DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado’s housing market became one of the nation’s most expensive metro areas in no small part because of its massive population influx throughout the 2010s.
Colorado added 774,518 residents since 2010, just a little more than the entire population of Alaska. They were also wealthier on the whole than the Coloradans who left the state in the same time, allowing for more home purchases and more bidding contests.
Colorado’s population expanded more than almost any state in the union between 2010 and 2020, according to the recently released 2020 U.S. Census. The state’s population grew 14.8%, from 5 million to 5.8 million. Only Nevada, North Dakota, Texas, Idaho and Utah had higher growth rates in the same time period.
No state exported more people to Colorado over the last decade than California. Between 2010 and 2018, IRS records count just over 90,000 people moving from the Golden State to the Centennial State. Roughly one out of every seven new Coloradans in the last ten years came from California.
With just over 82,000, Texas exported the second most people to Colorado, followed by Florida with 49,000 people.
The inflow to Colorado came largely from a handful of states, though Americans from all over moved to the Centennial State.
Half of Colorado’s new residents in the last 10 years have come from only 10 states: California, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Illinois, New York, New Mexico, Washington, Virginia and Kansas.
A quarter of them came from the nation’s three most populous states: California, Texas and Florida.
These states brought money in equal proportion.
Colorado has cycled in wealthier people and shed less wealthy people in the last 10 years. The average household income for incoming Coloradans between 2010-2018 was about $5,000 more than the Coloradans who left.
The total annual gross income, or AGI, of the people who moved into Colorado from 2010 to 2018 was $7 billion more than those who left. The combined annual gross income of the households that moved to Colorado 2010-2018 was $50 billion. The combined AGI of those that moved out was $43 billion.
Half of that total AGI came from households from just eight states: California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Arizona, New York, Virginia and Washington.
The states that imported the highest income per household were Connecticut, New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, California, Illinois, Maryland, Texas and Minnesota. Together, these states exported 303,000 people to Colorado between 2010 and 2018.