When shopping for a car, most shoppers narrow the search at some point. What started out as a search for a mid-size SUV with all-wheel-drive, has turned into a search for a BMW X5, the one with the 5.0 engine, black on black, with the 21 inch wheels, because the stock 19 inch wheels look like they belong on a rental car at the Akron Airport. This is the way a search evolves. Initially it’s just about accomplishing some general goal, like transportation, but it ultimately turns into a fine-tuned search for personal perfection. Housing searches are like this, too.
I spent the past two years with a buyer in search of something unique. Well, it’s unique now, but it wasn’t always unique. A general lakefront house, in a general location, nothing too fancy, with budget aplenty. The search had ups and it had downs, far more downs than ups, really. After so much time searching for something specific, the search arrived at a crossroads. Should this buyer continue searching for what they really wanted, or should they acquiesce to this tight market and buy something that, at least, gets them here? They wanted to be in this place in a certain variety of home, but maybe just being in this place would suffice, for now.
This week I closed on a three bedroom condo at Abbey Ridge. It was a homecoming of sorts for me, as I used to spend considerable time in this condominium development listing and selling these two, three, and four bedroom condominium units. The condo was a nice enough three bedroom with a bit of a harbor view and a generally pleasant disposition. $560,000 was the ransom for this space, and we secured it in turn key fashion, down to the bottle openers and fake bird statues near the fireplace.
Abbey Ridge, for those who haven’t been paying attention, is hot again. Hotter than hot. Infrared. I sold a unit there last December (off-market), and didn’t bother to write about it. That unit sold for $555,000. A four bedroom unit overlooking the pool sold last October for $485,500. A three bedroom unit listed at $635,000 is pending sale. The only available unit at Abbey Ridge today is a two bedroom first floor unit listed at $360,000. Abbey Ridge is bucking the soft condo trend and printing peak numbers, and for this, we should stand and applaud.
But what of these buyers, what of this particular condominium bent, of this desire to find a condo in Fontana without any particular form of lake access? Are these buyers that have only aspired to this form of vacation home ownership? I’d say yes, some are, and a nice condominium in a nice lakeside village in this nice place is a very nice thing. But I have a feeling that several of the other recent buyers aren’t here because they desperately want to be. They’re here because there’s nothing available that truly fits their eye. Abbey Ridge might be benefiting from the tight housing market on the lake and just off, and as a result, sales are printing and prices are escalating.
I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about buyers making hot-market-mistakes. This was a bit about the buyers who find the bread and butter vacation home segment to be too hot, too scarce, too expensive, so they retreat to areas where prices are lower and value seems evident. They’re often making mistakes by buying vacation homes in non-vacation home settings, which sets them up for crushing price declines should the market one-day adjust downward. A safer play for these sorts of buyers is to do what my buyer just did. Find a place in Abbey Ridge. In the Villas. In Willabay or Bayside Pointe. Find a condo that might not be what you really want, but it’ll help you live your best life this summer.