At the start of the decade, apartments renting for under $1,000 a month were easy to find in metro Denver. Last month, only one neighborhood in the city still had decent availability in that price range, according to a price survey from Rent.com, one of the country’s largest websites for rental listings.
That rare oasis of affordability is the multi-family enclave of Indian Creek, along south Quebec Way and Cherry Creek South Drive, south of Louisiana Avenue and north of Evans Avenue.
Rents for a one-bedroom apartment available there last month averaged $969.14 a month, up from $952.52 in May 2018, according to Rent.com.
The survey looked at the listed rents for one-bedroom apartments on Rent.com and Apartmentguide.com in Denver neighborhoods with five or more units listed.
“This data includes all neighborhoods in which Rent.com has inventory,” said Brian Carberry, who ran the analysis of around 40 neighborhoods.
Bear Valley in southwest Denver had an average rent of $1,081.67 a month, making it the next most affordable option after Indian Creek. Cherry Creek was the most expensive neighborhood in the survey with an average rent of $2,647.61.
Indian Creek and Bear Valley rents have been stable the past year, but several other affordable areas saw a big spike, including southwest Denver. Average rents there have gone from $1,082.99 a month to $1,366.47, an increase of 26.2 percent.
Belcaro, which is south of Cherry Creek, reported Denver’s biggest rent increase the past year, according to Rent.com, with the average on a one-bedroom listing popping 34.2 percent — from $1,764.15 a month a year ago to $2,367.70 a month in May. Big rent increases also were at play in the Washington Park West, Kennedy and Berkeley neighborhoods.
Average rents on one-bedroom apartments were the most stable in the Hale neighborhood, up 0.1 percent; downtown Denver, up 0.5 percent; Hampden South, up 1 percent and Lowry, up 1.6 percent.
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Rent.com measured the average rent on a one-bedroom in metro Denver at $1,694 at the end of last year. But its rivals, Apartment List, still shows Denver as one of the best bargains in the metro area for a one-bedroom unit, with a much lower median rent of $1,080 a month.
Rent.com uses an average of the rents listed on its website. While that shows what someone hunting for an apartment has available to them at a given point in time, rents can get skewed in areas where a lot of new luxury units are coming onto the market.
Apartment List uses a different methodology to get around the problem by looking at what the same apartment rents for over time. It also reports a median rent, or where half the rents are higher and half are lower. Because Denver has so many older apartments, it still has a lower median rent than the suburbs, even with all the high-end units being added.
The median rent for a one-bedroom in Thornton is $1,530 and in Parker it is $1,420, according to Apartment List. Only Wheat Ridge is lower than Denver with a median rent of $1,000 a month.
