains you're probably going to hop on I70 likewise to go to Denver I70 is your route and then you have i76 that kind of branches off of I70 just south of Arvada and that'll get you more into the northeastern BBS um along with Dia so commute time so if you were in the heart of Arvada and you had to get to downtown Denver you're looking at about a 22-minute drive now if you got to head over to DIA to catch a flight out of town you got a few different options here you got about 35 minutes with most traffic kind of heading to the northern part of Dia or you can head through I70 i76 uh and you're looking at about a 40 to 45 minute drive even with traffic and if you work down in the tech center you're going to be looking at about a 35 to 45 minute drive with traffic on most days and then if you're looking to head out skiing heading over to bread Ridge hour and a half to 2 hours you hear me talk about this on every single video depends on what time you leave on the weekends weekdays I hour and a half hour 45 you're totally solid on the weekends if you leave after about 6:00 a.m. you're probably looking at 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours or you can head up to Alora which is just west of Boulder in Netherland and you're going to be looking about an hour drive there so Elora is becoming more and more popular as the I70 Corridor is getting more and more slammed with traffic on the weekends so might be a good choice for you to head up to Alora but the overall average commute time if you live in Arvada is 27 minutes now arvada's population has been driving a lot of the increase in prices in ourv it's it's no surprise that real estate all across the country has doubled or even tripled in some places over the last 10 years 15 years or so and our Vada is no difference however it's a little bit more hyper than some of the other locations around Denver than say Aurora or even Littleton littleton's had some great growth but over the last 10 years our vas population has increased by about 20% going from about 100 ,000 in 2014 up to over 120,000 here in 2024 so with that you have increasing prices so we can see here the median sales price in 2024 is about 640 now it's not uncommon that most of the suburbs around Denver have appreciated by more than 100% in the last decade back in 2014 our V was sitting at about 270 so we are well more than 100% 100% would be 540,000 words 640 so we're almost at 150 170% increase over the last decade which is quite a bit more than the other suburbs around the Denver area you know it's been built out for a while you have a lot of really cool homes in Arvada you have some mid century moderns you've got some newer builds that are 4,000 plus Square ft and then to the western side you have you know houses with Incredible views of the Foothills some horse properties like you have this great mix of real estate and we can talk about numbers all day long but we're going to look at what you can actually buy in Arvada today for that median price but we're also going to show you some more inexpensive stuff you know Town Homes condos and then we're going to show you some really nice multi-million dollar homes here in a second let's take a look at what you can actually buy today in our V [Music] hey

Living in Arvada, CO

[187:23] [Music] he [Music] I told you Arvada has some incredible properties there now what you just saw by the time you see this video is probably not going to be on the market anymore I mean the average time on Market in Denver the whole metro area is about 2 weeks right now so what I'll have is a link in the description below that you can click on that you can look at your preferred list of our V homes you can get those delivered to your inbox every day if you want so now what about everything else in our V it's lifestyle there schools well this is where I love to head over to niche.com and I'll even have a link in the description below for you that you can check this out and dig into it much further but we're going to check out its entire report card here and overall as we can see our Vada on niche.com gets a r of an A minus which is not uncommon for the Denver suburbs we're at an incredible quality of life you know yes we are a bit more expensive but proximity to everything between hiking golfing skiing mountain biking like it's just second to none so we all rate pretty darn High going down this list B+ for public schools C+ for housing because we're just more expensive um so we get dinged for that but if you want the great quality of life yeah you got to pay for it B minus for jobs little surprised at that the Denver Market is pretty hot for theob job market right now especially on contractors uh we have an extreme shortage of any skilled labor force there so little bit surprised that we got a rating for that c for cost of living we are high on the cost of living side of things a for outdoor activities I mean as far as hiking and biking and all that we'll go over some locations here in a minute but it's literally all right outside your back door C+ for crime and safety well we have a lot of vehicle thefts here in the Denver metro area for whatever reason when I get to the bottom of it I will be the first to let you know why we are very low in violent crimes but for some reason we just have a lot of car thefts a minus for nightlife you know it gets ranked pretty good here with the Downtown Arvada Oldtown Arvada where you do have a number of restaurants and bars that are going to be open late like Arvada is a cool little town to hang out in B+ for diversity B+ for weather which you hear me harp on this we have the best weather in the world here um I'm a firm believer of it I'm from the Midwest originally from Chicago and you know I know hot gets hot 90s is just stifling humidity in the 80% 90% when it's 90° here our humidity might be in the single digits but more realistically it's about 10 to 15% so it's super low so it doesn't feel nearly as hot and same with the cold like 30° here is still just Sweater Weather um the best weather in the world all four seasons here and four remarkable Seasons a minus for health and fitness like we're just an extremely healthy City overall like many of the other cities around the Denver metro area so we rank really good there and then B for commute and now if you want to get rid of my biased opinion of Arvada and how good of a town it is you can just head into the reviews over on niche.com and see what people that are living