Just as small municipal market statistics can be skewed by a particularly top heavy or an especially light year, so too can individual segments of those broader, if still small, markets. Country Club Estates, the Fontana stalwart that fills many holes in the market for those seeking a Fontana vacation home with adequate, but not impressive, lake access, is made up of three primary segments. First, there is the high end of Country Club. These homes ring the bluff along Arrowhead, some border the Abbey Harbor, and still others are at the bottom stretch of Shabbona, nearest the lake. They also huddle on the southern end of Tarrant, where new homes of high value are for some reason built nearest the only active railroad tracks within ear shot of Geneva Lake. But this is just one segment inside that cartoonish castle entrance.
The bottom of the Country Club market makes up much of the bottom of the broader Lake Geneva vacation home market with it. There are homes in Country Club that can be bought in the $150ks, and those homes with lake access are among the cheapest lake access homes in the entire market. Those economical vacation homes are not relegated to a particular street, instead they are scattered along Waubun and up Featherstone and around other corners as well. These are an important homes for our market, as not every buyer seeks to spend millions to secure their extremely satisfying piece of the Lake Geneva pie.
The rest of Country Club makes up the meat and potato portion of this fine lake access association. We’ll consider that middle range to consist of homes priced from $225k to $500k, and this is where CCE is most comfortable. This is also where CCE provides quality inventory in a price range that affords mostly low quality in the broader vacation home setting. That isn’t to say a $500k home in the Harvard Club isn’t extremely high quality. The proximity is, the slip is, the idyllic setting absolutely is, but the home itself? Not so much. CCE allows for a home buyer to purchase a quality home in that price range to a degree that most other lake access associations cannot offer.
2011 was a fine year for Country Club. There were 12 total sales ranging in price from $149k to $840k. Three of the sales were over $500k, two were under $200k, and the rest fell into that prime slot where CCE shines. I sold one of those homes this year, a fine ranch on Featherstone with higher end finishes for $335k. There were 10 sales here in 2010, with two sales again under $200k, and not a single sale over $500k. 2009 saw 13 closings, with just one sale under $200k and again not a single large sale exceeding $500k. Looking back to the peak of 2006, a year that found me both younger and far more handsome and as of then sporting a still intact lower back, there were 17 sales.
With the benefit of that historical context, we can see that CCE had a fair year, but not a spectacular one. This movement is in line with that I saw for the market before this year began: a stable plod forward, not sexy and not dire, but stable and solid and safe. I refuse to give average or median values for a small market association, and anyone who does so and cites those valuations as a making of a trend should be ignored. CCE is priced around 30% off peak value for most offering much like the broader market, and that is as far as the pricing discussion needs to go.
Entering 2012 there are 22 active listings in Country Club. There are two priced under $200k and five priced over $500k. The inventory is obviously a bit top heavy, and there is plenty of sucker pricing here. Expect to see sales here on par with 2011, so long as stock market indexes hover somewhere within 10% of current levels. If you’ve been reading me for quite some time, you know we don’t need increased stock market valuations in order to fuel real estate sales here, we just need to maintain values. I think the price declines of the past three years are mostly over, though it wouldn’t be a surprise to see certain properties sell for certain prices that represent extreme value. As always, most of those values will be found in homes that need significant updating or those that are owned by an anxious bank. The value will be there, if only you knew someone who could help you find it…
Photography by Matt Mason Photography