6-10-2026 Fountain of Youth, Family Surprises, and a Market That's Finding Its Balance

Let's start with the important stuff: I am a fantastic keeper of secrets. Ask anyone. I can hold onto someone else's news like a vault. So when I planned a surprise trip to Boston for my niece's graduation, I told exactly one person: my sister Lauren, because, well, I needed to tell someone. Lauren told my mom only because she had to leave to come get me, and apparently decided that was a bridge too far to lie across.

When I walked into my sister Jocelyn's house, Jocelyn saw me first. The look on her face was everything I came for. That moment alone was worth the flight. I hadn't seen my sisters since a quick February dinner before my mom and I went to Scotland last year, so this one hit differently.

My nephew is almost 20 and is heading to Singapore in August for a semester abroad, which is three months away and already sounds like the coolest thing any of us has ever done. In the meantime, he's doing an internship at an investment firm in Chicago, so he's clearly not wasting any time. It was fun catching up with him about it. My niece is heading to nursing school in the fall. Big chapters, both of them.

Watching them step into these moments made me reflective in that way that happens when you're standing next to people twenty-some years younger than you, and you realize how much road you've covered. I would not go back to being that age. Not for anything. You think you have all the time in the world, so you treat it accordingly, which is to say, carelessly. You waste spectacular amounts of energy on the wrong things. You make decisions from fear dressed up as confidence. And you're so self-conscious you can barely enjoy the room you're standing in.

I was shy in a way that made basic conversation feel like a performance. That shifted when I was 27 and opened my boutique in Georgetown, Colorado. You greet every person who walks through the door. You learn names. You ask questions. Somewhere in that repetition, you stop thinking about how you're coming across and start getting genuinely curious about other people, and that changes everything. I'd keep every single thing I've learned.


My body, for the record, is in genuinely great shape right now. CrossFit is working. The goals are tracking. But there are these small, annoying little flags starting to appear, a nerve thing in my leg, some eyesight stuff that wasn't there before, little reminders that whatever fountain of youth people keep referencing, I have not found it yet. If you have, please send directions.

Bridger started driver's ed this week. Sterling started camp and is thriving, which, if you know Sterling, is not the automatic outcome you'd assume. I am choosing to accept this gift without question.

This Week in Real Estate: On Being Misread, and Why It Didn't Break Me This Time

I'm going to be honest with you: I dealt with a significant stressor this week while I was away, and I can't get into the specifics. What I can tell you is that it involved being misread. Someone misinterpreted my actions, drew conclusions about my intentions that weren't accurate, and I had to sit with that from a few thousand miles away with nothing I could do about it in the moment.

Here's the thing. This used to wreck me. Being misunderstood, especially around my intentions or my integrity, would send me straight to that familiar pit in my stomach where I just wanted to implode. If you grew up feeling like people regularly got you wrong, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's a specific kind of awful.

This time was different. I didn't go to that place, or at least not the way I used to. I sat with it and I got to the other side of a thought I've been working toward for a while: I know my intentions. I act in integrity, in honesty, in the best way I know how. And if someone is going to see what they want to see regardless of what I actually do, that is genuinely a them problem. Not mine.

That's growth, I think. Uncomfortable, mid-vacation, stress-ball growth, but growth.

Outside of that, the work continues. If you're thinking about buying or selling a Colorado mountain home, or if you're an adult child helping a parent navigate a transition to assisted living, a move in with family, or managing an estate, I'd love to talk through what that process looks like before you're in the middle of it. You can reach me at 303-328-8800 or vmerchant@kw.com.

The Market: What the Numbers Are Actually Telling Us Right Now

Here's where things stand as of early June 2026.

The median residential sale price in the Denver metro hit $615,000 in May, up 2.24% from April and 2.5% from a year ago. Modest, real, steady appreciation. DMAR's data shows that from May 2017 to May 2026, the median sale price grew from $382,000 to $615,000, a 6% average annual increase that mirrors the market's long-run historical norm. The pandemic years felt like an anomaly, but zoom out and the slope looks pretty familiar.

Active inventory climbed to 12,259 homes in May, a 6.24% increase from the previous month, giving buyers more choices than they've had in recent years. Pending sales edged up 1.17%, suggesting buyers are still entering the market when the right opportunity shows up.

Mortgage rates remain the main friction point for both buyers and sellers. According to Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed averaged 6.48% as of June 4, down from 6.53% the week prior and a full 37 basis points lower than a year ago. The Mortgage Bankers Association expects rates to stay between 6.4% and 6.5% through the rest of 2026, while Fannie Mae projects something closer to 6.3% by year-end. Neither is a dramatic drop. If your plan depends on rates returning to the threes or fours, you need a different plan.

For sellers, the message hasn't changed: price it right from day one. Rising inventory means buyers have choices, and they're using them. They're doing more research, requesting inspections, and negotiating harder. The homes sitting on the market are the ones that launched with wishful pricing and have spent weeks chasing a number they should have started at. Get ahead of it.

For the Colorado mountain home specifically, add wildfire insurance costs and the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code to your planning list. Any roof replacement must use Class A fire-resistant materials. These aren't dealbreakers, but they're conversations to have early, not at the inspection table.

Steady market. Good time to have a plan.

Victoria Merchant | Realtor in Evergreen, Colorado Keller Williams Foothills Realty | Victoria Merchant Group 303-328-8800 | vmerchant@kw.com | victoriamerchantgroup.com