there are actually saying about the city so what about Parks trails open space well the city of Arvada within its limits manages 4,200 Acres of parks and open space more than 90 parks and 96% of residents are within a 10-minute walk of one of their Parks so where are some of our favorite spots to go to in ourv well starting on the western side of town you have Long Lake Regional Park this place is huge and if you love flying kites man right against the Foothills these parks are phenomenal there's usually a low light Breeze constantly blowing so it's almost near impossible to not get a kite off the ground this place is huge and then of course there's Ralston Valley Park which which is kind of in the middle of town there but it connects to miles of trails both east and west and I got to say the Denver metro area is really good about making these elongated trails that go for 20 30 mil throughout the Denver metro area and access to part of it is right here in Ralston park where you can go west almost all the way to the Foothills and East pretty much all the way to Denver and then if the weather's crappy outside or you got a snowy day you can always head over to the Apex Rec Center this place is awesome we go there all the way from South Denver uh on rainy or snowy days if we want to hit a water park it's got a full indoor water park with a couple of slides a small Lazy River like such a great facility to just go hang out they've got a Climbing Gym in there full gym like this place is a real legit recck Center and if you're looking to head out hiking you can just head directly west and depending on where you're at in narvada it might only take you a few minutes to get to the White Park Ranch east trail head which is a phenomenal place right in the Foothills there super easy to get to so now how about the schools in our Vada well you've got some great options here you're in Jefferson County Jefferson County is a highly regarded School District around the Denver metro area and then you know the elementary schools without getting into the charter schools or private schools or anything like that are rated pretty darn well so here we've got a list of Dennison Three Creeks and Jefferson County open Elementary School all rated a and B+ and B+ just really Goode elementary schools then as far as the middle schools go we have deelyn which is a junior high SL High School rates really really strong and we've got Manning options school as well as Three Creeks Elementary which also feeds into it's a k through eight uh so you get your middle school experience there as well so then as far as high schools go you have deelyn which is rated extremely high and then you have Long View High School not rated nearly as strong those deelyn so now how about the affordability in our Vada well we've already looked at some of the real estate prices right and our median price sitting at 640,000 let's pull out our mortgage calculator and kind of see how that shakes out so taking the standard approach of putting 20% down on 640,000 assuming a 7% mortgage interest rate today now this is where property taxes really help out right we have very low property taxes so about half of a percent of your properties value in property taxes per year so a little bit over three grand for our example here at 640,000 assuming uh insurance at about $2,400 a year with 20% down okay you're looking at about $3,800 a month payment okay now that's with 20% down let's look at the minimum here of 5% down for conventional loan and see what happens so taking all those same numbers and putting 5% down so $32,000 which is a much friendlier down payment that a lot more people can actually afford we're looking at a monthly payment of just about $4,500 a month so it is not a cheap place to live but that's pretty much what you're going to find around the Denver metro area but again there are some more inexpensive Solutions around that 400 to 350 Mark or so if you're willing to be in a condo or a town home most single families you're going to find between that 500 to about 750 range then of course your horse properties and your 4,000 plus sare ft newer Built Homes are all going to be north of a million now what about the overall affordability outside of just housing well heading over here we can see on our card overall we rank at a 132 where the national average is 100 so about 32% more expensive on average to be in our Vada than you are in the rest of the country then groceries We're Just a Touch Above the national average there Health we are down quite a bit in health costs because we are a healthier City in general so our health care costs are just that much lower housing 191 so almost 100% more than the national average not too dissimilar from most of the Denver metro area utilities we are under the national average by at about 95% so a little bit cheaper here Transportation 117 so above the national average and then miscellaneous 155 for everything else that goes into our lives now we're going to take a break and technically head a little further south than Denver Metro all the way down to Castle Pines here I would say if Gulf is your top priority right you don't want to be in the city you don't want to really feel like you're in the Denver metro area which you you kind of are cuz it's pretty close on I25 going Southbound but you have this little pass that you go over so it kind of feels like you're exiting the city Castle Pines is your place they have a different weather pattern here little bit more extreme but some of the best golf courses around the Denver metro area if you've heard about Castle Pines or you've thought about moving there done a Google Search and it came across your radar you're going to want to pay attention of this video CU today we're going to talk about everything you need to know about Castle Pines Colorado now it's probably not a city you may have heard of 20 to 30 years ago and well there's a reason for that because it was just recently Incorporated but this is a phenomenal Community with lots of newer build properties the scenery is incredible and it's one of those places that lots of people strive to live in and it's their goal in life to be there now we're going to be talking about everything you want to know about Castle Pines its lifestyle what it's like to actually live there it's commute time and of course it's real estate and then we're going to compare Castle Pines to the rest of the Denver metro area now I know a few years ago we really