Published in The Gazette | September 7, 2012 | Written By Wayne Heilman
It’s still a relative bargain living in Colorado Springs. But rising housing prices in the Springs area pushed local living costs to the closest they have been to the national average in 7½ years, according to a quarterly survey.
Living costs in the Springs were 3.9 percent below the national average during the second quarter, up from 4.5 percent below the average during the previous quarter and 8.2 percent below the average a year earlier, according to the survey by the Arlington, Va.-based Council for Community and Economic Research. That is the closest to the national average the council’s cost-of-living index for the city has been since the end of 2004. The index hit a 20-year low in the second quarter of 2011 in comparison with the national average.
“That our growth in housing prices is so far ahead of the rest of the nation is surprising,” said Tom Binnings, a senior partner of Summit Economics, a local economic research and consulting firm. “On the whole, that is good news from the standpoint that our housing sector is growing stronger.”
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