♦ IN MEMORIAM
1969 – 2026
Founder, The Lofthus Group

Remembering

Chris Lofthus

Chris passed unexpectedly in June 2026.

The tribute below is offered in his memory by those who knew him well — through his real estate business and the community that grew up around it.

I met Chris Lofthus not long after he brought his family from San Diego to Boise 20 years ago. In my first meeting with Chris, it didn’t take long to understand what made him different.

Before real estate, Chris had been a PGA golf professional — a career that took him to pro shops and club operations in Washington and Nevada, where he learned how to read a room, turn around a struggling operation, and lead a team.

He carried those lessons into the Treasure Valley and set about building what would become The Lofthus Group, a residential real estate practice that would grow to serve buyers and sellers across Boise, Eagle, Meridian, Nampa, and well beyond.

Chris repeatedly framed real estate the way he framed golf: as a discipline where preparation, tactics, and — above all — relationships determine the outcome.

His company mission emphasized “a spirit of collaboration, innovation, and integrity,” a team-based representation model, and treating the brokerage as “a lifestyle company committed to informing and connecting clients globally.”

He used to say that success — in life and in business — starts with a great connection. In the years that followed, he showed it.

Chris became one of the more visible faces of Treasure Valley real estate during the market’s recovery and boom years, and he did it by being genuinely useful to people, not just to his own clients.

He hosted The Real Estate Radio Show with Chris Lofthus every Saturday on KIDO 580 AM, bringing on title officers, lenders, builders, and fellow agents to talk through what was really happening in the market — a platform he used to lift the whole community, not just himself.

He appeared on KTVB as a market commentator and was never afraid to offer an honest read.

When Boise was earning national attention as a real estate boomtown, Chris was the one telling reporters that while the numbers were good, the overheated market of 2005 was nothing to wish back — because families had gotten into homes they couldn’t afford.

That kind of measured voice was rare. His company mission said it plainly: a spirit of collaboration, innovation, and integrity. Anyone who dealt with him knew he meant it.

The clients who worked with Chris described him the same way: available night or day, direct even when the truth was inconvenient, and willing to go to bat for whoever he was representing.

I watched him build The Lofthus Group on a team-based model that treated the brokerage as a lifestyle company — one committed not just to closing deals but to connecting people with a place they could build a life in.

A key part of that success was his partnership with Gerri Kelley, a native Idahoan and seasoned broker who brought deep local knowledge and steadiness to everything the group did. Together, Chris and Gerri made The Lofthus Group something greater than either could have built alone.

For more than a decade he was among the busiest and most respected names in Treasure Valley real estate, earning it one relationship at a time. I had the privilege of partnering with him on the digital side of that work — building and rebuilding the company’s website over the years, helping establish its online presence as Chris’s reputation grew. Every version of that site was an attempt to put into pixels what Chris already embodied in person.

But the numbers were never really the point with Chris, and the website was never the man. What I’ll carry forward is the person away from the deals — quick with a laugh, generous with his time, happiest with people he cared about or our times at the Idaho Steelheads games.

Over the years we shared countless coffee meetings and informal gatherings and laughter with his circle of associates and friends, and those conversations said more about him than any transaction ever could.

He treated his clients like neighbors and his neighbors like friends, and a remarkable number of both became exactly that. The Treasure Valley real estate community — and everyone lucky enough to call him a friend — is smaller without him. He will be missed.