wouldn't have considered Castle Pines as a part of the Denver metro area because of where it's located but as we expand it's really not that far of a shot to get to downtown Denver and a lot of other things because of where it's located so what's the actual appeal to wanting to live in Castle Pines well starting off with just its location and where it's located you've got the ridges these Canyons that all sit around Castle Pines and so it's not uncommon to have a house with Incredible views of the Rockies to the west but yet have Foothills views to the north to the South or even to the East and I would categorize Castle Pines is kind of a luxury Community right it's not somewhere you think of to go to you know head out to the bars at 11: 12:00 at night like it's not that it is a luxury Community lots of new homes being built golf courses that are just Second To None views Galore hiking all over the place so your quality of life is extremely high in Castle Pines now you'll pay for it because the average price is well up there close to about a million dollars right now but there is stuff all throughout the range depending on what you're looking for safety is a huge thing people who live in Castle Pines love Castle Pines you don't have the city center you're not really a part of the Denver metro area so you don't get a lot of that traffic from Denver but yet where it's located like you're just a straight shot South on I25 so there's just so many reasons to want to love Castle Pines I love it myself uh we're down there all the time you're located just north of Castle Rock that's where most of your shopping is going to be and it's just an ideal place to literally spend the rest of your life which is a lot of people's goals to get to Castle Pines so let's start off with where Castle Pines is located and what your commute would be like if you did live here so we can see Castle Pines is located on the south end of the Denver metro area but you're just north of Castle Rock to the South and getting into the downtown metro area really doesn't take long whatsoever so Highlands Ranch is just above you and I25 dissects Castle Pines running north to south so that's going to be your way to pretty much get everywhere is hopping on I25 heading north or heading South into Castle Rock now if you're looking to go hiking I mean Castle Pines just absolutely has you covered just to the West you have Daniels Park huge area just to the north just south The Highlands Ranch you have the East West trail system there mountain biking Galore I mean dozens of miles of trails uh all throughout that system and then just to the north of Castle Pines it's our little secret here it's our favorite dog park in the entire metro area but it doesn't really come up as a dog park it comes up as an open space Glendale open space and it's basically a dog park with about 40 acres it just went under a bunch of Renovations which I actually wish they didn't do uh it used to be just this huge open field on a hill you could have a 100 plus dogs in this place and still not be surrounded by other people we could do a mile Loop walk around that a few times the dogs absolutely loved it and then you have this Trail right on the outside of it that you can take your dogs up as well up to the ridg line with some incredible View and here's our dogs at the top of the ridge on a hot day and that's our Obie dog in the muddy puddle damn it Obie hi buddy don't get her M oh she got a [Music] little hey can you get out cleanly pretty typical if you a retriever you're not really shocked and if you're looking to head over to Chatfield maybe go paddle boarding fishing uh you're looking at about a 23-minute drive just to the northwest of you and if you work in the tech center like a lot of people do you're only looking at a 17-minute drive so because you're right off I25 it's just a straight shot North and there's generally not much traffic for most of that drive and if you need to catch a flight and hop out of di you're looking at about a 40-minute drive if you take the 470 toll road to the western side of the city if you just don't want to sit in traffic that is an option but it is a pricey toll road or you could head up to 225 few minutes longer but absolutely no tools and if you're going to head up skiing well if you live in Castle Pines it's actually not so bad I thought it would be a little bit worse than this but you're looking at about an hour and a half drive to get to let's say A Basin and about 2 hours to get all the way over to Vil now that's going to be without traffic remember I hammer in on this every single video but depending on when you leave on Saturday or Sunday morning it could take you 2 and 1 half to 3 hours to get there if you leave past about 6:00 a.m. and if you want to know what the average commute time is if you live in Castle Pines it's just under 25 minutes now it's time for niche.com report card about Castle Pines cuz we can all have our biases for the areas that we love and I love Castle Pines and Castle Rock in general we've actually been kind of toying with the idea of moving down into that part of the Denver area but we can head over to niche.com check out an unbiased report card of what Castle Pines has to offer and what its lifestyle is really like so pulling up the entire report card it's no surprise overall rating of an A plus you know most of the Denver metro areas rated extremely high yes we are a bit more expensive than a lot of other cities but there's reasons why people will pay to be here because our quality of life is quite literally through the roof so Public Schools we get an A for public schools we're just rated extremely well they're in Douglas County um and there's just a lot of good things that Douglas County has going for it with the expansion of the southern part of the Denver metro area as well as Parker it all falls within Douglas County and so there's a lot of new schools a lot of great teachers have been drawn to Douglas County and so they're just doing a lot of really good things B+ for housing you know it is more expensive I I'm surprised that it rated as high as it did honestly because usually our affordability kind of knocks us down to around a c or so A+ good for families great communities uh HOAs keeps everything really clean and nice and well-kept tons of parks tons of hiking tons of stuff to do for families A+ for jobs that's an interesting one I'm not exactly sure how they rate this I mean overall Colorado has