Business/Technology Reporter
The start of a new year means that what happened in the last 12 months is beginning to trickle out. And there is so much. In this edition of What’s Working, we’ll tackle the latest.
More than 1 million Colorado businesses in “good standing”
The number of folks filing to start a business last year helped push the total number in good standing above 1 million for the first time in state history.
But please note, “good standing” only means that the business has its filings up to date and not, as the Secretary of State’s Office points out, whether it’s reputable or “is operating illegally.”
That’s been a big issue in recent years and why Secretary of State Jena Griswold supported a 2022 state law to target business identity fraud. The result was launching a complaint form in February 2023 and working with the attorney general to identify fraudsters.
“We have now addressed and resolved more than 5,000 business fraud complaints,” Griswold said during a news conference this week.
While Colorado added 187,163 new businesses last year, the pace started slowing in the second half of 2025, according to the secretary’s fourth-quarter report put together by the University of Colorado-Boulder Leeds School of Business. Business renewals also declined while accounts deemed delinquent increased. And the number of companies actively dissolving their business declined 31.2% from a year earlier, dissolutions are at historically high levels.
Griswold said the changes may be an indicator “that folks are just feeling a little nervous about starting a new business during a period of economic uncertainty.”
>> See report
Colorado’s GDP
The state’s productivity, or GDP, improved to 4.6% in the third quarter from the second quarter, while the U.S. was 4.4%, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis on Friday. It will be a few more months until we know how the fourth quarter fared.
For Colorado to keep up with last year’s 2% growth rate, the fourth quarter would need to grow 1.6% from the prior year or be flat quarter-over-quarter, said economist Brian Lewandowski, with CU’s Business Research Division.
But the paradox of the state’s economy is that there’s been growth in Colorado GDP but weak job growth, he said.
“Interestingly, in Colorado, we peaked before the nation. We had a higher rate of unemployment that was the highest in May 2025 and we’ve seen it drifting downward,” he said. “This reflects an increase in the number of people employed and a decrease of people unemployed and a decrease in the labor force.”
Colorado’s last job report of 2025 will be out Tuesday.
How the housing market ended up
As previously reported, prices of for-sale homes were flat in Colorado and the Denver metro area last year compared with 2024. More houses hit the market, returning to 2022 levels, when prices peaked.
But the number of homes sold was down by 20% to 30% from that peak. In December, buyers who could afford a median-priced $560,000 home in the state or $599,900 in the Denver metro, skewed toward older, wealthier and existing home owners.
The missing market? First-time buyers who faced an average monthly mortgage payment that was twice the cost of renting. It’s been like this for a few years and the gap used to be worse for buyers two years ago.
And this week, we learned that more than 34,000 apartments in the seven-county Denver metro area sat empty at the end of the year, causing vacancy rates to rise to 7.6%, the highest in 16 years, according to the Apartment Association of Metro Denver. And average rents are back to where they were four years ago at $1,754 a month.
Meanwhile, concessions and incentives were showered on potential homebuyers and prospective renters. Sellers are covering closing costs and rate buy downs, while renters are offered an average of four to five weeks of free rent — or a 9.5% incentive off rent. Add those in and the so-called “effective rent” comes out to $1,585 a month. This chart shows how the value of concessions have increased in two years:
In other words, a growing number of would-be buyers are stuck renting, while landlords face a larger number of empty apartments.
But this isn’t a paradox. There are just more apartments. The Denver region added about 45,000 new units in three years. Since 2012, local renters leased about 10,000 to 11,000 more new apartments a year.
Last year, that net absorption was more than 14,000 units, and Scott Rathbun, president of Apartment Insights, doesn’t think we’re going back to that lower average. He believes that as multifamily developers step back from new projects, which is already seen in a shrinking construction pipeline, that’s going to hurt the future rental market.
“I think that Denver graduated to a different level of city at some point in the 2010s,” Rathbun said. “The base level of demand has increased … and if we regress to the mean, we’re going to probably fall back to around that 11,000 unit number. Right now, demand is higher. People clearly need housing.”
