If you had to pick the worst month of the year, please list the reasons why it is, without any doubt, the month of April. It’s dark and it’s cold, or it’s windy and it’s sweaty. It’s drizzly and it’s snowy and it’s muddy, or it’s not. Those Florida dwellers would respond in concert, “it’s another day of paradise here”! But is it really? Or is it sticky and hot, each day a little bit more of each. Sticky today, hot tomorrow. Wednesday? Weather You Can Wear. The desert types would tell you that April is just another month to watch those purple mountain sunsets and play yet another round of scorpion golf. Really? Because the temperature hits 100 degrees this month and it’s not going to let up until Christmas. Then you get your reprieve. If September is lovely the world around, then April is the opposite: Unpredictable misery.
The market at the lake has an odd feeling each year, but especially so this year. What is April, really? Is it almost summer, or is it still winter? Should we put the pier in and gas up the boat, or should we put away such childish things and look to the forecast to decide if today we’ll be wearing our winter jacket, or our sorta winter jacket? If that’s the typical mood, how much worse is it when we shed 10% of our equity investments, or if you’re more like me, 20%? Are we to be cheerful and excited for summer, or stuck in the malaise that is a bitterly clingy winter?
The answer is, I’m not sure. Offers are being written, deals are being struck, inventory is being contemplated. The buyers are present, though most are aware that an uneasy stock market should be tempering seller enthusiasm. Sellers look around and see little competition and decide that the stock market matters little. It’s the inventory that drives this thing, they tell me that I often told them. And they are right, I did say that, and I was right. Kinda. But today the phenomenon is different, because if inventory is the sole driver of pricing then why are buyers deciding that pie-in-the-sky offering prices are to be rebuked? Like all things Lake Geneva, the answers to these rhetorical questions are found in the spaces between. With apologies to Carville, it’s the nuance, stupid.
Last week, I closed on my off-water listing in the Casa Del Sueno association (condominium). That was a nice sale at $3.175M. The market will see this sale and suggest that anything similar in the Lindens or Valley Park should be viewed through a similar valuation lens, but they wouldn’t be accurate. The lakefront market had a period of a week or more where there wasn’t a single lakefront home available on the open market. That may or may not be the case today, depending on the outcome of one such lakefront contract. There’s a pending deal to a buyer whom I’m pleased to represent on an off-market lakefront in Williams Bay, and a rumored new lakefront offering that seeks to test the strength of the upper bracket.
For today, it’s just April at the lake. Which means the piers are going in and the lawns are being prepped and the workers are busy preparing this place for yet another summer. What it doesn’t necessarily mean is that the inventory is forthcoming and that the buyers are immune to spastic stock market valuations. How this month shakes out is anyone’s guess, but if you’d like some help figuring out where the sentiment of the market meets accurate valuations, I’m here to help.
Above, the private shared pier at the Casa Del Sueno off water home I recently sold.