Northern Colorado experiencing housing and population boom according to new numbers

FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- The metro area isn’t the only spot in Colorado seeing a population boom and skyrocketing home prices.     

Tens of thousands of people are also flocking to Northern Colorado.

Families like Shawn and Wendy Nettleton moved their kids to a new Northeast Fort Collins neighborhood two years ago for much of the same reason that thousands of others are.

“This is just a really good neighborhood by and large. There’s a lot of new construction, but other than that, we can afford this,” said Shawn Nettleton.

But not everyone is completely happy with the influx of people in Larimer County.

Shawn’s neighbor and friend Steve graduated from CSU and like many, has mixed emotions about the population boom.

“It is a little bit frustrating when you’re like ‘this should take half the time it takes,’ I mean we go down for the CU-CSU game anymore and you got to plan for twice the amount of time as you planned on beforehand,” said Steve Millison.

So we dug into the numbers for you, looking at jobs, housing and traffic.

State figures show Larimer County is expected to grow by more than 50 percent by 2040 from its current population of 316,000 people.

Figures provided by Larimer County officials show almost 5000 jobs have been added in the past year and unemployment is down overall in that time.

And in looking at housing, home prices are climbing too.

Figures from the Colorado Association of Realtors indicate people are paying more for homes and townhomes than they were a year ago in Larimer County.

Townhome prices are up almost 15 percent from a year ago.

And then we have traffic.

CDOT tells Denver7 it’s working on a road-widening project on I-25 from Fort Collins south to Johnstown in a project that is expected to relieve some of the traffic congestion.

Still, with more people and more traffic headaches, those like the Nettleton family tell Denver7, they wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

“It’s certainly worth living here, this is a great place to live,” said Shawn Nettleton.