The Denver Gazette continues its Colorado cost-of-living series with a look at Adams County, where the dream of buying a home has apparently been placed behind glass with a little museum plaque that says, “Remember when working people could do this?”
The article centers on Adams County real estate broker Jessica Zeleniak, who says the median age of first-time homebuyers among her clients now hovers around 40. Housing prices are only part of the squeeze. Interest rates, HOA fees, metro district dues, car payments, rent increases, and the general expense avalanche of modern Colorado are all piling up at once. As Zeleniak put it, “Everything is feeling too expensive all at once. The whole picture right now is just making it unaffordable.”
The Bullet Point Brief
- First-time homebuyers in Adams County are getting older, with Zeleniak saying the median age among her clients is now around 40. Nothing says “Colorado affordability” like needing a midlife crisis before qualifying for a starter home.
- Zeleniak says people are moving out of Adams County and the Front Range, with many heading to the East Coast where housing is more affordable. Read that again. The East Coast is now the bargain bin. Colorado has officially lost the plot.
- Areas like Thornton used to be the affordable fallback for people priced out of Denver. Now those communities have skyrocketed too, because apparently every “affordable option” in Colorado comes with an expiration date and a fee schedule.
- Buyers are accepting longer commutes and smaller homes, trading the dream of a yard, basement, and garage for a two-bedroom townhome and the privilege of still feeling broke.
- One 22-year-old first-time buyer, Cooper Gill, found a townhome in north Thornton with a 3.75% interest rate, which the article correctly treats like finding a unicorn in a King Soopers parking lot.
My Bottom Line
This is just another article in the seemingly endless drip, drip, drip of reality finally catching up with Colorado’s ruling class. Everything is too expensive. Housing is out of reach. Young people are delaying homeownership. Older people are stuck in houses that no longer fit their lives because downsizing somehow costs more. Families are stretching, settling, commuting farther, and asking the same obvious question: how did Colorado become this unaffordable?
Well, let’s not act like this was delivered by aliens. Colorado has had 16 years of Democrat governors and eight years of total Democrat control. That matters. Policy matters. Regulation matters. Fees matter. Energy policy matters. Land-use games matter. Anti-business attitudes matter. You cannot stack mandate on mandate, regulate everything that moves, celebrate every new government “solution,” and then pretend to be stunned when the bill shows up.
The East Coast being more affordable than Adams County should make every sane Coloradan stop and stare at the wall for a minute. That is not a quirky market detail. That is the alarm bell. Colorado used to be where people came to build a life. Now people are leaving the Front Range to find affordability in places we used to mock for being expensive. Congratulations, Gold Dome geniuses. You made Colorado into a cautionary tale with better sunsets.
This is what a failing experiment looks like when it is managed by people who confuse socialism with compassion and government control with good policy. They break the housing market, inflate the cost of living, squeeze working families, then hold another press conference about affordability. Meanwhile, real people are doing the math at the kitchen table and realizing Colorado’s leadership has turned “living here” into a luxury product.
Source: The Denver Gazette
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