an incredible job market right now I mean starting minimum wage at most even fast food places is between 20 to $25 an hour contractors if you know anything in any trade I mean starting at 25 plus an hour is almost the norm C+ for cost of living they hit us there it is going to be on the expensive side a for outdoor activities I mean you cannot be surrounded with a better outdoor activity lifestyle from trail running mountain biking hiking climbing I mean everything you could possibly want golfing like this has it covered in Castle Pines for you crime and safety we don't have a rating this one's interesting in I'm going to assume if we did have a rating it'd be on the B side or so uh I'm going to guess that just like the rest of the Denver metro area vehicle thefts are on the higher side um still a strange phenomenon I'm not exactly sure why uh but we do have higher than average vehicle thefts but violent crimes were really low on in Colorado C+ for nightlife I mean you're not going to have many bars and restaurants that are open past 11 12:00 at night here B minus for diversity we we've got a no rating for weather which means it's better than an A+ you guys hear me talk about this all the time I love the seasons here in Colorado we have all four of them but yet they're extremely mild if you're coming from the East Coast if you're coming from the Northwest like you know what humidity feels like you know what heat feels like but man you've never had anything like a 90° day in Castle Pines Where You're outside enjoying love and life and then you walk into the shade and it literally drops by 15 de like our weather here is just remarkable we have nearly 300 sunny days a year and even our gr days we just we just cherish them because we don't get a ton of them and yeah I could talk all day about the weather here but we have the best weather in the world a for health and fitness super healthy cities Super Active Lifestyles overall and then B+ for commute I mean if I lived in Castle Pines my Hubs would probably be Castle Rock and the southern part of Denver for all of my shopping which is just an easy run up and down I25 like I that would be that would be your bubble I'd say but you don't have to take my word for it on how great of a place Castle Pines is on niche.com which I will have a link below in this description that you can go to niche.com check out castlepines all the nitty-gritty details that you want to know but you can actually go and see reviews from people who have lived there as to what their real experience is in Castle Pines now we've already talked a little bit about hiking that's kind of around Castle Pines area but if you're just looking for a park to get to Castle Pines isn't a huge footprint so there's a decent smattering of parks that are just around the Castle Pine areas all newer Parks all going to be new facilities now normally I don't cover golf courses here but if you want to live in Castle Pines there's a good chance that you'll probably play some golf there are some epic golf courses in Castle Pine starting on the Northwestern side we've got The Ridge at Castle Pines North each round here is about 115 bucks per person so for as great of a course as it is it's really not that bad I mean look at some of these pictures here you've got ridges and Peaks all over the place you're hitting golf balls down 20 30 yards below you off of ridges around corners like this is straight out of Tiger Woods Golf guys like this is just a remarkable place to play then of course you have the country club at Castle Pines now the good news is you don't have to be a resident there to be a part of the country club they do accept accept memberships even if you don't have residency there but the memberships do range anywhere from $25 to $50,000 a year with monthly fees as well now you can't just go golf there unless you're a member you have to be a guest everything is charged through your guests membership but this is a world-renowned Jack Nicholas inspired golf course this place is just it's remarkable it's what you expect from a country club their restaurant is remarkable the views are just I mean I don't know what else to say about this place but it is spectacular and if one Jack Nicholas Golf Course wasn't enough for you we have two now we have the Castle Pines Golf Club just to the south of the country club so you've got some amazing choices here again you do have to be a member here so it's just not open to the public the ridge is your best friend if you're you know just a regular golfer like myself um which is gorgeous even without having to be a member so you've got your pick here of the litter of some of the best golf courses in the world with some of the best scenery at least the best scenery in the world um and that's just talking about the stuff that's directly in Castle Pines not to include or just to the North or just to the West like you're surrounded by some epic golfing if that's your thing so what about the schools in Castle Pines well since Castle Pines is not a huge City you don't have a whole lot of choices for the public schools now you do have a couple of charter schools and then since a lot of the Denver metro area People Choice in it's not uncommon to see people being driven to let's say Parker or up into the Highlands Ranch area if you want a larger School experience but we can go back to niche.com and check out the public schools in Castle Pines are really highly rated so starting with their Elementary School you have Timber Trail Elementary School rated in a minus then the Middle School which normally the middle schools struggle we usually get grades of B's to C's around the Denver metro area it can be a challenging age but even here in Castle Pines we're looking at the Rocky Heights Middle School again rating of an A minus and then their high school is great as well now in the Denver metro area what you'll notice is that elementary schools high schools are typically rated fairly High middle schools is where we struggle but in Castle Pines The Rock Canyon High School rated number 655 best high school in the United States according to niche.com rates up there really well so here in Castle Pines like schools they've just got you covered they've done amazing things they're all new facilities yeah it's just an overall great place to send your kids to school so now how about the real estate in Castle Pine what's it doing what does it look like well you got a lot of wild swings in Castle Pines