Denver's Suburban Developments Boom Leaves Few Affordable Options

The most recent suburban developments in the metro Denver area are more dense and community-focused, but unobtainable to an average buyer. Painted Prairie, a new neighborhood development 17 miles outside of Denver, features welcoming front porches to facilitate community connections, reports The Denver Post. It feels more neighborly, but the area’s median price point of $600,000 is not as welcoming. Denver itself is a booming metro with an expected population increase of 1.1 million by 2040. Painted Prairie is just one of the dozens of new communities popping up throughout the area—76% of all metro area lots in Denver are currently under development.

Sixteen of the top 20 best-selling residential developments in metro Denver are in Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties. And those three counties alone account for 76% of all metro area lots under development, according to Zonda data. But there are problems as the building boom moves east: the metro area’s median home price is creeping toward the $600,000 mark.

That raises the vexing question: Who exactly will be able to afford to live in these evolving suburbs?

The extraordinary tightness of the market — record-low inventories, lightning-fast transactions and sales prices well over asking — have some affordable housing officials declaring the metro area’s residential home market “unhealthy,” “not functioning well” and “at a tipping point.”

“We are in an extreme crisis of supply,” said Peter LiFari, executive director of Maiker Housing Partners, the agency charged with providing affordable housing for residents of Adams County.

And that’s before the arrival of a projected 1.1 million newcomers who will call metro Denver home by 2040, according to the state demographer’s estimates.

“With the cost of raising a family on my own, I don’t think it would be possible to buy a place,” said Stephen Barmore, a restaurant server who rents a home in Lakewood and splits the monthly cost with his adult daughter and her boyfriend. “Colorado, for the foreseeable future, is a hot spot and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

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