The next Boulder? (1 Viewer)

[Colin Dunn]

I should add that both Boulder and Austin are "blue" spots in otherwise "red" states. That's part of the advantage - get off the crowded and expensive coasts but enjoy some of what the coastal cities have to offer.

BTW, Dallas County went blue in the last election. Who woulda thunk it?

 

[JeremySt]

I am born in raised in Bozeman MT. Its expensive to live in town. 200k will get you a 3br condo. 300+ is required for modest 3br house. 350-400 is the norm for a 3-4 br in a good part of town. It has been going up quick since the early 90s. A new home that went for $170k in 1998 is now worth 250k.

If your all about outdoor activities, its a great place to live.

 

[DaveF]

I also have some interest in the Boulder area, but I'm concerned about housing costs. Joe's insinuation that $800k is "affordable" is laughable to me it belongs in the other thread about "who's wealthy". I can't imagine buying such a house without a family income of > $300k, or previously sold house of similar value. I am not so wealthy: I will never be able to afford a $800k house. Even $400k is unreasonable for the forseeable future.

I've not heard of $200k houses near Boulder -- what sort of homes are these?

 

[David Brown Eyes]

Ok I gotta say this.

Collen you get sick of Texas already? I think I mentioned the long hot summers to you years ago.

anyway. small left leaning communities are usually pretty expensive.

have you tried outside of Bozeman MT?

 

[Brad Porter]

The people who wanted to live here grew and the housing supply didn't. The policymakers decided that they liked Boulder to stay roughly the size that it is, so they restricted growth and pursued an open space policy to surround the city with nature rather than suburbs - simultaneously creating more reasons for people to want to live here. The tech boom of the 1990s gave many of those people the ability to go ahead and purchase homes in Boulder and the average home price grew substantially as existing homeowner's took advantage of the seller's market.

So I guess you just have to blame all the other yuppie, liberal Boulder twits who don't know the value of a dollar.

Brad

 

[JohnRice]

To be more accurate Colin, Colorado really isn't a "blue" state. In fact, the joke around here is that Colorado is purple. Statistically, it is virtually a three way dead heat, with the state evenly divided between Republican, Democrat and Independent. Our latest Governor is Democrat and Senators are one D and one R. Boulder and Denver, which actually accounts for most of the population are pretty liberal. The East (not much population) is rather conservative, and of course, there is Colorado Springs, which is about as conservative as it gets. I live North, In Ft. Collins, which is a pretty rabid mix.

Regarding Laramie, people talk about how windy it is, but I seriously doubt it is as bad as Boulder, which has the benefit of channeling the winds down the canyon and into town. It just can blow like hell all along the Front Range. Laramie is not enough further North of Boulder for it to change the weather, but it is probably about 1,500 ft higher, so it will be a bit colder.

For that matter, Ft. Collins has become extremely (far too) popular. Real Estate is still too high, but nothing like Boulder. You can still get a liveable house in the 200K area, but 250 or so is probably more realistic. The University here (CSU) may be bigger than CU, but I'm not sure. The population is definitely higher. Too many people here complain about it, but I have lived all over the country and can say they are full of it. They just don't realize how nice it is here.

Oh yeah, someone mentioned Boise, which is definitely worth checking in to. Don't expect a very liberal culture though.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Ft. Collins is generally in those lists of top 10 places to be, along with Boise.

Idaho is a libertarian conservative state, not a social conservative state, where in the words of Martin Luther King people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The mainstream press seldom mentions Idaho unless it's to discuss various neo-nazi groups who have since been run out of the state - to the relief of the vast majority of Idahoans. There are a lot of religeous types here, but Idaho also has the highest percentage of atheists/agnostics in the US - something like 35% IIRC. The first Jewish governor elected in US history was Idaho's governor Moses Alexander during WWI, and he was re-elected to a second term. Around here people are very accepting as long as you live a moral life, work hard, and pack heat.

 

[DaveF]

That was helpful. I did some searching for Boulder & Longmont and saw a diversity that surprised me. Newer, large homes (2000+ sq. ft., built after 1990) were $350k and up. But next door could be $150k home; but it was typically from 1963, 1500 sq. ft., and it made me wonder if those homes needed commensurate remodeling.

What stunned me more was that Condos & Townhomes were no less expensive than new homes, while offering less living space, smaller garage, etc. I don't understand the value proposition: Spend as much as you would on a new home and get less? Their locations didn't see any better either.

I'm considering whether I'd want to try and transfer to Boulder for work. As far as I can tell, I'd need a 40% increase in salary to get decent house. :frowning:

 

[Colin Dunn]

David -

I was afraid you'd stumble across this thread. Turns out that except for the hot summers and the tech bust, the move to TX wasn't so bad for me. It seems that the high real-estate costs that drove me out of Colorado are still an issue. :frowning:

Because of Boulder's anti-development policy, I'd really given up on the idea of living there again unless the market crashes. So I started this thread to try to find out if there are other places similar to Boulder, but without the hyper-inflated housing prices.