the reason for that is because it's not a big city so the averages can l literally change by 10 to 20% month after month after month depending on what's actually closed you might have a few months where there's only been a couple handfuls of properties to sell at $1 and half to $2 million well that's going to skew the results and likewise you might have other months where a bunch is sold in the 600s or 700s so either way when you look at these numbers remember averages are just averages but we can see here in 2024 the median sales price for Castle Pines is 800,000 but but just a couple months ago it was at 1.15 so huge swings in there that doesn't mean property values have tanked by 20 to 30% that just means that whatever is sold has just been within that range and we can go back 10 years ago when Castle Pines was in the 400s and it's virtually doubled but that is not uncommon for the entire Denver metro area now the types of homes you're going to find in Castle Pines are all going to be virtually newb built in the last 10 to 20 years okay cuz that's when the place was literally Incorporated so most of its construction has happened within the last 20 years or so most of the communities are all going to be in an HOA so if you're looking for a funky mid-century modern probably not going to find it here if you're looking for an old Victorian you're not going to find it here if you're looking for a 5,000 ft 5-bedroom three bath home with views we got you covered but let's compare Castle Pines how does that fall in pricing wise compared to other areas around the Denver metro so again starting with Castle Pines we're at 800,000 today for our median price if we head down to Castle Rock we're looking at our median price of 667,000 if we head over to Parker again we've got 677000 as our median sales price Denver today our median sales price is 610,000 heading west over to Golden today $861,000 for the median sales price and then heading all the way up to Boulder we're just over a million doar for our median sales price in boulders so what you're going to find is that Castle Pines falls on the upper end of price ranges around the Denver metro area Aurora I think sits in the low mid 400s right now uh upper 400s you know that's the lower extreme of things all the way up to Greenwood Village that's likely you know well north of a million dollar for the median sales price today now median sales pric is all well and good what in the world can you actually buy today in Castle Pines and we're going to look at the full range we're going to look at what you can buy around that median sales price but then we're going to look on the lower more affordable ends for Castle Pines and then we're going to look at some beautiful luxury homes to see what's available today in Castle Pines

Living in Castle Pines, CO

[214:03] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] so now most of those homes that you just saw are likely not going to be on the market I mean the average days on market right now is just a few weeks so what I'm going to have is a link below in the description that you can look at all the preferred Castle Pines homes that you want to see and you can also have those delivered to your inbox every single day if you want so now what about the cost of living in Castle Pines well as far as getting a loan on a property you can borrow up to about 800,000 in Douglas County right now I believe so anything north of that you're going to be putting down in cash so you're going to be between a 4 to $6,000 monthly payment on average for your monthly mortgage not including HOA fees so you're definitely on the upper end before you get into jumbo loan territory now outside of that the regular cost of living for Castle Pine we've got a breakdown here and yes we're going to be on the higher end we can see overall we score a 143 on this report card the national average is 100 they kind of balance everything out now compared to the rest of the Colorado we're at 143 versus 120 so still above the state average then breaking down groceries we're just a little bit above the national average Health we're quite a bit down 17% lower than your national average for health care costs we're a very healthy place to live in general so we have less Health Care associated with it housing woo boy housing 245 2.5 times above the national average for housing it is what it is folks you want to live in Castle Pines you got to pay to be there to be in one of the better places in the country are youtil ities though are 5% lower so that helps make up for it right Transportation we're a little bit above the national average we don't have much public transportation here so everyone's driving and then everything else compiled up we're at a 157 so quite a bit above the national average now if you happen to get a job in the tech space and that's why you're moving here DTC is probably top of your list here now it's a little small Hub so you're also going to want to look at Greenwood Village and Centennial and Denver because it's kind of right in the mix DTC is actually really small but it's a huge Tech Hub so likely you've heard of it the Denver Tech Center you've probably heard of it you've probably looked up where it is what companies make it up and maybe you're wondering about moving to the Denver Tech Center well good news we're going to talk about everything DTC here in this video so if you've been thinking of moving here or you're coming here from OT State and you've got a job in the tech center and you want to know kind of what the area is about you're going to want to tune into this video cuz we're going to talk about everything it's lifestyle it's culture it's real estate of course where it's at commute times everything you want to know about DTC so starting off with why the Denver Tech Center why would anybody look at living close to their well I mean the Denver Tech Center is home to some of the largest companies in the world like tech-wise we are a major Hub in the entire middle of the country and location wise it's located ideally south of downtown Denver just north of 225 in this small footprint now we're going to leave kind of the navigating around DTC out of this cuz if you're in DTC you better have Google Maps or Apple maps running because the streets are really stinking goofy but if you're looking to move here and be close to where you work in the tech center you're going to find something really interesting cuz well the Denver Tech Center