You at a desk, three years ago. Your job, to chart a recovery plan for the South Shore Club. You’d need some paper, a pen. Maybe a pencil. Some coffee. A snack. Nothing salty, but something. You’d need to figure out how to generate volume, so that new buyers could see an established history of meaningful sales activity. Then, you’d need to liquidate the 10 or so remaining, developer owned lots. After that, you’d sit back and look at your paper, with these two notes, some crumbs, a ring where your coffee cup rested. Then, you’d need to rid the club of a few of the upside down owners, some of the weaker hands that through naivety or difficulty and just bad luck found themselves in a bit of trouble. This would need to be your three point plan. Create sales volume that would establish a trusted price range. Sell the remaining lots. Remove any financially troubled ownership. Three goals, three lofty, potentially unrealistic goals, and one mostly eaten cookie. This was three years ago.
It was three years ago because that’s when the developing group of the South Shore Club called me. They wanted to know what to do, how to do it, and they figured that the guy who wrote some damning bits about the South Shore Club just might be the guy to do it. If you’ve been reading along, which I hope you have, you know what happened from that day until this one. The South Shore Club accomplished every one of those goals, culminating with the sale that I just closed on Friday of a foreclosure at lot 33. Since January of 2012, I have sold four built homes in the South Shore Club, sold 9 vacant lots, and moved one foreclosure and one short sale. The sales have been established, the inventory cleared, the trouble spots scrubbed clean. The reality of what has happened here is that in 35 months we’ve taken a club with a questionable future and transformed it into one of the most desirable locations on Geneva Lake. I’d take a bow but I’m not silly enough to think that it was all my doing.
The most recent sale was of the REO property that I told you about just a month or so ago. That property came to market and sold in the same week, to a buyer who recognized value when he saw it. Sure, it was masked with some gaudiness that might have deterred a handful of initial buyers, but value is value, loud paint job or not. The sale at $2.15MM is a nice print for the market, even if it undersells my target price range for those SSC homes in that sort of location (I see those homes priced from $2MM to $2.5MM in the coming months and year). While some SSC neighbors may be displeased with that sales price, the greater market will be the prime beneficiary of this sale. Lingering REO properties are the sorts of properties that apply downward pressure to a small community, and in this case, we immediately and easily pushed this property from the market and into strong hands. That’s a win for the SSC, even if the immediate neighbor reaction may be to cry foul about the pricing.
While I’ve never pretended to me any sort of foreclosure specialist, and I’m not on any bank’s short list of REO listing agents, this sale is my third lakefront foreclosure wherein I’ve represented the bank or REO holding company. Two years ago I represented Bank Of America in their liquidation of the Clear Sky Lodge property ($3.7MM), last summer I represented an REO holding company out of New York on the sale of that Geneva Oaks lakefront that moved at $1.925MM, and now this SSC property. In the brokerage world, this makes me a lakefront REO stalwart, and I’d like to be considered such for any bank that seeks to move any property in this Lake Geneva vacation home market. I know I typically write to buyers, but this is an appeal to sellers, as I don’t see anyone in this market that has charted the lakefront REO track record that I have.
For the South Shore Club, there is now just one available home. That property is my listing on Forest Hill, for $1.849MM. That property is poised to sell at a very discounted number, and I’m looking forward to bringing another new buyer into the SSC. If you know anyone who might be interested in snapping up this last morsel of inventory, now’s their chance.