But how many apartments are actually available for a decent price?
Even with that decrease, the average rent in Denver is still $1,638 per month. That would require a salary of at least $65,250 annually to follow the traditional guideline that rent shouldn’t cost more than 30 percent of your income, according to the listing service.
Apartments.com also says the average apartment size in Denver is 699 square feet, so some of those affordable apartments could be fairly small. Prices vary by the number of rooms, too.
“When you rent an apartment in Denver, you can expect to pay about $1,463 per month for a studio, $1,638 for a one-bedroom apartment and around $2,158 for a two-bedroom apartment,” apartments.com notes of prices of entire units. “If you opt for a three-bedroom rental, you could pay $2,804 or more.”
Sometimes it feels like only very expensive places are available, but apartments.com breaks down the cost of the housing stock, finding that 45 percent of apartments listed in Denver as of December 2024 rent for between $1,001 and $1,500 per month. Just 15 percent are available for $1,000 or less, while 24 percent go for between $1,501 and $2,000 monthly. The pricey places above $2,000 represent 15 percent of Denver’s apartment stock right now, according to the listing service.
The five least expensive areas in Denver for around 700 square feet of space are Hampden, Goldsmith, Cherry Creek South, Virginia Village and east Denver. The most expensive include Lower Downtown, Riverfront Park, the Golden Triangle, the Denver Tech Center and downtown Denver overall, the listing website notes.
To see what you can get with Denver's average rent prices and budgets above and below, we tested what sort of apartments are available on apartments.com and Zillow as 2024 ends.
Apartments Available for Denver Average Rent
On apartments.com, there were 1,897 rentals available for between Denver's average rent of $1,600 and $1,638. Upon narrowing the search to studios only, 509 listings came up. Studios tended to be small, but at this price, many new builds or buildings that appeared to have lots of amenities showed up. For example, at AVA RiNo in Five Points, a 549-square-foot studio was listed for $1,620 per month, and listing photos showed a large pool area with barbecues and hammocks.One-bedrooms at this price point allowed people to live throughout the entire city. There were over 1,388 listings for one-bedrooms.
It’s worth noting that apartments.com shows listings by range within a building, so some complexes that say they rent for $1,600 might have one or two apartments at that price, but most of the listings are priced much higher.
That was the case at Sabine, an apartment complex by Denver International Airport. It came up in nearly every search and seems to offer apartments at every price point, from fairly small studios to giant, $4,000-per-month apartments. But a 757-square-foot one-bedroom apartment at Sabine is $1,629 per month.
There were significantly fewer two-bedroom apartments available for the average Denver rent, with just 473 listings. Apartments in this search were concentrated in the southeast side of the city.
When we tried to find three-bedroom apartments with these terms, just one listing came up: Auraria Student Lofts. There, prices are per room and not per apartment, so while you could technically live in a three-bedroom apartment for around $1,000 monthly, the total cost of the apartment is really around $3,000.
On Zillow, there are generally fewer listings, but that may be because Zillow’s price filters seem much more fine-tuned than those on apartments.com.
Zillow found 399 rentals available for between $1,600 and $1,638 overall, but it doesn’t even give the option to look for studios. That may be because homes don’t usually come with “studio” versions, so Zillow’s home-buying-centered search filters leave that option out.
There were 295 one-bedroom rentals available on Zillow. Although square footage was small, the spaces seemed to have good quality, like at the Irving. Part of the new 9+10 CO development off Colorado Boulevard, the Irving has a one-bedroom apartment at 474 square feet listed for $1,625.
There were 121 listings for two-bedrooms on Zillow. Similar to apartments.com, most options were on the southeast side of the city, though there are a few units available in most areas. Here, we found a listing for exactly the average Denver rent of $1,638 at the Tamarac Apartments.
Also similar to apartments.com, there was just one three-bedroom apartment available on Zillow at this price point: the Mountainaire Apartments in Boulder, where a three-bedroom costs $1,615...but one of the bedrooms has no window.
What Can You Rent in Denver for $1,000 or Less?
When we narrowed the search down to what is available for $1,000 or less, apartments.com found only 304 listings, while Zillow found just 196.Many of the apartments at this price point on both listing services were in Capitol Hill or other dense neighborhoods outside of downtown, where buildings tend to be older, there are fewer building amenities and units tend to be smaller.
For studios, apartments.com found 102 listings, including one at the Jefferson in Uptown, where $990 gets you 400 square feet.
One-bedrooms turned up 181 listings on apartments.com and, interestingly, there were no listings anywhere near the airport with these parameters. At the Lakeridge Terrace Apartments in southwest Denver, a 600-square-foot apartment goes for $998.
On Zillow, 94 one-bedroom apartments under $1,000 showed up, including the Terrace Arms Apartments in Cap Hill, which offered a 660-square-foot apartment for $945.
For two-bedroom apartments, the outlook is quite bleak on both websites, with just 52 listings on apartments.com and only four on Zillow. The Zillow listings were all income-restricted housing, while the apartments.com listings mainly consisted of rooms at places like Auraria Student Lofts or CoLab, where the rent is paid per individual room.
Only three results for three-bedrooms came up between the two sites, and all three were for individual rooms within three-bedroom apartments.
Renting in Denver for $2,200 per month
Since we subtracted $600 from the average rent to complete our low-end test, we added $600 to complete our high-end test. The glory of setting the minimum rent to $2,200 was amazing. At that price point, we found options throughout the entire city at all sizes. On apartments.com there were 8,692 listings for over $2,200, and on Zillow, there were 5,036.The data suggested by apartments.com largely held true, especially for the different number of bedrooms at various price points. It is possible to live where you want in Denver for around $1,600, though these prices don’t include utilities, parking or any other add-ons.