isn't actually a city so if you were to just go on to Google Maps and search for the Denver Tech Center you're going to see it actually lays out this map of well it's kind of only a handful of streets east to west and north to south and in that footprint I don't even know how many properties there are but we're going to find out uh but it's not very many so when people say they're looking to move to DTC I'm going to broaden this out a little bit into the zip code of 80111 and that does fall into Greenwood Village uh which we've got a whole video on just Greenwood Village in general um but this Falls within Greenwood Village uh jurisdiction and so you can see 80111 is a bit bigger it's more like a mile to a mile and a half east to west north to south this is really what I would consider uh to be DTC if someone said hey they lived in DTC I would assume it was somewhere within this map zone so now here's one of the huge benefits of being the dech center is that you can just get there from virtually anywhere I25 runs right down the middle of it okay so super easy getting to downtown uh getting further south into you know Parker down to Lone Tree Castle Rock area then just to the East and just to the north of DTC you have 225 which 225 kind of does this half Loop to get up and around closer to North Aurora and towards the airport area and then just to the South you have 470 which is the big loop around the Denver metro area getting you you know from Ken Carl and Highlands Ranch all the way over to parts of Parker and Eastern Aurora so now kind of some commute times if you were looking ah head to downtown Denver you're really looking at about 20 to 25 minutes uh for most times of the day to get from the tech center up to Denver if you had to head over to the airport you're going to be looking at about 40 minutes and that doesn't matter if you hop on 225 or you head on 470 to get over there 470 is going to cost you about 120 bucks on that toll um just slightly joking but it's probably going to cost you about 20 bucks on that toll um and then if you're going to head over to Golden let's say Apex Park to go hiking again 35 40 minutes tops even with traffic to head over there you're just literally right next to Cherry Creek Reservoir so it's around the corner from you uh huge spot there paddle boarding fishing kayaking things like that um and then if you're going to head over to let's say Winter Park you're looking about an hour and a half hour and 45 minutes without much traffic I'm sure you're tired of me hearing about this but ski traffic does change a lot in the winter months Saturdays and Sundays uh depending on what time you leave it could take you 2 to three hours to get to most of the key spots there and just for the average overall commute time it's really hard to find stats just on DTC because it makes up part of Greenwood Village but Greenwood Village you're about 20 minutes on your average commute but if you live in DTC and you work in DTC like you're within 5 minutes of pretty much anywhere now looking up the stats just in DTC as confirmed I went back and looked for the last 10 years of every property that has sold in the small part of DTC and only 57 6 properties came up so that's virtually all of them and almost twice so there's really only about 250 to 500 properties within the Denver Tech Center and 90% of them are going to be condos you're going to have a small smattering in the southern part of DTC and then you've got a little neighborhood of some single family homes that are well into the millions uh and then you've got this other little tiny pocket but again most people probably wouldn't consider this you know DTC as a city saying that they live there they probably say they live in Greenwood Village I'm going to assume or just buy DTC like not many people associate themselves with living in DTC so what have real estate prices done in the last decade well they've done pretty much what most of Denver has done so if we look here for 80111 remember this is a little bit bigger footprint so we can actually get some real stats here uh we can see that our median price was hovering in the mid 400s so that still tell telling me back then in 2014 like it was still a pretty pricey area and we can see today we're in the 800 so it's more than doubled which has been the trend of pretty much everywhere around the country so not super surprised here so what's actually available today in the Denver Tech Center and the surrounding area that you can buy well we're going to go over what this list looks like and there are some more affordable options in the 3 to 400 zone for some of the condos and then around the median price in the 800s there are a few single family options still and then we're going to show you some incredible properties well north of a million bucks that are available today in the tech center [Music] so you can see it really spans the range of different properties all the way from the 300 smaller th000 foot condos all the way you know to mid 800s more reasonable 2 to 3,000 ft single family homes on good size 10,000 ft plus lots and then you have the monsters at two three even up to $4 million with some interesting pent houses that I didn't show you but if you want to see those just make a comment below and I will make a video directly on some of the craziest properties that are around the Denver area and DTC definitely has a couple of them and if you are looking for properties in the Denver Tech Center check the link below I will have a list of preferred homes that you can see today that are available because let's be real the average days on market right now is about 2 weeks in the entire Denver market so what you just saw by the time you saw this video probably isn't actually for sale but link below in the description you can see a list of all the properties in the Denver Tech Center and you can actually have those delivered to your inbox every single day so now what about everything else around the Denver Tech Center well this is where I love to go to niche.com and we can look at their report card to see how everything else Falls Jobs schools outdoor lifestyle like everything that you would want to know and again I'm going to have a link in the description below that you can check out niche.com kind of dig into all these numbers a little bit further but let's take a look here so we can see starting with their Public Schools they get rated as an A+ so we're looking at mostly the Cherry Creek