Denver’s building boom is over. Now it’s a tenant fantasy land

What do they say about too much of a good thing again?

(Benson Kua, Flickr, back/ Hamberty, left/ Wikimedia Commons, right)
(Benson Kua, Flickr, back/ Hamberty, left/ Wikimedia Commons, right)

Denver has been booming with an influx of people working in tech outpacing the building of homes, until now.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s a recap of why Denver’s a hot housing market: the combination of a growing tech industry and strong job market powered a building boom in the city, which includes the city’s first supertall luxury condo.

Between 2005 and 2015, for every residential building that received a permit, 1.7 jobs were created — and that figure shot up to 2.9 jobs for the second half of the decade, according to data gathered by Apartment List. In ten years, Denver’s median rent went from $777 to $1,184, but developers might have gone too far, according to the Wall Street Journal’s sources.

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“They have totally overbuilt the luxury apartment buildings,” said president of Colorado & Co. Real Estate Christina Freyer Walker to the Journal.

As prices soften, developers are struggling to rent out units and resorting to extreme lengths to seal the deal, according to the Journal. Some of their efforts include offering would-be tenants signing bonuses, a free month of rent, furnishings, memberships to the Denver Zoo, six months of pet grooming and/or doggy day care, and, last but not least, a snack subscription that brings in exotic treats from new places around the world on a monthly basis.

[WSJ] —E.K. Hudson