🏠 Colorado (CO) · 2026 Housing Data

What Salary Do You Need
to Buy a Home in Colorado?

$141K+
Salary Needed
$545,000
Median Home Price
$3,283/mo
Total Monthly Cost

The Real Numbers in Colorado

The median home price in Colorado is $545,000. With a 20% down payment and a 7.0% mortgage rate, your monthly PITI payment comes to $3,283/month — including principal, interest, property taxes (0.51% avg.), and insurance.

To qualify under standard bank underwriting (28% front-end DTI), you need a gross annual income of at least $141,000. Colorado's median household income is approximately $78,000/year, giving the state a price-to-income ratio of 7.0×.

At 7.0×, Colorado sits near the national average for affordability. Buyers earning the median income are close to qualifying but may need to adjust their target price range.

Median Home Price (Colorado)$545,000
20% Down Payment$109,000
3.5% FHA Down Payment$19,075
Monthly P&I Payment$2,901/mo
Property Tax (est. 0.51%/yr)$232/mo
Home Insurance (est.)$150/mo
Total PITI Payment$3,283/mo
Salary Needed (28% DTI)$141K+/year
Price-to-Income Ratio7.0× median income
FRC Market DemandCOOLING
See if your income qualifies for a home in Colorado
Check My Approval Odds → Calculate My Payment →
📋 Data Sources: Median home prices from NAR & Zillow Research. Property tax rates from Tax Foundation. Income data from US Census Bureau ACS. Mortgage rates from Freddie Mac PMMS. All data updated 2026. Educational use only — not financial advice. Learn more →
The part no calculator can tell you

Numbers like these tell you what you can afford. They cannot tell you whether a lender will say yes — and that varies more than almost anyone realises. In the complete 2025 federal record, approval rates across the 100 largest FHA lenders ran from 98.2% down to 21.3%. Same program, same year.

And it is not simply who applies where: holding state, loan amount, income, debt-to-income and loan-to-value constant, applicant mix explains only a 2.7× range in expected outcomes.

Which lenders approve most → Your metro's lenders → Apply to more than one? →

CFPB HMDA 2025, computed by FinanceRateCalc · rates reflect applicant mix as well as lender practice · historical observation, not a prediction · free, CC BY 4.0.

The Denial Dispatch
One finding a week from the federal mortgage record.
One chart, three paragraphs, every Saturday. Measured, not assumed.
Get the Dispatch →
AI Accuracy Index The Door Effect The Denial Map Open Data About 184 Metro Gaps Evidence Navigator Hallucination Files Press Newsletter
FinanceRateCalc · Independent analysis of the complete federal HMDA record · Measured, not assumed. · No lender or AI vendor funds or previews this work.