School District so the Cherry Creek School Districts if you know are one of the top rated districts in the country so they take up a large part of kind of South Aurora and Greenwood Village parts of Denver uh but they're extremely highly rated from their Elementary their middle school and their high schools nightlife we've got an A look in the Denver Tech Center there's a lot of incredible restaurants and some of the top rated restaurants in the Denver metro area r& DTC you have Shanahan Steakhouse you have haa Sushi which is incredible you have Del Frisco I mean these are some topnotch restaurants you're going to pay for them but with where it's at in DTC like if you have clients coming in from out of town right you have a convention going on in DTC like these are the places you take people to impress clients we get a B+ for divers University we get a be for weather for whatever reason like if you know me you know I love my Four Seasons I love winter I love summer I love spring and fall and we get all four of them in a fantastic fashion our hot here is not very hot our cold is not very cold you can ride your bike for 12 months out of the year for at least several days out of each month so I don't know what they're talking about here but we have the most incredible weather in the world should be an A+ or higher A+ for health and fitness not super surprised Denver Metro in general one of the healthier cities out there a for commute I'm interested in this one a little bit because going north and south on I25 uh of DTC is some of the heaviest traffic but maybe if you're in DTC you avoid all that right B minus for housing we're expensive there you go A+ good for families there is a lot of stuff to do in the ease of access to get around parks recreation stuff like that just makes it really nice for family living a minus for jobs I mean it's the tech center it's one of the largest hubs of tech jobs in the entire middle of the country C for cost of living again it's expensive and then a for outdoor activities we're just surrounded I mean with Cherry Creek Reservoir just to your East and then with Chatfield just about 20 minutes to the Southwest like it's just easy to get out here and do stuff so what about parks and trails well if you live in DTC or work right there you have George Wallace Park just to the east east of DTC so it's this nice big Park that spans about I'd say about a mile north to south maybe a little bit under uh but there's really not going to be much other than that there's a few parks that are smattered around kind of the DTC area but really if you're looking to kind of take a longer bike ride let's say uh paddle boarding you're going to go to Cherry Creek Reservoir just to the east huge area you can bike for Miles you can walk for Miles I wouldn't consider it a hike but paddle boarding fishing like this is your spot it's a place a lot of people go to cool off in the summer when we're getting hit with the heat so how much is it going to cost you if you want to live in the Denver Tech Center well all we can really do is go off the median price right we don't know how much you're potentially putting down but we're going to take some averages here so at our median sales price of 835,000 putting down 20% with a 7% interest rate which is what they're running today figuring in property taxes now if Year from out of state our property taxes are extremely low not as low as Hawaii or I think Alabama are the only two places with property taxes that are lower than ours but they're extremely low about half of a percent of the property's value every year so on an $835,000 house you can expect around 4,000 or so in yearly property taxes much lower than most of the rest of the country calculating in some uh homeowners insurance here about $300 a month you're looking at about $5,100 a month for your your monthly payment now if you were to put down the minimum of 5% on that same loan which start to get a little bit risky I would say uh most lenders wouldn't really like it and the 800's just putting down 5% but hey you can still do it you're looking about a six grand a month payment to be in DTC with the medium price now for the overall cost of living there's really no way to narrow it down just by DTC or even the zip code of 80111 we really have to look at all of Greenwood Village uh but I think that gives us a good Benchmark but what we can see here is that we're higher than the national average which is not uncommon you know Colorado in general is higher than the national average but breaking it down overall if the median is 100 as a benchmark number throughout the country we said about 123 so about 23% more than the rest of the country but it's still not that terrible uh groceries 105 so a little bit more expensive Health 85 we are a healthy place so our health insurance and our health costs in general are significantly lower housing 433 so now this is Greenwood Village Greenwood Village in general doesn't have a ton of homes and most of them are in the 2234 million Mark I mean Greenwood Village has the most expensive homes in the Denver metro area uh if your budget is 15 million I got you covered let me know plenty of stuff to look at at that zone in Greenwood Village Utilities Fall just a little bit under the national average Transportation a little bit more everybody drives a car are here it's just what we do and then miscellaneous everything else at 153 so we're a bit higher than most places uh for the cost of living but really our cost of living is you know a direct correlation to our quality of living and the quality of life here is just phenomenal our weather you know we have all the major sports teams are hiking biking skiing like it's all literally outside your back door ladies and gentlemen and the Denver Tech Center just happens to be a remarkable Hub where lots of startups go lots of tech companies go and are seeking out Talent All Along The Front Range for some of the best biggest companies in the world and we can't cover the Denver metro area without covering Denver proper I mean it's the reason why all these other cities around us likely exist in our 4 million person Denver metro area and the city that started it all from the gold rush back when is Denver Denver is our featured city of the day we're going to take a look at its history as well as what it's like to actually live in Denver and during this we're going to take the chance to check out its affordability what the lifestyle is like as