Living in Longmont, CO

Boulder County

Longmont is a real, independent Boulder County city with its own separate civic and economic identity -- not a Boulder neighborhood or a satellite suburb riding on Boulder's name, even though the two share a county and a highway corridor. Founded in 1871 as the Chicago-Colorado Colony, an agricultural settlement along the St. Vrain River, Longmont's roughly 100,000-104,000 residents (sources disagree by about 4,000 depending on whether the City of Longmont's own official estimate or a third-party aggregator is used) live in a city with a genuinely more attainable housing market than Boulder -- a real, disclosed relative claim, not an absolute one: Longmont's median sale price runs in a $480K-$575K band depending on source, date, and ZIP code, well below Boulder's roughly $915,000 median, but still meaningfully above the ~$408,776-$431,400 national benchmark used elsewhere in this dataset's Colorado coverage, so this is not a nationally cheap market either. Longmont's clearest, best-documented economic anchor is Seagate Technology's Longmont campus, employing more than 1,500 people, part of a broader tech, aerospace, biotech, and satellite-imaging employer mix that local economic-development sourcing describes qualitatively but that this research pass could not fully quantify beyond the Seagate figure -- disclosed as a real but partially unverified claim rather than inflated. St. Vrain Valley School District, headquartered in Longmont, ranks a genuinely strong #14 among Colorado's school districts (#5 in the Denver metro specifically) per Niche's 2026 rankings. A structurally important, well-documented hazard sets Longmont apart from Boulder and Fort Collins in this dataset: the September 2013 Colorado floods hit the city directly via St. Vrain Creek, which burst its banks and pushed water into neighborhoods outside the mapped floodplain, destroyed 6 of the city's 7 raw water sources, and caused nearly $150 million in city infrastructure damage alone -- real, primary-sourced, dated flood history, not a generic risk statement. Crime data genuinely diverges here across three sources: NeighborhoodScout reads Longmont as having one of the higher crime rates in America (driven mainly by property crime), CrimeGrade reads its violent-crime rate as average-to-better-than-state-average, and DoorProfit assigns an A- overall safety grade -- all disclosed rather than resolved into one verdict. Like the rest of the Front Range, Longmont carries real hail-driven homeowners insurance costs and tornado risk from its Eastern Plains-adjacent position, not the hurricane exposure covered elsewhere in this dataset.

Explore Longmont in depth

• Moving to Longmont: Pros, Cons & What to Know
• Cost of Living in Longmont
• Housing Market in Longmont
• Buying a Home in Longmont
• Renting in Longmont
• Taxes in Longmont
• Homeowners Insurance & Natural Hazard Costs in Longmont
• Climate & Weather in Longmont
• Jobs & Economy in Longmont
• Schools in Longmont
• Crime & Safety in Longmont
• Healthcare in Longmont
• Traffic & Transportation in Longmont
• Best Areas to Live in Longmont
• Pros and Cons of Living in Longmont
• Retiring in Longmont
• Who Should / Shouldn’t Move to Longmont

Housing

Taxes

The tradeoffs

Who this fits

Best for: Families and professionals who want a real, separate Boulder County city identity and a strong-ranked school district (St. Vrain Valley) at a genuinely more attainable price point than Boulder itself, plus tech-sector workers drawn to Seagate Technology's large Longmont campus or the city's broader, less precisely quantified tech/aerospace/biotech employer mix.

Maybe not for you if: Buyers expecting Boulder's university-town cachet or a nationally "cheap" housing market should recalibrate -- Longmont is a genuinely separate city with its own identity, not a discount version of Boulder, and its median home price still runs meaningfully above the national benchmark even though it undercuts Boulder specifically; buyers who weight crime-data safety scores heavily should review NeighborhoodScout's, CrimeGrade's, and DoorProfit's genuinely conflicting reads for a specific address before deciding; anyone buying near St. Vrain Creek or in a formerly flood-affected area should independently confirm current FEMA floodplain status given the city's real, documented 2013 flood history.