I’m fairly long off the tee. My drives can soar with the best of the 15 handicappers out there. In addition to soaring straight, these potent drives tend to soar to the left and to the right. I routinely play from neighboring fairways, off of front lawns (to the lady in the Highland unit who yells at me every time I approach her condominium grass, I’m aware that I’m not supposed to), and through the woods. White and red stakes mean little to me. It’s this affinity for the spray that caused me to both love and hate Abbey Springs at the very same time. A straight drive at Abbey Springs is reason to celebrate and congratulate, while a crooked drive is usually best left resting on the deck, or driveway, or living room carpet where it settles.
While the Geneva National crowd generally likes to golf, and golfers generally like Geneva National, Abbey Springs gets very little golfing respect. I was a member at Abbey Springs for a handful of years and found that I thoroughly enjoyed that little golf course. I say little only because the 18 holes are not able to stretch to the 7000 yards that most modern day tip tees will afford. The maintenance is of the highest quality, and the rolling topography of this classic course offers nearly breathtaking views of Geneva Lake. The course at Abbey Springs is difficult, and while I don’t know what the stimpmeter thinks of it, I know it’s a course designed for straight hitters, with little softness around the deciduous edges for someone with my bomb and gauge mentality. Today is not a post on golf, it’s a post on Abbey Springs, but the two seem to silently cross paths in the night inside most buyers minds. I’m here to tell you that if you love golf, and you love the lake, and you love country club atmospheres, then there’s a good chance you’re the guy or gal that the 29 Abbey Springs sellers have been looking for.
Outside those 29 current listings available through our MLS, there appears to be just one additional property pending at Abbey Springs. My blood pressure just inched up a tick to register one notch below “Call 911” when I wrote that, as that one pending listing is a vacation home that I had listed last summer. No matter. As I’ve written at nauseating lengths, Abbey Springs has managed itself quite nicely through this most recent bust cycle, and while other developments have scrambled for traction, Abbey Springs has remained slow and steady, with ample sales, steady inventory, and a look on their faces that might register on the arrogant side.
What 2011 is bound to teach Abbey Springs is that even as they have fared well, they’re still not immune to the fits and starts of a soft broad market. There are 29 properties for sale in the development now, which is a reasonable and fairly typical inventory statistic for this development. But with just one property pending at what should be nearing the height of our spring market, only the most intellectually vacant agent could proclaim the development to be full steam ahead. The MLS also shows that not a single sale has been recorded through the first two months of 2011. The inventory that does exist is of a moderately high quality, but the trend that has seen the cheap get cheaper remains in full effect. This morning there are four condominiums priced below $200k, and one particularly interesting unit priced at a staggering $127k. This number does not make Abbey Springs happy, but it is a number that they’ll have to deal with as a comp this year once this property sells.
There also appear to be some single family values in the $400ks, and I’d expect to see an uptick in sales activity over the next 8 weeks as several of the listings ultimately sell before the summer arrives 87 days from today. The tight credit market should have some mitigating effect on Abbey Springs sales this year, much as the tight market has undoubtedly negatively impacted the Geneva National market. For the cash buyers that are always present in the Lake Geneva market, there are no credit worries, just worries about locking in the most solid of deals. I think the market in Abbey Springs is ripe to yield a few deals now, perhaps more ripe than it has been at any point in the last two years. With foreclosures all but non-existent in AS, if you’re a buyer looking for REO property here, best not hold your breath. Oh, and if you’re going golfing at Abbey Springs this summer, leave your driver at home and pack your 3 wood.