I don’t think I ever had cause to enter Abbey Springs before I was 18, maybe 19. As a kid, I surely knew Abbey Springs was there, over on that south shore that we didn’t dare take the Boston Whaler to, for fear that it was too far, too rough, to unknown. I didn’t have any friends who lived in Abbey Springs, so I would have never been to a birthday party or a sleepover inside those gates. I didn’t mow any lawns in Abbey Springs, mostly because the lawns there are primarily wood chips and an unkempt mix of poison ivy and buckthorn. And so it must have been, an entire childhood spent outside of Abbey Springs. Only when I started to play tennis was I attracted to this place, and I learned to play under my own tutelage inside that giant winter-time bubble they’d inflate over the courts. It was a treat to play, some phenomenon to know you were playing indoors in the winter, with just that thin bubble wall protecting you from the elements. What a thrill it was to shout out the score and have your opponent rarely hear it, the giant fan blowing and roaring to keep the tent warmish.
But that has nothing to do with this. Abbey Springs looks, from my eye, to be ready to yield value next month. The inventory is high, with forty available homes and condominiums, though far more of the latter. In fact, there are just eight single family homes available today. The market for single family homes in Abbey Springs was pretty slow over the spring and summer months, but late summer and fall proved active, and several homes, lead by my $746k sale on Saint Andrews, sold. Another listing on Saint Andrews was listed as pending, then listed as active, now showing as price reduced, so we’ll assume that either the listing office is dazzling us with their technology or the deal fell through and the home is now looking for a new buyer. Either way, the single family market is vibrant, and any buyer looking to steal a home in Abbey Springs will likely find themselves out of luck. Small condo buyers on the other hand have a distinct buying opportunity forming.
That’s because there’s a glut of condo inventory in Abbey Springs right now. Traditional inventory isn’t nearly this high, and because we’re the smart ones we know that ample inventory in a very specific segment can lead to falling prices. As of this writing, there are 25 condominiums listed in Abbey Springs under $300k. That’s a lot of inventory, and buyers can tactfully pit those owners against each other. Many of those sellers won’t be in a huge rush to sell. They’ll just sit until they sell, because that’s how real estate works. But if we have 25 sellers, we must have 5 of them that really would like to sell before the snow flies. That’s why a smart buyer in search of an entry level lake access condo would do very well to weed through the inventory and find those sellers that truly want to sell.
That’s really all I have to say about Abbey Springs this morning. The bubble bit and the fact that you could come up and steal a small condo with me next month. The other interesting market news of the week is a major price shift at Lakewood Estates Golf Club. This is the development that I wrote about on these pages earlier this year. It’s a small, gated enclave of higher end homes that ring a private lake and share access to a private, member’s only golf club. It’s an extremely unique property, and as with most extremely unique properties in Lake Geneva, it didn’t capture the attention of the market, even after my glowing review. With that market reaction in mind, the seller of these properties just dramatically reduced the asking prices, lopping $200k or so off of every available parcel. A development that was originally priced in the mid $400s and up can now be had from the mid $200s. This matters, and this should make a huge difference to anyone looking for a second home in the country. As with every property I represent, if you’d like more details and a private tour, all you have to do is ask.
The news last night said that Lake Geneva is now past our peak fall colors. I say bunk. That’s not the case at all, it’s just that there are equal amounts of fall colors in the trees as on the ground. Take a drive up to the lake this weekend, crunch some leaves. Walk the path. Enjoy fall because October has been an incredible month but it’s just about over.