Zillow: Metro Denver rents are “very unaffordable”

Would-be metro Denver homeowners will have a harder time saving for a down payment because rents are up almost 10 percent in the past year, consuming about 31.8 percent of median income, Zillow said in a report released Thursday.

But buying is a better deal because the median home price will consume only 18.9 percent of income, the report said.

Zillow said both renters and buyers in the Denver metro area historically have spent about 21.6 percent of income on housing.

Buying has become more affordable because rents kept climbing during the recession, the company said.

Median rent for all metro Denver residential properties in July was $1,712, up 9.4 percent from July 2013, a level Zillow described as “very unaffordable.” Only San Francisco; San Jose, Calif.; and Pittsburgh logged greater rent increases.

Median Colorado home values gained 12.6 percent in the year to reach $269,200. Other big value increases were reported in Las Vegas; Riverside, Calif.; Miami; and Atlanta.

Metro Denver home values are expected to rise 3.7 percent by next July, compared with a 2.7 percent increase nationally, Zillow said.

Nationwide, Zillow said that only a dozen large metro housing markets — including Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse, N.Y.; Bakersfield and Fresno, Calif.; Hartford, Conn.; Pittsburgh; and Spokane, Wash. — offer both for-sale and rental housing that is affordable, as widespread growth in housing costs continues to outpace wage growth.

Nationally, people signing leases at the end of the second quarter paid 29.5 percent of their income toward rent, compared with 24.9 percent in the pre-bubble period.

The report said in 88 of the nation’s largest metro areas, renters should currently expect to pay a larger share of their income than they would have historically.

The Zillow report comes after two reports in the past week saying that shelter costs are spiking cost-of-living increases in the metro area.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report saying that higher housing costs in the metro area — which rose 5 percent between the first half of 2013 and the first half of 2014 — were largely responsible for the 2.9 percent rise of consumer prices in the Denver-Boulder-Greeley metro area from the first half of 2013 to the first half of 2014.

During the same time period last year, the federal agency said the cost of shelter — up 4.2 percent — accounted for half of the overall increase in consumer prices, which jumped 2.8 percent from the first half of 2012 to the first half of 2013.

And economist Ernie Goss issued a warning that wages in Colorado are not keeping up with inflation.

Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939, hpankratz@denverpost.com or twitter.com/howardpankratz