➔ ICYMI: Apartment vacancy in metro Denver reaches highest rate in 16 years, pushing down rents again >> Read story
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ Your Colorado Xcel bill is already going up amid the current winter storm. Here’s why. >> Read story
➔ Trump administration must keep funding Colorado’s poorest families, judge rules in temporary reprieve. Colorado uses the funding for its child care payment assistance program, cash assistance for families to buy basic needs and job training >> Read story
➔ Health insurance enrollment declines in Colorado, but not as much as feared. More than 270,000 people signed up for coverage through Connect for Health Colorado for 2026, but cancellations also spiked >> Read story
➔ How the Colorado legislature contributed to the state’s budget crisis. Nonpartisan staffers told lawmakers this month that the way they spent billions of dollars in one-time federal funds given to Colorado during the COVID pandemic contributed to the state’s budget shortfall >> Read story
➔ Downtown Denver’s office vacancy rate grows to 38.2% as tenants reimagine the workplace. Much of the downtown submarkets ended 2025 more than 40% empty. But as available sublease space diminishes, the industry hopes stabilization is afoot. >> Read story
➔ Denver Foundation accused of delaying funds for nonprofit that helps undocumented immigrants. The foundation decided Tuesday afternoon to approve the $80,000 in grants, which will help DACA recipients apply for work permits >> Read story
➔ Tariffs keep Colorado’s small businesses guessing, as state’s exports increase but imports fall. Trade with the state’s top three partners fell in the first 10 months of 2025, with Chinese imports dropping 25%. >> Read story
Colorado’s economy every week Get What’s Working in your inbox!
Reader polls: Junk fees
Nearly 500 people responded to last week’s reader poll about junk fees. Essentially, you don’t like them, though service charges at restaurants were by far the most annoying and getting 63% of the vote (though this excludes all the write-in reasons that picked “all of them”).
Others pointed out strange fees like the “Public Improvement Fee” at some Colorado Springs retailers. That’s a private fee developers charge to tenants to pay for property upkeep. And Colorado Springs isn’t alone. Shopping centers in Pueblo, Aurora, Johnstown and other areas charge PIFs. But it does look like some are getting rid of them like Glenwood Meadows in Glenwood Springs.
When asked if there were any fees you’re OK with, the response was pretty much zero.
“A gratuity is just that, showing gratitude,” said one commenter. “Demanding it is insane, add it to the total listed price if gouging is the goal!”
However, another person who didn’t leave their name said they owned a restaurant in Fort Collins. They got rid of the “kitchen appreciation fee” from the past owner and added the cost to the menu price. But here’s probably why those restaurant service fees will continue:
“Now customers have complained about higher prices. The prices are actually the same, but the psychology is different. It makes it challenging to do the ethically right thing (full transparency in pricing, no asterisk at the bottom to squeeze an extra 3%) when competitors know people will buy more if the prices look lower but they add an extra fee to make them equal.”
Take the new poll:
Other working bits
➔ 1 in 6 Colorado municipalities canceled a project due to budget cuts last year. And those budget cuts were due to reductions in state and federal funding, according to the 2026 State of Our Cities and Towns survey from the Colorado Municipal League, which represents 271 cities and towns in Colorado.
Larger cities along the Front Range said they felt worse about slowing growth that hurt tax revenues. Smaller communities felt 2025 treated them the same as 2024. Western Slope and mountain communities felt better about their economies in 2025. >> More to it
➔ Denver renters have second lowest “low urgency” rate to move. Finding a new apartment within 45 days, which is considered urgent, hasn’t been a big concern for Denver-area renters in the past year or so, according to a new analysis by ApartmentList. About 57.8% of area renters are looking for a new place but three months out, compared to 53.8% of renters nationwide. That ranked Denver the second lowest.
On the flip side, Denver’s rate was slightly higher in August, at 59%, which could mean “the recent increase in urgency could be an early indicator that market conditions are starting to shift,” according to the report. >> See where cities rank
➔Aims Community College’s new workforce center adds 3D builder. The Greeley college has been working with homebuilder Alquist 3D for a few years now. On Friday, Aims announced Alquist will be its first industry tenant at its new Aims Workforce Innovation Center. The AWIC will open later this fall and be the “first innovation incubator” in Weld County. Alquist, which builds homes on site with its proprietary 3D printer, signed a five-year lease. It plans to have between eight to 20 employees on site, as well as work with college students on the technology behind 3D concrete printing. >> Details
➔ 8 local organizations that provide job training to help Coloradans get good jobs. The eight are also recipients of $1.7 million in grants as part of the state’s Opportunity Now program, which launched in 2022 to help Coloradans get into “in-demand, high-skill, high-wage occupations.” The latest recipients and the their awards, according to the state Office of Economic Development and International Trade:
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Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. Back next week with a report from Sun rural-business reporter Tracy Ross, plus the December jobs report. Stay warm! ~ tamara
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