If you were to close your eyes right this very moment, squeezing your eye lids together so tight that it forces your face into a strained unintentional smile, and picture your ideal vacation home, what would it look like? If I were to squeeze my eyes shut right now, which I am doing even as I type this to you, I would picture a beautiful big home with clapboard or shingle siding and a cedar shake roof. If I closed my eyes now, or tomorrow or next year, the vision would remain the same. There are times when the vision is twisted a bit, when I see a small cabin built aside a blue ribbon trout stream, but that’s an option that requires a days drive to visit, so I’ll focus instead on my big lakefront with a steady front lawn and a blue water view framed by oaks and maples and an occasional birch. My armada of watercraft would be tethered to my big white pier, and I would without question have some big striped umbrellas and natural teak lounge chairs arranged just so. This is my vision, eyes closed or eyes wide open, today, yesterday, and forever.
I am fortunate to be in a position where I get to sell lots of Lake Geneva vacation homes to discerning, wildly intelligent people, but every once in a while I get to sell a home that I myself find as appealing as the buyer does. Last year that happened to me when I was lucky enough to sell a sprawling shingle manse on Fontana’s south shore. Last week, it happened again, when I found myself the proud papa of a new deal on a picture perfect lakefront situated at the leeward tip of Black Point. The home, listed for $3.795MM, is large and it is impressive, though it is not burdensome or otherwise unwieldy. It fits the lot with gracious ease, and while it certainly doesn’t scream for your attention, it does regularly absorb lustful second glances.
This home, all covered in white clapboard siding under an appropriately weathered cedar shingle roof, fits my eye in a way that many homes do not. It is understated without being forgettable, and this blend of style is not often accomplished. Much of the new construction on the lakefront, while impressive and beautiful, demands you gaze at it long and hard. It grabs you by the throat and angrily commands that you pay it attention. Have you not seen my copper turrets!? Are you not impressed!? These homes are wonderful, but I much prefer some subtlety as I am wooed by a structure. I want it to grab my attention and not let it go, but I don’t want to be brow beaten by some foreboding structure that surely blends into some landscape somewhere, but not this one, not now.
The lakefront on Black Point is laden with timeless appeal made apparent by the fact that it is now 20 years old and every bit as classic today as it was when the carpenter nailed up the first course of siding, stood back, and deemed it level enough. Though the structure warms my heart and leaves my current home suffering from a severe complex, I am first and foremost a value hunter, focused on land and frontage and the current and future value of the dirt far more than I am enticed by large lakeside screened porches. The property here- nearly 2 acres of land with a gaudy 165′ of level frontage- is ideal. It fits the mold of an estate sized parcel, and before a property in this price strata deserves to be pursued, it must first fit inside the rigid template of our estate parameters (100+ feet of frontage and at least 1.5 acres).
There are many reasons that this home is under contract pending sale to my prized buyers. The property is of the correct scope, the home of classic appeal, the final sales price accurate and pleasing. The current inventory on the lakefront in this price segment is ample even if most of it is less than impressive. The Basswood estate ($3.4MM) is still on the market, and it shouldn’t be. It should be sold to some buyer who wants to work with me, and it should be sold in that context soon. The market has myriad offerings for those looking to tear down and rebuild, or otherwise remodel existing inventory, but what it lacks today is newer construction on estate sized land in the $4.5MM to $6MM range. I’d love to test the market today to see if a buyer exists for such a property, as I’m betting there is plenty of market interest to support a sale in that strata. For now, it’s November and we should be bargain hunting. See you at the lake.