East Colfax

Pricing trends

East Colfax holds some of the lowest detached-home prices inside Denver, well below Lowry and Central Park next door, which draws first-time buyers and investors. Renovated ranches on the quieter southern blocks carry the premium; original homes and small apartment buildings offer the entry points. The Denver table below carries the citywide numbers.

Citywide figures for Denver. Source: Local Market Update, August 2026, REcolorado data compiled by the Colorado Association of REALTORS®. Neighborhood-level figures vary; ask me for comparables on any specific home. See all area tables.

About East Colfax

East Colfax is the neighborhood along Colfax Avenue between Lowry and the Aurora line, a mix of 1940s to 1960s houses, mid-century apartment courts and the motels and storefronts of the old highway. It is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Colorado, with immigrant families from Ethiopia, Mexico, Central America, Nepal and Burma, and it holds some of the lowest home prices inside Denver, two miles from the Anschutz Medical Campus.

Location

East Colfax runs from Quebec Street east to Yosemite Street, the Aurora line, and from Montview Boulevard south to 13th Avenue, with Lowry to the south, Central Park and Park Hill to the north and west and Original Aurora east across Yosemite. Colfax carries the city's busiest bus route, and the Anschutz Medical Campus is a short ride east.

History and background

East Colfax was prairie and farmland outside the city until Colfax Avenue became U.S. Route 40, the main highway east out of Denver, in the 1920s and 1930s. Motels, gas stations and diners lined the road, and the Lowry Air Force Base, opened in 1938 just south, brought the first housing demand to the blocks beside it.

The neighborhood was annexed and built out in the 1940s and 1950s with modest ranches and bungalows for the base's airmen and the workers of the post-war city, followed by the apartment courts of the 1960s. When Interstate 70 took the through traffic in the 1960s, Colfax's motels declined into the strip the city spent decades trying to revive.

Immigrant families began arriving in the 1980s and 1990s, drawn by low rents, and they made East Colfax the most international neighborhood in Denver, with the restaurants and markets that define it today. The closure of Lowry in 1994 and its rebuilding as a neighborhood, and the medical campus's growth across the Aurora line, have brought rising prices and new attention since the 2010s.

Housing and architecture

The streets hold 1940s to 1960s brick and frame ranches and bungalows on 50-foot lots, with 1960s and 1970s apartment buildings and courts along Colfax and the side streets near it. Much of the stock is original, and the neighborhood has seen renovation and new duplexes since the late 2010s as Lowry and Central Park prices rose around it. The East Colfax Community Collective works on preserving affordable homes and the mobile-home community near Yosemite.

Parks and recreation

Verbena Park and McNichols Park serve the neighborhood, with Lowry's Great Lawn and sports complex south across 11th Avenue and Central Park's parks and Bluff Lake to the north. The Westerly Creek and Sand Creek greenways are a short ride, and Fitzsimons' Montview Park is just east.

Dining, shopping and daily life

Colfax between Quebec and Yosemite is one of the metro's best stretches of international food, with Ethiopian, Mexican, Salvadoran, Nepalese and Vietnamese restaurants and markets. The Lowry Town Center and Hangar 2 are south, the Stanley Marketplace is east in Aurora, and groceries are at the markets along Colfax or the King Soopers at Lowry.