My conclusion, after all this discussion, is that despite the hot summers and red-state politics, no one has identified a much better "Boulder replacement" than Austin that fits within my budget. I'll just have to stay inside during the summer. (Much like people in Colorado had to stay inside this past winter!)

So now I go back into hiding for a few years, and I'll check on the Boulder real-estate market again around 2010. That is, unless I happen to buy a winning Lotto ticket before then.

 

[David Brown Eyes]

Colin I would check around.

The housing market has really crashed here. you certainly will not find much change in Boulder but both North, south and east Denver it really is a buyers market out here.

 

[Shane Martin]

Tulsa is very similar. I went looking around as I had a few oppurtunities in Colorado but the housing really soured me.

As much as I love the scenery there and Denver in general, the cost of living was a bit much for me.

 

[RobertR]

What's the weather like in Boise, Dennis?

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I've only been here a little over a year, but before I relocated I spent some time gathering weather statistics on Boise. Boise gets the downwind remnants of the Pacific maritime weather from WA and OR. Most of the precip. falls on the Cascades, leaving less for ID. Boise averages 10 inches of rain and 22 inches of snow per year (last 30 year average). Let's see if this NOAA chart shows up properly:

Number of Days with Snowfall >= Threshold (days)

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC _____ ANNUAL
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THRESHOLD >=0.1 inch

5.8 3.6 1.9 .5 .1 0 0 0 0 .1 2.6 5.6 _________20.2


THRESHOLD >=1.0 inch

1.7 1.1 .4 .2 0 0 0 0 0 .1 1.2 2.3 __________7.0

Hmm....I guess you can still make out the chart. Basically there's 7 days per year of snow over one inch. Most snowfalls melt by around noon. The humidity stays around 20% year around. This past January was pretty cold - averaging around 20 deg. for days on end, getting down to 10 degrees on occasion - but this was a record cold and dry January. Summer doesn't get much above 90 degrees and then only now and then. Boise is at roughly 3,000 feet in a valley bounded by the Owyhee Mountains to the south west and the Rocky Mountains to the north east, both rising locally up to around 8,500 feet. This creates a sheltered valley that protects the area from some of the more extreme climate of the Rockies.

For more info on temps and precip. see http://www.cityofboise.org/CityGover...page14791.aspx Note how during the summer the night time temps drop back to the 50's.

In general I would say that spring/summer/fall in Boise is very similar to San Jose CA, the differences being lower humidity and more frequent windy days here in Boise. Winter is NOT similar to San Jose, but it would appear to be milder than many places that have a "real" winter.

 

[RobertR]

Thanks, Dennis. Doesn't sound very different from what I grew up with in Denver (perhaps a little drier).

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Before we wrap up this thread on the topic of relocating, here's one more map that compares states in the US with countries of similar GDP.

 

[JohnRice]

Robert, I have found much of the inland NW to be rather similar to the Front Range of Colorado. Not humid like the West coast, maybe not quite as dry as Denver. Probably more snow, but with the same tendency to melt quickly. The weather in Spokane was quite a bit like Colorado, except about 3 weeks of constant rain in the spring and fall, not year round like Seattle can be. Lots of sunshine also. You would find little difference between Denver and Boise, or Spokane for that matter.

 

[Greg_R]

Wow... I have a hard time believing that Saudi Arabia's GDP is only equal to Tennessee's!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Here's the original link so you can check their methodology:

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/200...-similar-gdps/

Note that the formula used for GDP includes the term (exports - imports) which is probably what knocks Saudi Arabia down. They trade lots of oil for lots of neat stuff.

 

[Peter Burtch]

Demand is a huge factor, and quality of life offered. CO has a lot to offer a great variety of people for sure. There's also the small fact that many folks planning on moving to that area are coming from areas which are already more expensive (housing & overall cost of living) or at least as expensive, and they make very good wages where they currently reside. There's a lot of equity floating around in this country along with the obvious debt . Anyway, IMO there's no way a place like Boulder will ever have it's housing prices return to such 'historical lows' that you speak of. It's way too popular for that. Areas like that are unfortunately way past the cutoff point for a 1970s family with a single breadwinner. As the front range in general becomes more crowded and more baby boomers also settle that area, the high demand will keep up those high prices you're currently seeing there.

There's another thing residents in CO will have to become used to in the near future as more families move there with school age children- higher taxes. The tax rates for the same size home are much lower in places like Highlands Ranch (for example) than their counterparts living in many other suburbs in urban areas elsewhere. Some of the school districts won't be able to handle the influx of people without raising taxes significantly IMO. I've seen some of the budgets and they likely won't be able to keep up for the next 10 years. I would be very surprised, anyway.

-P

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Colin,

So have you checked the news lately? How are the much-lower prices in Boulder affecting your plans? I understand prices in Bozeman have tanked royally.