well as real estate which this in-depth approach is going to allow us to compare Denver to the surrounding Denver metro area so if you've been thinking of moving to Denver or just want to know more about Denver then this video is for you because we're covering everything you need to know about Denver Colorado Denver is located in the Front Range of Colorado north of Colorado Springs yet south of Fort Collins but it's further north than most people think and we have three major highways that Encompass Denver for you to get around I25 going north to south I70 running east to west and then 225 connecting both of them on the outskirts now if you're looking to go skiing on average the map says an hour and 15 minutes but that's during off peak times I would generally give yourself an hour and a half to at least 2 hours to get the most of the ski resorts off of I70 in Summit County and if you're looking for world class climbing or mountain biking you want to give yourself about 35 minutes to get to the outskirts more towards golden and if you're looking to catch a flight over a Dia you're going to want to give yourself about 30 to 35 minutes from downtown Denver and I'm sharing these heavily trafficked areas because at some point or another if you're looking to move to Denver it's likely you're going to go skiing mountain biking climbing or catch a flight but to give you a better sense overall of what the commute time is like in Denver it's 25 1/2 minutes on average Denver was originally founded in 1858 as a gold mining town however the gold quickly dried up and all the miners started moving West into the Foothills in the mountains Denver is one of those cities that people move to for the lifestyle every outdoor sport that's imaginable is just within a couple of hours of downtown Denver and because we value our lifestyle so much within Denver City Limits there are so many parks wreck centers and so many things to do and this has led to a steady growth of population however Denver is actually not as big as what most people think with a population of about 71,000 people with a larger broader Denver metro area which includes cities like Lakewood Centennial Aurora Westminster that gets close to about 3 million for the Denver metro area now to pull in an outside source to look at the data and how Denver ranks you can see here through niche.com out of the 12 categories for lifestyle in Denver we get rated in an A minus but that's just the algorithm but what are the actual residents current and past saying about Denver and we can see here with over 1,00 reviews we're getting four stars and I can't imagine that too many cities are getting a much higher rating and now this full report is fairly extensive so I'm going to link it down below so you can dig through it at your own Leisure overall Denver has over 250 Parks ranging from hiking trails to biking to Pavilions to rec centers and just going back to denverites appreciating Outdoors now let's take a look at the school systems because whether or not you have kids it does affect you you're going to be paying property taxes for the school system and it does affect resale value Denver public schools contains about 990,000 kids in roughly 328 different schools across the city of Denver and on average the teacher to student ratio in Denver public schools is 15 to1 which is pretty good ratio Nationwide and now as an agent I can't share a whole lot more information about the school systems however I'm going to leave a full report that you can click on the link down below to review whenever you'd like now something I can talk about is In-N-Out burger and is there an In-N-Out Burger within Denver City Limits and I'm sad to say there is not your closest one from downtown Denver takes about 21 minutes to get to but let's be real you're not moving to Colorado for in andout burger just go to Santiago's now something that impacts all of us whether you're a renter or a homeowner is Real Estate because it highly impacts your quality of life so let's take a look from a larger macro point of view on the city of Denver where we can see that the median home price as of the end of 2022 is 530,000 which compared to a year ago is actually flat but in the last decade since about 2012 home prices are up more than 150% so if you've been thinking about buying in Denver and you've been waiting for home prices to go down your wish has been granted and now that we know that the median home price in Denver is 530,000 let's compare that to the neighbors the median home price in Aurora is 470,000 in Lakewood the median home price is 466,000 in Centennial the median home price is 586 th000 all the way up in Boulder the median price is now 850,000 and in Greenwood Village 1.2 million so you can see Denver is actually right in the middle of the pack for median home prices around the Denver metro area but let's go a little bit deeper what does the median price of $530,000 in Denver get you today [Music]

Living in DTC, CO

Living in Denver, CO

[238:25] [Music] now the Chances Are by the time you see this video those homes that you just saw have already sold but fear not we're going to have our Denver preferred homes list linked down in the description below and you can also have that sent to your inbox every single day and now might be a really good time to talk about what the monthly mortgage payment would be for the median price in Denver and to do this the best as rates are constantly changing down in the description below once again I'll have a link for a mortgage calculator and especially if you're moving in from out ofate it's really worth checking out because our property taxes might be a lot lower than you think which now leads us into the Denver cost of living and you can see here that maybe we pay a little a little bit less for utilities and food however our housing Transportation goods and services are definitely above the national averages but I'd like to think that's because our lifestyle is above the national averages now if you're still with me after 4 hours I feel like I need to send you something so reach out to me send me a text message send me an email I'm rather impressed that you've made it through this and I know we've been talking about all the cities around the Denver metro area but if you're looking at Denver proper and you want to know specific neighborhoods that's what you need to watch this video for we cover the top 10 neighborhoods in Denver proper that you're likely looking at