Westminster was once seen as an affordable-ish landing spot for young people who could no longer pay Denver and Boulder rents. Those days may be over.
Now, the Denver suburb, which has seen a mural festival, a revitalized downtown, an Alamo Drafthouse, a new Tattered Cover, and plenty of wacky events programming (ballerina dodgeball, anybody?), has the highest one-bedroom rents in the metro area. The price: $1,860, according to data pulled from active listings on the online rental site Zumper.
Coming in second place: Broomfield at $1,850.
Both of those cities are near Boulder County and the site of the late 2021 Marshall fires, which destroyed more than 1,100 homes and commercial properties and left many families renting as construction lagged.
Centennial and Denver tied for third priciest median rent at $1,760.
If you're looking for a deal, Greeley is still significantly lower than Denver at $1,070 and Fort Collins comes in at $1,200. (But yikes, that's still expensive. Throw in commutes to the Mile High City, and renters will be suffering.)
But when it comes to two-bedroom rents, Denver's still the priciest city, with a median rent of $2,340, followed by Broomfield, at $2,240, and Westminster, at $2,170.
Plenty of other suburbs that have long been considered affordable have seen massive hikes in median rent.
Take Englewood, where median one-bedroom rent now runs $1,290, according to Zumper's data. That's a 33% jump from this time last year.
Nearby Littleton has seen a 24.5% rise to $1,370.
Longmont, near the Marshall Fire site, saw a 23.3% increase, year over year.
Statewide, median one-bedroom rent is $1,450.
Data from the online Apartment List, which uses a different methodology than Zumper that leads to a different set of numbers, shows similar trends in rent-price growth in the region.
National median rent has grown 12% over the past year, according to data from the online rental site Apartment List.
With inflation higher than it has been in the past 40 years, higher mortgage rates and still sky-high housing prices for buyers, many people are ditching their hopes of home ownership and continuing to rent. That creates more competition for already too few rental units.
On a national level, the Denver area rental market has the 71st fastest rising prices in the country's 100 largest cities, from this time last year.
Cold comfort: The trend of rising prices is hardly a local phenomenon, and nationwide, landlords are also charging more than many renters can afford.
