In or out? When it comes to moving, more people are “in” on Denver

Brooklyn, Phoenix and Austin residents this year are researching moves into the Denver area way more than Denver residents are looking the other way.  And when it comes to getting out of Denver, the scale tips in favor of Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Colorado Springs.

Online moving platform moveBuddah looked at the ratio of people researching moves into and out of Denver between 2020 through early 2023 to try to better understand where the population flowed. Metro Denver remains a popular destination overall, but movers are now more interested in the suburbs than they are in the core city.

“Search interest nationwide in moving to Denver was consistently high from 2020 to early 2023. But if you scratch the surface, you’ll see that most all the interest was outside Denver’s city limits and in the suburbs,” Nick Pipitone said in a blog post.

If one person is looking to move to a given city and one resident from that city is looking to move out to that place, then that represents a ratio of 1. In the case of Brooklyn, the ratio was 6.5 searches into Denver for a potential move for every search by a Denver area resident back the other way. For Phoenix, the ratio was 3.8 in Denver’s favor and for Austin it was 3.3.

In 2020, Brooklyn residents were also the most thirsty for Denver at a ratio of 8.25, followed by Minneapolis, San Francisco and then Chicago, which was at 2.29. But the ardor of Windy City residents, while still strong, has cooled from the 5.57 ratio in 2020.

On the other end, Denver area residents on the move have shown the most interest this year in Las Vegas, where five searches are headed that way for every Las Vegas resident looking to move here. Los Angeles, which has historically lost residents to Denver, is seeing a two-to-one advantage in its favor. And then there was Colorado Springs, a perennial favorite landing spot for those looking to escape Denver’s high home prices.

Only three other cities are winning the migration battle this year against Denver among the cities studied, and they include San Antonio, Texas; Tampa and Atlanta.

MoveBuddah is also able to look at moving searches within a given metro area. The favorite inbound ZIP Codes in metro Denver were Broomfield’s 80023; Denver’s 80206, which covers Congress Park; Downtown’s 80202; Golden’s 80401 and Aurora’s 80011. Piptone said Westminster, Aurora, and Arvada were also popular with inbound movers.