Luke Teater

Luke Teater is the inaugural Senior Research Fellow at the University of Denver's Center for Housing Research and Innovative Solutions (CHRIS), where he leads applied research on housing markets, development feasibility and finance, and policy simulation. His work examines how zoning, taxes, and financing shape what gets built, where, and at what cost. 

Luke worked with Terner Labs to bring its Housing Policy Simulator to Colorado and to DU and contributed to the simulator's first Colorado application, a 2025 DU study of parking minimums in Denver. He has also contributed to CHRIS's research on how building codes affect the cost and feasibility of middle-density housing. His other recent work includes research showing that Denver's apartment construction boom lowered rents across the market, with the largest declines in buildings most likely to house lower-income renters. He has also written and presented on property tax reforms and land value taxation and their effects on housing supply and affordability. Luke also helped design Colorado's Proposition 123, which created a dedicated state funding stream of more than $300 million a year for affordable housing, much of it directed to innovative new financing programs including public equity investments, financing for modular housing factories, and land banking. 
 

Before founding his consulting practice, Thrive Economics, he was Chief Economist and Deputy Director for Tax and Economic Development at the Colorado Governor’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting, where he led the administration’s economic and revenue forecasting and advised the Governor on fiscal and economic development policy. He began his career as a quantitative consultant in Washington, DC, forecasting credit risk and subsidy costs for federal lending programs and serving clients including HUD, FHFA, the U.S. Treasury, the Departments of Energy and Agriculture, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.