I have a cold today. It’s been working through to the surface since Monday, maybe Tuesday, but today it’s mostly a real life cold. You can’t really blame me for this cold, as I’ve fought all winter to stay clear of any virus or other nagging affliction, but on this cold day in the middle of February, I have given in. Winter is like that. It wears one down, constantly dripping or cutting or pushing, the pressure at some point becomes unbearable. That’s where I am today. My mind has given in to desperation, my body caved to the cold, and my thoughts of summer barely enough to keep me warm.
But enough about me, this is a day to think about the market. There’s much activity at the lake these days, and while the successes of the lakefront market have been well documented here, today it’s about the lake access market. The lake access market has a hard time keeping up with the lakefront market. Like a younger sibling to the starting shooting guard on the basketball team. No matter that the younger is a great basketball player in his own right, he plays forward, which isn’t nearly as glamorous as shooting guard. Try as he might, the younger can never equal the older. Until one game when he does, and the older congratulates him but even in that there is some condescension in his voice.
The lake access market, and even the very lowest bottom of the entry level lakefront market are rife with activity. There was a sale this week, a substantial brick ranch in Academy Estates. It was a nice enough house, if not very cottage like or very aesthetically appealing, it was still a house with a boatslip on the proper lake side of South Lakeshore Drive, and it sold for $650k which is a price I can stomach even if I refuse to thoroughly celebrate it.
There are other contracts pending too in this market, a couple on the low end of the lake access segment, including my rehab special on Glenview in Cedar Point Park, and another in Country Club Estates around the same $300k mark. There’s a cute little cottage pending sale in Knollwood too, and if I haven’t told you recently I should probably tell you again now: I heart Knollwood. There are two more sales pending in Country Club Estates in the higher reaches there- both in the $700k range- one of which is the last remnant of a flamed out builder who couldn’t escape the market downturn. There have been several of those claimed by the housing crisis, those who were so busy pounding nails and enjoying the spoils that they missed the signals of an impending downturn. From today looking back it’s easy to see the crisis coming, but in truth even at the very time that it arrived it wasn’t so hard to see that it was time to be a decisive and defensive seller. Some of these builders missed those ques, and instead now they bend nails in other states.
There is a listing in Geneva Bay Estates pending this morning, one located right next to the short sale that I sold late last fall for $735k. This house is across the street from the lake, which is nice. The house is another project house, so Lake Geneva will continue the process of plucking properties from less interested hands and place them in stronger ones. Gentrification wasn’t just a phenomenon of the 2000s; it continues today.
There are two entry level lakefront homes pending sale too. Both at $1.295MM, one in the Birches and another in the Lake Geneva Club. The LGC property isn’t really lakefront, and the parking isn’t ideal if you possess anything more than a single car, perhaps two, but the market is treating it like it’s practically lakefront so I will too. If the new owner decides to remodel the classic cottage that might be the best use of that property. If it gets torn down, then I’ll wonder aloud if it was a prudent idea.
This weekend finds me out on showings, but I have plenty of time for more of them. The ice boats have been staging in Fontana for a couple of weeks now, and the melt and subsequent freeze of this week has provided these racers with rather ideal ice. The strength of the ice is an issue still, but as Mr. Emerson said many years ago, “In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed”. See you at the lake.