Edwards/Miller Ranch/Homestead

Edwards is booming. You can tell from the hordes of little kids and teens bouncing around like excited electrons at Freedom Park skatepark, kicking soccer balls in the adjacent athletic fields, or somersaulting on the field house trampolines while their parents—entrepreneurs, restaurant owners, and resort workers who live in Miller Ranch (a deed-restricted affordable housing community of tidy single-family homes and modern loft condos with elementary, middle, and high schools within walking distance)—fly-fish in the burbling Eagle River, watch their dogs frolic in the pond of the off-leash area, or discuss their charming life at picnic tables outside Crazy Mountain Brewery over pints of hoppy Mountain Livin’ ale.

“Folks work hard and live down-to-earth, real lives,” says Edwards resident Josh Lautenberg of Engel & Völkers. “My family and I love our town.”

It’s easy to see why. Across the Eagle River from Miller Ranch, the Riverwalk pedestrian mall/Main Street—the commercial heart and soul of Edwards—bustles with boutiques, restaurants, cafés, bars, beauty salons, bike shops, bookstores, a gourmet grocery, a hotel, and a movie theater. In addition to the locals-only Miller Ranch enclave, riverside condos and tidy duplexes in the trendier/spendier hilltop community of Homestead lure Front Rangers looking for an out-of-the way place where they can, at least on the weekends, live charmed lives like Miller Ranch homeowner Kristen Green.

“I feel so lucky to be here and raise my family here,” says the marketing specialist at Colorado Mountain College, who walks home for lunch to check in on her kids at Miller Ranch Daycare or just take in the scenery on her stroll.

Stats
Number of active listings (at press time): 22/2/16
Active median home price: $1.69 million/$344,846/$950k
Number of homes sold in 2016: 18/31/9
Median price of homes sold here in 2016: $360k/$250k/$450k
Average number of days on the market: 106/8/75

Singletree

Opt for this Edwards semiprivate golf community (anchored by the Sonnenalp Club) if you want to exchange house keys with your neighbors, whom you’ll see running and walking daily along the neighborhood’s twisting country roads and who have lived just about everywhere in the valley only to finally put down roots here. Dotted with micro parks and multiple trailheads into thousands of acres of BLM scrubland, with Mediterranean-style villas carved out of arid hillsides with southern views of Arrowhead and New York Mountain (many backing to a 7,100-yard championship golf course), Singletree is home to locals like Don Zerangue, a real estate agent with Slifer Smith & Frampton who changed his address to Singletree in 1985.

“It’s a place where the residents know each other and watch out for one another,” he says. “On sunny late afternoons, you find neighbors chatting with each other while strolling around the streets. It’s a comfortable place to live with a country atmosphere.”

And a clubhouse updated with a new fitness club, debuting in June, along with a signature restaurant (formerly Balata) getting a celebrity chef makeover by Kelly Liken as a farm-to-table destination, approachably priced and aptly self-described as “our newest neighborhood gathering place.”

Stats
Number of active listings (at press time): 18
Active median home price: $1.28 million
Number of homes sold in 2016: 12
Median price of homes sold here in 2016: $937,500
Average number of days on the market: 172