Mapleton Hill

Mapleton Hill is the neighborhood people picture when they imagine moving to Boulder and getting it right: big trees, wide porches, and downtown close enough to walk to for dinner. It's a small area and it doesn't turn over often, so if you're looking here you're probably choosing between two or three houses rather than twenty. Here's what to weigh.

What it costs

A typical Mapleton Hill home was worth $1,325,859 in June 2026, down 1.4% year over year. Across the whole city the same index reads $972,493, so Mapleton Hill runs 36% above it.

That figure is a typical-value index rather than a sale price, which makes it a good way to compare one area against another and a poor way to decide what to offer on a particular house.

On renting: asking rents in ZIP 80302 ran $2,373 a month in June 2026. Zillow publishes rent by ZIP and not by neighborhood, and a Boulder ZIP covers areas that have very little in common, so read that as the going rate around Mapleton Hill rather than the going rate in it. It also tracks asking rents on new listings, which sit above what people already in a lease are paying.

Getting around from Mapleton Hill

Driving times below are free-flow, with no traffic, measured from the middle of the neighborhood. Treat them as the floor. The trip to Denver in particular is materially worse at rush hour, and the trip to campus can be slower than the map suggests once you add finding somewhere to put the car.

For context, the average Boulder resident's trip to work is 18.1 minutes and 17.5% of them walk or bike it (Census ACS 5-year 2024). The long commutes in this county belong to people who live outside Boulder and drive in. See cost of living for what running a car here adds up to.

Schools serving Mapleton Hill

• Elementary: Whittier Elementary School, 269 students in 2024-25.
• Middle: Casey Middle School, 363 students in 2024-25.
• High: Boulder High School, 1,939 students in 2024-25.

Two things to know before you rely on that. The attendance-area maps BVSD publishes were last updated between 2015 and 2018, so we used them to identify the schools and then checked each one against the federal school directory to confirm it is still open and to get the enrollment. And boundaries do move. Before you sign anything on the strength of a school, run your exact address through BVSD's own school locator.

Where these numbers came from

Pulled 2026-08-08. Housing figures move monthly, so re-check anything more than a quarter old.

• Zillow Research: the typical home value (neighborhood-level index) and the ZIP-level asking rent, both for June 2026.
• OSRM on OpenStreetMap data: free-flow driving times from the neighborhood centroid.
• USGS 3DEP: elevation at that same point.
• BVSD attendance-area layers for the assignment, and the NCES Common Core of Data 2024-25 directory to confirm each school is open and to get enrollment.
• Boulder County Assessor: the boundary this page measures from, valuation area 107 ("Mapletown Hill"). These are property-valuation boundaries, not legal or planning ones.

Who actually lives here

Established owners, a lot of them long-term, in a historic district where the houses turn over slowly. Fewer young families than the price alone would suggest, because the entry point rules most of them out.

The practical effect is a quiet street with not many children on it. That surprises people who assume a neighborhood this walkable and this close to good schools would be full of families. The entry price does the filtering.

The historic district, and what it means for your plans

Mapleton Hill is one of Boulder's ten designated historic districts. In practical terms that means every exterior change to your house goes through the city first, via a Landmark Alteration Certificate. Windows, siding, porches, roofing, additions, and anything else visible from outside. The inside is yours.

Plenty of owners here consider that a feature, because it's also what stops the house next door from being scraped and replaced with something three times the size. It does mean your renovation timeline and your renovation budget both need room in them for review, and that a contractor who hasn't worked in a Boulder historic district before will underestimate both. Ask the city's historic preservation staff what your specific project needs before you commit to a number.

What's genuinely inconvenient about Mapleton Hill

• Old houses cost more to run than they look like they should. These predate modern insulation, wiring and plumbing by a century. Some have been fully brought up to date and priced accordingly. Some have not, and the ones that have not are where the surprises live.
• You can't just do what you want to the outside. See above. If you're the kind of owner who likes changing things, this will chafe.
• Parking is a permit and a hunt. Houses built before cars mostly still have nowhere to put one. Mapleton is a permit zone.
• It's small and it rarely comes up. Waiting for the right house here can take a year or more, and there's no fallback street with the same feel at a lower price.
• The index is drifting down, not up. Off 1.4% over the year to June 2026. That's not a crash and it's not a bargain either.

Who Mapleton Hill actually suits

Buyers who want to walk downtown, who love old houses enough to maintain one properly, and who have the budget to do it without flinching. It also works well for people at a stage of life where a smaller, beautiful house near everything beats a bigger one further out.

If the walk to Pearl Street is the main draw but the price isn't workable, Whittier is the next street over in spirit and roughly 32% cheaper on the same index. North Boulder trades a few minutes of walking for more house.

Once you've picked a neighborhood

We stick to the moving-here part: what areas cost, who lives in them, and what the trade-offs are. For everything you'll actually do from Mapleton Hill once the boxes are unpacked, our sister sites go far deeper than we could here.

• Taste Boulder for restaurants, cafes and coffee, with menus and prices.
• Outdoor Boulder for trails, trailhead parking and seasonal access, plus the guide to acclimatizing if you're arriving from sea level.
• Boulder Things To Do for events, attractions, and Pearl Street.

Related guides

• All Boulder neighborhoods, compared side by side.
• Homes for sale in Boulder: what buying here involves.
• Cost of living in Boulder.
• Wildfire risk and insurance: older housing stock and what insurers make of it.
• The Boulder real estate market.

Mapleton Hill FAQ

Two more sources for this page

• City of Boulder, Landmarks and Historic Districts and Landmark Alteration Certificate review. Checked 2026-08-08.
• City of Boulder, Neighborhood Parking Permits: the 1993 start in Mapleton and University Hill. Checked 2026-08-08.