Denver Transplants and Home Bidding Wars

According to a new report, transplants have a built-in advantage over locals in bidding-war scenarios.

Why? Because they have more money to spend.

The study by the real-estate website Redfin found that out-of-towners — specifically people who move to Colorado from other states for new jobs, new opportunities or lifestyle upgrades — often have larger budgets for big-ticket items such as houses because they earned higher salaries in their old hometowns, and may have extra cash from selling their previous abodes.

The challenge is particularly acute in Denver, which had the eighth-largest disparity of spending power between transplants and locals of the major U.S. metros analyzed by Redfin. As of June, the site calculated the average maximum budget for home shoppers from Denver at…