Ahh, the mid range. A range that, when you think about it, would be considered high end for most Midwestern Lakes. Lake Geneva has a way of doing that. It gladly takes your seemingly robust budget of, say, $500k, and turns it into a swift kick in the pants without even a door prize for your efforts. While lakefront on Geneva cannot be bought for this sort of figure, lake access homes can be, and I’d be the first in line to argue that a solid lake access home with terrific proximity to the lake is about as good of a replacement of a true lakefront home as one can find anywhere. I’d also go as far as to say that I’d rather have a lake access home at Geneva for $500k than a lakefront home on another lake for the same price. But that’s not just me, that’s actually exactly what ended up happening with one of my cherished customers from 2010.
I met this particular couple on a blistering Saturday positioned dead center of Memorial Day weekend. This couple, the heads of a young northwestern-suburb based family with several children in the fold, were armed with a lust for a vacation home and more than prepared to part with $500k of their hard earned money in order to find the weekend lifestyle that they so badly desired. Without a particular connection to Geneva, we started their search on the lesser lakes (puddles) of Mary and Elizabeth, where $500k buys a private lakefront home. We looked at those homes. We marveled at their large lots and private piers. We poked and we prodded, and we looked behind cupboard doors. After we did this, we went to Lake Geneva. Pulling up to Lake Geneva meant we were no longer looking at lakefront homes, but it also meant we had graduated to the grown up lake. Sorry Mary and Elizabeth, I find you less than captivating.
We kicked around Geneva for a couple hours, before finally deciding on a vintage cottage in the Lake Geneva Club that had just come to the market that same week. We negotiated what I thought was a real attractive deal, and on June 30th I passed this new Lake Geneva owner on the lake, me in my boat, they in theirs, and the vast aquatic playground beneath our hulls, ready to provide all the fun any young family could ever want. This couple paid $505k for their vacation home, and this sale was one of many in the middle market price range of $500k to $750k at Lake Geneva.
I was fortunate to broker four of the sales in this particular segment of our market, and those sales at the Lake Geneva Club, Harvard Club, Belvidere Park, and Hunt Club Lane were all sales that I was humbled to help close. Buyers in this price range generally look for boat slips, and three of my sales had slips, with only the Belvidere Park sale lacking (apparently a buoy was open). This market segment had 6 total sales during 2010 (not including the Harvard Club, as it closed for $475k), with these other sales occurring in Knollwood, Geneva Manor, Valley Park, and another in the Lake Geneva Club. It should be noted that the two sales in the Lake Geneva Club most likely occurred when they did as a result of a long standing pier issue having finally been resolved- a resolution that resulted in each home possessing a newly transferable boat slip.
Of those sales, the only one leaving me a touch befuddled is the sale in the Geneva Manor. The Manor can support that value, but the home in question didn’t inspire me, and without a slip or anything particularly special about the home, I didn’t like the sale. The Knollwood home was large and beautiful, which made up for the lack of a slip or view. The other properties were solid, and I loved every last one of them. I only wish there had been more.
The fact is, there probably would have been more sales if we had more inventory. Much like Cadillac will never run out of 74 year old men to sell DeVille’s to, the Lake Geneva vacation home market will never run out of buyers for $500k homes with slips. Take the slip away and that sale become a bit difficult, but with a slip, consider that bread toasted and buttered. 2011 looks to be a good year for this particular market, as long as the inventory is ample enough to provide buyers in this category the choices that they desire. Of the 14 vacation homes currently available in this price range, properties in the Lake Geneva Club and Glenwood Springs look like they might be sold during the spring season, and with added inventory with sub $750k asking prices and boat slips should be well received by the market. This price range is financed more often than the lakefront segment here, but cash purchases still make up more than half of these sales. All that to say this- these are affluent buyers, even if in the context of the lofty Geneva price brackets these sales might look a bit less impressive. Rest assured, anyone buying a vacation home for $500k is plenty rich to have their faces on the dartboards behind the doors of both Obama’s and Quinn’s offices.