If favorable and Denver’s housing market are mentioned in the same sentence these days, it’s from the perspective of sellers and builders.
Certainly not from the point of view of buyers.
Which is why it was surprising when Denver and several metro-area cities were ranked high on a new list of favorable housing markets for first-time homebuyers.
A deeper dive into the criteria used by WalletHub revealed why Denver would rank No. 7 among large cities (population of 300,000 and up) and No. 51 overall on the personal-finance website’s list.
Three main categories were considered in compiling the rankings: Affordability, real estate market and quality of life. Within each of those categories were subsets, and those were given points that were added up to give each city a final score.
Needless to say, Colorado cities that ranked high relied heavily on the quality-of-life score to counterbalance what were low assessments on affordability.
For instance, the top-ranked Colorado city was Centennial, which came in at No. 3. The city ranked 114th in affordability, 51st in the real estate market category, and seventh in quality of life. It’s total score was 64.74, compared to No. 1 city Broken Arrow, Okla., at 67.09.
In the overall list, several other Colorado cities were ranked in the Top 30. Numbers are as follows: Ranking, total score, affordability rank, real estate market rank and quality of life rank.
No. 6, Thornton, 64.69, 122, 40, 3
No. 17, Arvada, 63.37, 147, 25, 6
No. 20, Greeley, 62.95, 110, 69, 4
No. 23, Longmont, 62.61, 150, 31, 8
No. 25, Fort Collins, 62.54, 156, 63, 1
No. 27, Colorado Springs, 61.9, 84, 57, 67
No. 28, Westminster, 61.89, 124, 53, 18
To read the full report, go here
