MONEY Magazine Ranks 1 Colorado City Among Best To Live

COLORADO – There's a lot of pride for our Colorado home towns, but how do they fare when compared across the country? MONEY Magazine has ranked a single city in Colorado among the "50 best places to live in America" in a recent study. The magazine teamed up with Realtor.com to crunch numbers on more than 135,000 data points. And while Frisco, Texas, ranked the best place to live in America — we’re not making that up — citizens in Highlands Ranch can now boast that they too are among the nation’s best.

MONEY ranked Highlands Ranch 8th in the country, just ahead of Sammish, Washington and just behind Dublin, California. The magazine highlighted predicted county job growth and public parks and open space in Highlands Ranch as reasons it’s one of the best places to live. Here’s what the magazine had to say:

“Overall, Moody's Analytics predicts that county jobs in and near Highlands Ranch will grow 7.4% between 2017 and 2022.

"Founded in 1981, the 22,000-acre planned community is also a great place to settle a family, with top-notch schools and low crime risk. An influx of residents in recent years has seen the population soar to almost 100,000.

There is still plenty for everyone to do though: Resources include 19 public parks, over 2,000 acres of undeveloped land set aside for exploring, and more than 60 miles of trails for running, biking, and walking."

Here are some of the newly listed homes for sale in Highlands Ranch:

$625,000 10116 Astorbrook Ln, Highlands Ranch, CO 80126

$399,900 1390 Braewood Ave, Highlands Ranch, CO 80129

$485,000 1653 Brookside Dr, Highlands Ranch, CO 80126

But as great as HR is to live in, it ain't Frisco, located about 30 miles north of Dallas in Texas. Frisco — dubbed by MONEY as a “boomtown” — topped the list. Below are the top 10 places to live in the U.S. according to the magazine.

1. Frisco, TX
2. Ashburn, VA
3. Carmel, IN
4. Ellicott City, MD
5. Cary, NC
6. Franklin, TN
7. Dublin, CA
8. Highlands Ranch, CO
9. Sammamish, WA
10. Woodbury, MN

The authors said Frisco, once a tiny rail town, has seen strong job growth and attracted major companies, including T-Mobile and Oracle. It became the fastest-growing city in America by the middle of last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Job growth is expanding in Texas as fast as anywhere,” Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told MONEY. “Firms are moving to provide jobs where houses are affordable, and people are moving to jobs where the cost of living is not high.”

Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox Software, which is headquartered in Frisco, told the magazine the city’s quality of life has improved as its population has increased — something all cities can aspire to.

“The mentality here is, Let’s build the place we all want to have fun in and live in,” Pitchford said.

According to MONEY, Frisco has great weather — more than 230 clear days a year — and a median family income of about $129,000. The median home costs about $349,0000 and nearly every high schooler graduates.
Danielle Hale of Realtor.com told the magazine that while Frisco home prices are higher than most of the country, it’s a great choice for people because of its affordability to monthly income ratio.

“It’s actually lower than what we see throughout the U.S.,” she said.

A typical family in Frisco can pay off a new home more than twice as fast as those in Boston, the magazine said.

Most of the “Best Places to Live” are suburbs, Hale said, because these areas are near cities — and opportunities — and are often more affordable, meaning you can get more space for less cash. When compiling the rankings, the magazine weighted economic health, public school quality and local amenities as the most important factors. Housing, cost of living and diversity were also key factors. Click here to read the full methodology.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

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