7-15-2026 Home from the Maritimes, Camper Van Wish List, and Finally Ready to Hire Help

My Week: Life Off the Road. We're home. We rolled back in Tuesday night after finishing the loop of our northeast coast road trip, Boston up to Halifax and Prince Edward Island, back down through Boston, and finally home to Colorado. There's a particular kind of tired that comes from two weeks in a van with your whole family, and there's a particular kind of happy that comes right after it, when you walk into your own kitchen and stand there for a second.

I eased back into real life Wednesday morning with CrossFit, sort of. I skipped the full class, which was a high-intensity cardio day, and did Build instead, a lower-body-focused class that felt like a much kinder way to shake off two weeks of sitting in a van seat. We're also several loads deep into laundry purgatory, and the well is full, which, after a summer of watching that number, counts as genuinely good news.

The van itself was the real story of the trip. We all loved it, cramped quarters and all, and skipping the onboard bathroom turned out to be no big deal since campsites had facilities. The one non-negotiable was electricity, since the fridge needs steady juice. We were also surprised by the gas mileage and how easy the thing was to park and drive around cities we'd never been to. Tag, who has historically been a camper van skeptic, is now a convert, which honestly might be the best souvenir of the whole trip.

Naturally, this led to us mentally shopping for our own van, and I'll be honest about what kind of shopper I am: I put things in the cart and let them sit there for months, sometimes forever. So, officially, we are in the "add to cart" phase. But we did come home with a real wish list: no onboard bathroom, but yes to an outdoor shower, yes to an onboard sink, no onboard stove since outdoor cooking works fine, lots of storage, a bed that runs front to back instead of sideways, the rooftop tent bed, a genuinely comfortable driver's seat with real legroom, swivel captain's chairs, blackout window covers, a good sized fridge, all wheel or four wheel drive, and a broom. A specific, non-negotiable broom.

Somewhere between Farkel, Bang, cards, and a random racket game we picked up at a Sierra Trading Post in New Hampshire, we also started planning the next trip: Hawaii. None of us have been except Tag, and he says Kauai reminds him a lot of Madeira, so that settled it. We're also trying to sneak in a family trip to Fire Island, which means I now have a mission to get my dad out to the States for a visit next year.

Stepping away for two weeks did what it always does for me: I came back with more energy than I left with, and a couple of new goals. Personally, I'm reining in my sweet tooth, which has been running the show for a while. Professionally, I've decided it's time to hire real help.

This Week in Real Estate: My Real Estate Life

I already have a virtual assistant who handles my socials, and Terri, who runs transaction coordination, and both of them are great. But I've been circling the idea of someone who actually sits next to me every day, and I've been dragging my feet on it because handing off any piece of my business has never come naturally to me.

A while back, I went through a full hiring process with three candidates, and none of them felt right, so I let it go. This trip changed something. Watching my kids on that road trip, playing cards and losing at Bang and negotiating for the front seat, made it hit home that the time I have left with them at this age is limited. I'd rather try to hire, have it not work out, and try again than look back and realize I spent those years chained to my desk instead of building something that gives me room to actually be there. So I'm restarting the search, and this time I'm not letting reluctance be the reason I don't.

The Market: What's Happening in the Denver Metro and Foothills Market

For the market update, I always turn to my friend Megan Aller, a title expert and stats guru at First American Title, who tracks this closer than almost anyone I know. Here's what she's seeing as summer rolls along.

The detached single-family market kept adding inventory this month. Sellers are staying active, which means buyers now have more choices, more negotiating power, and more time to make decisions than they've had in years. Even so, pricing has held up well, and homes that are priced correctly from day one are still attracting real interest. The homes that miss the mark on price are getting a lot less forgiveness from buyers than they used to.

Negotiations have become a normal part of nearly every deal. Price reductions, seller concessions, and creative incentives aren't the exception anymore; they're close to expected as sellers work to bridge affordability gaps and get buyers to the closing table.

The condo and townhome market is telling an even more buyer-friendly story. Inventory is elevated, fewer new listings came on compared to last month, and homes are sitting longer as buyers get pickier about condition, location, and price. Demand is steady, but this corner of the market still clearly favors buyers.

That pricing point isn't just a general trend, I checked it against our own local numbers. I pulled data from REColorado, my MLS, for Evergreen, Conifer, and Pine specifically. In the last 30 days, 67 homes sold across those three towns. The ones that needed a price reduction along the way took a median of 74 days to sell and closed at under 91% of their original list price. The ones priced right from the start, no reduction needed, sold in a median of just 8 days and closed at a median of 99.1% of list price. Concessions told the same story: homes with no price reduction had a median concession of $1,500, while homes that needed a price reduction had a median concession of $2,850. That gap says it all: price your home correctly from the beginning, and you sell faster, for more money, with fewer weeks of carrying costs eating into what you walk away with.

If you're thinking about moving to Colorado, weighing a move to a Colorado mountain home, or wondering what it would take to sell a home in Evergreen, Conifer, or anywhere else in the foothills right now, the short version is this: pricing strategy matters more than ever, and the days of just putting a sign in the yard and waiting are over. If you're navigating downsizing a parent's longtime home or managing an estate sale in this market, that's exactly the kind of transition I help families through, and I'm always happy to talk it through with you.

One general note on the wider picture: mortgage rates this week were sitting in the mid 6% range across most sources (Bankrate had the 30 year average at 6.59% on July 15, Freddie Mac had it at 6.49% as of July 9), and Denver metro's median detached home price was reported around $675,000 in June, continuing a slow climb since spring, per reporting from the Denver Gazette. These are broader regional numbers rather than foothills-specific, so treat them as general context rather than a precise read on any one town.

Thinking about a move, a sale, or navigating a parent's estate in the Colorado foothills? Reach out, I'd love to help.