Brooklyn, Phoenix and Austin residents are doing far more research into moving to the Denver area this year than Denver residents are looking the other way. And when it comes to leaving Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Colorado Springs all choose.
Online moving platform moveBuddah surveyed the ratio of people researching moves to and from Denver between 2020 and early 2023 to better understand where population flows were going. Metro Denver remains a popular travel destination overall, but movers are now more interested in the suburbs than the core city.
“Statewide search interest in moving to Denver was consistently high from 2020 through early 2023. But if you just scratch the surface, you can see that much of the interest has been outside of Denver city limits and in the suburbs,” Nick Pipitone said in a blog post.
If a person wants to move to a certain city and a resident of that city wants to move to that location, that’s a ratio of 1. In the case of Brooklyn, the ratio was 6.5. Searching Denver for a Potential Candidate Every time you search for a Denver-area resident, move in the opposite direction. The ratio in Denver’s favor was 3.8 for Phoenix and 3.3 for Austin.
In 2020, residents of Brooklyn were also the thirstiest in Denver with a ratio of 8.25, followed by Minneapolis, San Francisco and Chicago with a ratio of 2.29. But enthusiasm among Windy City residents, while still high, has cooled from 2020’s ratio of 5.57.
On the other hand, Denver-area relocators showed the most interest this year in Las Vegas, where five searches are made in that direction for every Las Vegas resident who wants to move here. Los Angeles, which has lost residents to Denver in the past, sees a two-to-one advantage in its favor. And then there was Colorado Springs, an all-time favorite landing spot for those looking to escape Denver’s high real estate prices.
Among the cities surveyed, only three other cities are winning the migration battle against Denver this year, including San Antonio, Texas; Tampa and Atlanta.
MoveBuddah is also able to view relocation searches within a specific city area. The most popular ZIP codes for inbound arrivals in the Denver metro area were 80023 from Broomfield; Denver’s 80206, which spans Congress Park; Downtown 80202; Golden’s 80401 and Aurora’s 80011. Piptone said Westminster, Aurora and Arvada are also popular with movers.
A caveat is in order for 80202’s high rating. That’s the standard zip code assigned to someone generally viewing Denver, so it doesn’t necessarily mean they prefer downtown living, Pipitone said.
On the other end, the zip codes with the most unbalanced outbound searches were 80016 in Aurora; 80129 at Highlands Ranch; 80203 in Capitol Hill; 80112 at Centennial and 80111 at Cherry Creek.
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