Geneva Lakefront Sales Update

New year, old year, activity on the lakefront remains. The day doesn’t matter much. Snow or sunshine, 52 or 14, it’s just the way it is. Denzel Washington keeps climbing around the top of this market, trying to make it stop, and yet it doesn’t, and his daughters are horrified. It is a market operating smoothly but quickly, efficiently even, and another week or two has left us with another closing and another pending sale.

There are three homes in a line in Lake Geneva’s 700 Club that have been active over the late fall and into this young winter. One of those homes has been listed for quite some time, the other two hit just this past fall. The tenured listing at $2.99MM is now under contract, as is the long ranch with a whole bunch of pleasing frontage priced similarly. One home in the middle- a newer home with fine finishes and an attractive design- remains the only one without a contract. It must be sad over that, eating ice cream late into the night, wondering how a market could be so cruel, so stupid.

Those two pending properties have shown yet again the preference of this market. The sweet spot in recent months has been in the $2.4MM to $2.75MM range. If buyers can find around 100′ of frontage and a decent home in that range, they’ll more quickly buy that home than they will almost anything else. I personally don’t like one of the pending sales in the 700 Club. I think the house is a bit unwieldy and potentially more deserving of a back hoe than a bucket of paint. Alas, neither of these homes were my listings nor were the buyers mine. I may join the third, unsold home in a gallon or two of ice cream tonight in an attempt at drowning my sorrows in sweet, sweet calories.

Another home sold last week, that one on South Lakeshore in Fontana that had been pending for the latter half of 2011. The closing at $2.5MM for 81′ of frontage may, at first, looks a bit top heavy. I assure you that it wasn’t. I actually like this sale at $2.5MM, and would so much rather be the buyer of this home than the buyer of the home in the 700 Club at similar dollars. The frontage may be a touch slight for this level, but it was fairly level and the lot was deep and tree lined. The home was old, but classic, proof that wainscoting can never be applied in excess. The 81′ in this case feels like a much larger parcel. Much of that open feeling is due to a vacant lot to the East of this now sold property, so perhaps that spacious feeling will fade when someone, someday, constructs a massive structure as owners of vacant properties on Geneva tend to do. For now, until then, this is a beautiful parcel and at $2.5MM, regardless of the price per foot that this price implies, it was a value.

The lakefront market will now begin building with inventory. Starting off the year with this much activity is momentous, and more sales now will likely mean more sales later. Inventory will grow, as it already has, though the market today still has several solid offerings that I think will sell over the first quarter of 2012. I see that cheap lakefront in Glenwood Springs and another one in Cedar Point, and I still see them both selling soon. I’ll be upset when they do sell if they sell to anyone but a buyer of my own representing. Basswood will sell, as will one or two others, and by April 15th I can envision a scenario where we’ll have had 6 lakefront closings as of that early date. The key now, if you’re a buyer, is to get rolling and let me help you identify value. For every great listing on Geneva there are three ridiculous ones, and it’s going to be a big help if you know which is which.