Synopsis of current Denver market

[Braden Hobbs]

http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_27780191/den...

This article explains in a nutshell how intense the market here in Denver is right now.

[Gordon Weakliem]

Originally posted by @John Barnette:

Denver is now one of a handful of elite cities in the US and perhaps the only non coastal city with such market conditions.  

Denver is not as restricted geographically or zoning and building limitations as SF.

We have a massive shortage of housing relative to population and job growth. Coupled with extraordinary tech wages

I snipped the highlights. Oil production is a component, but most of that is either Western Slope or Northeast (Weld / Morgan / Logan). There are lots of Oil & Gas jobs in downtown that can pay a wage appropriate of a $300K house, but that doesn't explain things like RiNo & Golden Triangle. You've got Industry anchoring a tech hub in RiNo and Galvanize in GT. Denver has caught some traction as a tech hub and the demand is for live and work downtown. When I moved here in 1997 I was 30 years old and even though all the jobs were in DTC, I bought a house in Alamo Placita because I didn't care to live in Greenwood Village / Highlands Ranch / Parker / Littleton. Boring! I wanted to be close to nightlife, easy access to the mountains, and I liked the urban setting. I think that right now, Denver is attracting a lot of the 22-30 year old demographic, single or recently married, no kids, employed in tech. Once you hit early 30s, you have kids, thinking about schools and a bigger house, it's off to Stapleton, or the more adventurous ones get into Highlands or Wash Park and do a pop top or a scrape off (are there any bungalows even left to pop the top on in Wash Park?). But the days of leaving your bachelor(ette) pad for Highlands Ranch are gone.

I think the MMJ business has put some pressure on industrial and retail space, but even bigger is the demand for office space downtown and the rise of shared workspaces. These are frequently built in old light industrial locations - I know of a couple in Curtis Park along Lawrence / Larimer. I'll bring up Industry again - what was once a huge warehouse is now 120,000 square feet of office space, and I'm absolutely certain that another similar development of the same scale will happen in the next couple years. It's already in the blueprint stage.

It used to be that Boulder was the place for tech in Colorado - Sun (pre Oracle), Google, lots of other startup tech. I think Boulder maxed out its capacity because of zoning and building controls. So now that is spilling over to Denver. If you're not in tech you may not see it, but it's obvious if you work in tech.

So yeah, oil prices? More in the macro sense of hurting the US economy and global business conditions, but local employment-wise? The actual oil field workers are probably living closer to the oil fields and can most likely transition to construction jobs anyway. If you work in an office downtown, your skills are likely transferrable to another gig in tech. Sucks to be a Geologist right now, but otherwise I think employment will be fine, barring global financial catastrophe a'la 2008. But things were hard everywhere back then.