Pull up listings in The Broadlands in Broomfield and Legacy Ridge in Westminster side by side and they read like the same neighborhood wearing two different zip codes. Both are built around a public 18-hole golf course anyone can book a tee time on. Both mix custom estates with more modest ranch homes. Both post median sale prices in roughly the same band, with Broomfield's citywide median landing around $682,000 over the three months ending June 2026, up 6.2% from a year earlier, and The Broadlands specifically pricing a touch higher at a median of $742,242 that same month, up 14.2% year over year. A buyer cross-shopping the two would be forgiven for treating them as financially interchangeable.
They are not. And the difference has nothing to do with the golf.
The bill hiding behind the sticker price
Both courses are municipally operated public facilities. The Broadlands Golf Course markets itself as a premier public course in Broomfield, and Legacy Ridge Golf Course is run directly by the City of Westminster. Neither requires a private club initiation fee to access, so the golf amenity itself is not what separates the cost of ownership between these two neighborhoods.
What separates them is a taxing mechanism most buyers never think to ask about: the metro district.
The Broadlands sits inside Broadlands Metropolitan District No. 2, a special taxing district created to finance the infrastructure and amenities that came with the community's development. According to Broomfield's own certified mill levy filings, that district's total mill levy stood at 115.376 mills in an earlier certification and had climbed to 124.191 mills by the most recent filing on record, dated December 31, 2025. Meanwhile, Broomfield's own city and county portion of the tax bill, the piece the city council actually controls, has sat flat at 28.969 mills since 2001. The city rate has not moved in over two decades. The Broadlands' effective rate has kept climbing anyway, because the district layered on top of it has not stood still.
A Broomfield homeowner's city and county tax rate has not changed since 2001. A Broadlands homeowner's total mill levy climbed nearly nine mills in the space of one certification cycle.
Legacy Ridge tells the opposite story. It sits in an older, fully built-out pocket of Westminster with no metro district attached to it at all. Jefferson County's own property tax data puts Westminster's effective rate at approximately 0.46%, the lowest of any city in the county, below even the countywide median of roughly 0.51% to 0.56%. There is no bond debt being serviced through an extra layer of mills, because there was never a district formed to issue that debt in the first place.
What this actually means in dollars
Property tax math in Colorado runs through a few moving parts, actual value, an assessment rate set by the state, and the mill levy set by whatever taxing authorities overlap your parcel, so no single number tells the whole story for any specific address. But the gap between these two neighborhoods is large enough to show up clearly even in a rough comparison.
Take a $700,000 home in each place, purely as an illustration:
| Legacy Ridge (Westminster) | The Broadlands (Broomfield, in-district) | |
|---|---|---|
| Golf course | Public, city-operated | Public, municipally marketed |
| Taxing structure | No metro district | Broadlands Metropolitan District No. 2 |
| Approximate effective property tax rate | ~0.46% (lowest in Jefferson County) | Broomfield citywide runs ~0.68%; in-district parcels typically land above that average |
| Illustrative annual tax on a $700,000 home | ~$3,220 | ~$4,760 or more |
| City/county mill levy trend | Set by Jefferson County and Westminster | Broomfield's own portion frozen at 28.969 mills since 2001, but district total rose to 124.191 mills |
That back-of-envelope math puts the annual gap at roughly $1,500, or about $125 a month, before accounting for the fact that a Broadlands parcel inside the metro district is very likely taxed above Broomfield's own citywide average rate, not at it. The district's 124.191 combined mills already run well past what a comparably valued home outside any special district would owe.
None of this makes The Broadlands a worse buy. Metro district financing is how a lot of Colorado's newer master-planned communities pay for the infrastructure, roads, water lines, and amenities that make the neighborhood function, spreading the cost across the homeowners who benefit from it rather than the whole city. It is a trade, not a penalty. But it is a trade a buyer should be pricing in on purpose, not discovering after the first tax bill arrives.
The question worth asking before you write an offer
If you are looking at a home inside any Broomfield metro district, not just Broadlands, there is a document you are entitled to see before you get too far into a deal. Broomfield's metro districts each file a Service Plan describing the district's purpose, its authority to issue debt, and how its mill levy is structured, and that plan is a matter of public record with the Broomfield City Clerk's Office. Ask your title company or the listing agent to confirm which district, if any, attaches to the specific parcel, and pull the current mill levy certification for that district rather than relying on a citywide average. A five-minute records check tells you more about your real carrying cost than any listing description will.
A few things worth checking specifically:
- Whether the district's mill levy includes an active bond fund line, since that is the piece most likely to shift year to year as debt gets serviced
- Whether the district's levy has been trending up or flat over its last two or three certifications
- Whether the home's HOA dues (a separate line item from the district tax) already cover amenities the metro district also taxes for, which can mean paying twice for overlapping services in some communities
A few direct answers
Does a higher mill levy mean the neighborhood is a worse value? Not inherently. It means the neighborhood financed its infrastructure differently, usually through district bonds paid down over years rather than through developer costs baked directly into the home price. The question is whether you are comfortable with that ongoing carrying cost relative to what the home itself offers.
Will The Broadlands' district levy keep climbing? The two most recent certifications on file show an increase, from 115.376 to 124.191 mills. Whether that continues depends on the district's outstanding bond schedule and its own board's future budget decisions, which is exactly why pulling the current Service Plan and the latest certified mill levy before you write an offer matters more than assuming next year looks like this year.
How do I find the mill levy for a specific address I'm considering? Broomfield publishes its certified mill levies by district, updated annually, and Jefferson County publishes comparable data for Westminster and the rest of the county. Your title company will also confirm the applicable taxing districts as part of the closing process, but reviewing it before you're under contract gives you more room to negotiate or walk away if the number surprises you.
Two neighborhoods, two golf courses, two very different answers to a question most portals never ask. If you are weighing The Broadlands against Legacy Ridge, or any other West Denver neighborhood where a metro district might be quietly doing the heavy lifting on your tax bill, that is exactly the kind of detail worth working through before you fall in love with a listing photo.
Audrey Michel can walk you through the actual taxing districts attached to any home you're considering in Broomfield, Westminster, or the surrounding West Denver suburbs. Call or email Audrey to talk through what a specific address will really cost you to own.
