Note From Nilmini: Your Five-Year Vision
During another jaw-droppingly gorgeous weekend in Denver where the leaves continued to shine with their stunning golds and oranges against a CO blue sky, I went for a long walk with my love. Typically, we stay in our neighborhood of Park Hill, but we had the gift of time, so we looped City Park which is my favorite park in Denver. Besides having a shimmering lake and the best view in Denver from the top of the steps outside the Museum of Nature and Science (if you know, you know), it is filled with a huge diversity of people. Families drive in to bbq for the day, millennials play all sorts of “sports ball” or relax in hammocks while people of all shades and shapes walk, run and bike around them. I love living in such proximity to it! Sometimes, when walking around the lake, I am lucky enough to have a moment with the elephants at the Zoo and I pretend I am back home in Sri Lanka, where seeing elephants in daily life is quite normal.
On this walk, we started talking about whether we see ourselves staying in Park Hill. If you are a regular reader, you know the challenges that I have spoken openly about, most having to do with the neighborhood becoming overwhelmingly homogeneous and blindingly white. The gist was this - we love inter-twining our roots with my husband’s father’s family who lived in Park Hill for generations. We love the huge leafy trees that are over 100 years old, the wide streets, the parkways, and the neighborhood restaurants, coffee shops, and wine bars that we can easily walk or bike to. We love living in a beautiful old neighborhood with a rich history. Someday, we will downsize but for now, we decided that we would stay in Park Hill.
We had fun dreaming and visioning what our life could be as empty nesters, and we never once talked about restraining or shaping our vision because of interest rates, home values or the projected prices! These factors will impact our decision when the time comes, but they are not what drives us to move towards the future we want to co-create. I believe that we are not alone in this. We move from one home to the next, buy a second home, or begin to build a real estate investment portfolio when it makes sense because of our life journey.
The Q3 numbers speak to this idea in a nuanced way. Across all metro areas, median prices dropped from the previous quarter - Denver went down 2.5% and Boulder dipped down 3.4% while the mountains saw double digit price appreciation! Telluride lead the pack with a 26% increase, Crested Butte followed closely at 22%, and Vail came in third at 17%. It appears that the mountain lifestyle remains a major attraction for people considering living in CO.
I can’t predict where our family will be in the next 5 – 10 years, as much as I can’t predict what will be happening in the real estate market in the future. So, I am taking steps each day to bring us closer to our family’s desired vision for OUR life. Friends, what would you do differently today, with your 5-year dream life in clear view? What is the life you will be living with purpose, intention, and joy? I’d love to hear about your plans and explore how I may help you get closer to achieving them.
