Cannabis’ Influence on Denver Housing and Sales
The legalization of marijuana has been a popular topic since multiple states have made steps to provide medical and recreational cannabis for its consumers. In 2012, Colorado legalized recreational cannabis and began state-licensed retail sales by the beginning of 2014. The marijuana market has brought in substantial revenue for the state, but money isn’t all that has come from cannabis legalization. The growing industry of marijuana has created new jobs, as well as high demand for real estate. People are moving to states with recreational marijuana laws, causing an influx of migrants into the city of Denver. While this information has been known for quite a while, not many people are familiar with the exact numbers related to marijuana’s influence. As someone born and raised in the Denver area, I was curious about the quantitative data describing the impact of cannabis. Today, we will answer how the legalization of weed has influenced Denver county’s housing and cannabis sales. I will be analyzing multiple data sets to research this question. These include colorado county cannabis sales by year, colorado demographics by county, and average real estate prices by city. For the analysis of this data, I will be focusing on Denver county specifically, as this area has experienced a boom in cannabis businesses and customers.
While the state of Colorado has something to offer anybody moving to the mile-high city, cannabis has played a significant role in the city’s popularity. Due to Colorado being one of the first states to cultivate a marijuana market in 2012, more people have begun moving to the state. In Denver specifically, an influx of migrants was experienced in the year following state-licensed sales of marijuana, in 2015. In 2015, Denver experienced a 42% increase in net migrants, as well as a population jump of around 17,000 people. This includes people moving from their original state, as well as Coloradans moving from their original county. While it is important to note that not everyone is coming to Denver to buy cannabis, the emerging industry has created an immense amount of career opportunities, as well as a “marijuana-positive” environment. With this sharp increase in demand, cannabis has also impacted the real estate market in Denver.
Following the creation of state-licensed sales in 2014, Denver’s real estate market experienced a sharp increase in demand and price. With more people moving to the city, the real estate market experienced strong demand for residential properties. In the following year, the average sale price of Denver properties increased by 11%, jumping from 282,000 to 315,000 by the end of the year. This includes data from all types of residential real estate (condos, single-family homes). Commercial real estate was also affected by the creation of new businesses and growing facilities, experiencing a similar increase in value. These include all types of commercial property, from street shops to big warehouses needed for the growing product. By creating new opportunities for citizens and businesses of Denver, cannabis has had a considerable influence on Denver county’s housing. Due to the incoming customers, the sales of cannabis have experienced a similar boom.
The influx of migrants into the city of Denver has also had a major impact on the county’s recreational marijuana sales. With medical marijuana being legal since 2012, Denver medical cannabis brought in 174 million in 2014. Medical marijuana revenue has kept a steady trend since that year, but the same cannot be said for recreational sales. In the year following the introduction of state-licensed recreational marijuana (2015), Denver saw an increase of 60 million in retail marijuana sales. That number continued to grow until the year 2020, with a total 236% increase from 2015’s retail sales. The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced marijuana sales substantially, but there is no doubt that Denver migrants have been stimulating the cannabis market. As more people are becoming less cautious of COVID-19 and are transitioning back into their normal ways of life, some question how cannabis sales will be affected. While the data has yet to be collected, I predict that cannabis sales will fall below the 2020 peak, but not as low as the beginning of the cannabis market. The legalization of cannabis is a continuing movement that will introduce the substance to more individuals, and thus the market will continue to thrive and expand into new areas.
