Sometimes, you just want what you want. You want to be on the lake, that’s smart. You want to see a weekend like the one just ended and you want to see it from the front row, up close and personal. You want to be on a road, something of pedigree, something that matters, not just any road. You want the road to be easy. You want it to be on this shore or that shore, but you want it to be quiet and peaceful and you don’t want the rumble of a wayward motorcycle tour to interrupt your Sunday. You want a dead end, that’s what you really want, but you know it’s not easy to find a dead end. Bonnie Brae is a dead end, and if a car wanders down to your end of the lane home you can be sure it’ll be quickly followed by a many pointed Y turn, but Bonnie Brae is not on the shore you want. You end up looking and looking, content to be patient but wishing it wouldn’t take so long.
Then Lackey Lane comes to life with not one, nor two, but three properties available. On a street so small, an exodus so large. And so you see those 100 level feet and that wooded approach and you say that Lackey Lane is where you want to be. And then last Friday you close on that lakefront, the one with the small brick ranch that would be so much more at home in Niles. $1.91MM for 100′ of frontage, that Lackey Lane location, and a dream that someday soon you’ll have built a new home on Lackey Lane that will compliment but not mimic the newer homes that have already been built on that short little lane.
You’ll remember that last Wednesday I also sold the $4.275MM Pickell built home on Lackey. You’ll also understand now that $1.91MM makes thorough sense. It’s not that easy to find a location on the lake where a $1.91MM land buy can lead to solid, demonstrable value in the $4.5MM range, but on Lackey that’s possible. That’s why this post is about the two sales I just completed, sure, but it’s more about the one property that’s left on Lackey Lane. If you’re a buyer on Geneva right now, you should be letting me lead you to Lackey. The house that’s available is fine. You could fix it up and live in in for a long while. Or you could do the likely thing- buy it, tear it down, and build at the same time the adjacent, new neighbor is building. If there are few streets where $4.5MM all in costs are easy to justify (Loramoor is another one), then there are even fewer where you can build a new home next to another new build, at the same time. The convenience of one singular disruption is difficult to fully appreciate until you’ve spent a summer next door a new build. Just ask anyone in the 1030 area of South Lakeshore Drive, Fontana.
But I lied a bit, because this isn’t just about the available lot, and it’s not just about a fabulous client who let me help him into the new Lackey property, it’s a bit about me, because real estate requires shameless self promotion. That sale pushes me over $140MM in sales since the start of 2010, including $10MM worth of sales in just the past two weeks. No single agent (operating without a multiple person team) has sold so much real estate in Walworth County since then, and that’s exceedingly humbling to me. Additionally, no other active top agent has, since that cold day in January of 2010, an average sales price in excess of $1MM. I think those things matter, and they should matter to any lakefront buyer or seller seeking to buy or sell some slice of Geneva Lake. I’m well aware that these production numbers wouldn’t be possible except for the loyalty of my incredible and growing client base, and for that, I’m supremely grateful.
To the newest owner on Lackey, congratulations and thank you. The market should be keen to watch a new home rise from that site over the coming months, and I’m certain we’ll all be the beneficiaries of what promises to be a most beautiful new home. If you’re a buyer and you want to have a beautiful new home and a lovely family as your next door neighbor, we need to start talking, like stat.