Thornton, Colorado.
Typical home $489,037 (-2.1% in a year), asking rent $1,894 (-0.4%). Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,193 (+87%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $10,476 -2%
- $499,513$489,037 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $19,653 +4%
- $469,383$489,037 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Thornton$2,567
- Colorado$2,777
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 84 years.
Typical home values in Thornton, CO fell 2.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Thornton, CO fell 0.4% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Thornton runs $1,446/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $1,724 in Oct 2023.
That is $3,340 a month against $1,894 rent: a $2,567 mortgage payment, plus $249 property tax and $524 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Thornton
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$3,340
- Renting$1,894
- Mortgage only$2,567
Property tax · $249/mo 0.61% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Adams County, CO
Insurance & upkeep · $524/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Thornton, Adams County, Colorado
Thornton is a city of 141,867 people in Adams County. Half its households earn more than $103,088 a year and half less, against $94,571 across Adams County; 7% of its people live below the poverty line. 71% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 29% are rented. Unemployment in Thornton was 4.6% in August 2026, and Adams County had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then shops.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Thornton is a large suburban city in Adams County, north of Denver, with a population that skews younger than much of the country. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and household incomes run above the county's, with relatively few residents living below the poverty line. Winters are cold and snowy, with a good deal of snow each year, while summers turn hot, and the year brings little rain.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in professional and business services, and in the building trades. The largest workplaces in Thornton include Adams 12 Five Star Schools, North Suburban Medical Center and Walmart. Commutes are fairly long, and a fair number of people work from home. Unemployment has edged up over the past year, and job growth across the county has been close to flat.
Things to do. A short drive away, Dick's Sporting Goods Park is a stadium, and Clear Creek and Sand Creek are rivers where people can walk and spend time outdoors. A longer drive takes you into Denver, where Empower Field at Mile High and Coors Field are stadiums and the Denver Art Museum is one of the better known museums in the region.
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- 50,566households
- 33%of adults have a degree
- 7%below the poverty line
- 30 mintypical commute
- 15%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Adams County had 249,734 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 48° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 91° and lows near 59°. About 45 inches of snow and 15 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Northglenn weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Thornton
- Adams 12 Five Star SchoolsSchool district4,678FTE
- Murphy Company (Colorado)Mechanical contractors600
- North Suburban Medical CenterGeneral hospital577FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters448
- American Furniture WarehouseFurniture stores417
- Costco WholesaleWholesale grocer339
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters328
- AmazonCouriers and express delivery services264
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 54 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 7,489 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- HailRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Lightningrelatively high in parts of ThorntonRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Thornton’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Adams County and the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO metro.
Thornton home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Thornton$489,037
- Colorado$529,013
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Thornton listings, and the typical home goes pending in 31 days — the market is cooling.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Thornton38.63%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Thornton31
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Thornton616
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Thornton180
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Thornton$502,149
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Thornton99.67%
Zip codes with a Thornton address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Thornton — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Thornton
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80229 | Denver | 55,092 | $1,633 | $412,771 |
| 80233 | Denver | 48,441 | $1,652 | $456,249 |
| 80602 | Brighton | 44,783 | $2,934 | $635,104 |
| 80241 | Thornton | 34,082 | $1,921 | $502,714 |