Living in Colorado

The rarest kind of residence is about to hit the market in Denver: less-expensive condos around the newly redeveloped Union Station area.

And you only have to win a lottery to buy one.

The condos in question are on prime real estate as part of a new building, The Coloradan, overlooking the city’s main transit hub. There are 33 of them in total, and they’re set aside for people making certain incomes.

“Short and simple, I would say, it’s the right thing to do. When we set out to build The Coloradan, we viewed it as an inclusive community,” said Brad Arnold, the building’s vice president of sales and marketing.

Demand is likely to be very high, so the building’s owner and management will hold “unbiased, random” lotteries on June 19 to determine who gets the first chance to buy the units.

These kinds of lotteries can attract hundreds of even thousands of buyers. In San Francisco, an apartment building recently got 6,580 applications for just 95 apartments. The building owner already has about 360 people who have said they’re interested.

“I think we’ll literally draw it out of a hat,” Arnold said. (He didn’t know what kind of hat they’d use, he said.)

In order to buy one of the condos, buyers will have to prove that they make between 50 and 95 percent of the city’s area median income — a maximum of about $60,000 for a single person or $76,950 for a family of three.

If you’re hoping to apply, you’ll need to submit a letter from a lender by June 15. So, you probably want to get moving.

Visit The Denverite for more information and to see what's for sale!