Buyers have a unique tendency to focus on one or two aspects of a purchase, and in doing so, convince themselves to proceed with the transaction. This is true of jeans. If you love the fit but hate the color, you might buy them anyway. If you hate the fit but love the price, you might buy them anyway. This is why we have closets with jeans that we don’t wear. Sometimes it’s because we started working out and have, as a curious result, gained weight. But usually it’s because whatever jean we bought wasn’t quite right, but we bought it anyway. Houses are like this, too.
On the lakefront, it’s often less about what a house has than what it doesn’t. It has a fantastic stove. Yes! Shiny! But it has one bedroom. It has a big level lawn, sweet! But the foundation is an assortment of neatly, dry-stacked bricks placed at random intervals. Every house has good, and every house has bad. There is no perfect house. Not here, at least. Every property has something wrong with it. Buyers like to focus on garages. Lake houses and garages have a curious relationship. On one hand, a lake house doesn’t need a garage. Not at all. On the other hand, at a certain price point, the lake house demands a garage. It needs one. What’s that price point? That’s for you to decide, but I think it’s somewhere just north of $2MM. If I’m a $1.6MM lakefront house buyer, I should understand that a garage is an extravagance that my budget might not afford. If I’m a $3MM lake house buyer, I likely find a garage to be a requirement of the purchase. This is the way the market tends to behave.
That brings us to my newest lakefront listing, N1939 Bluff Lane. Follow the road through the little stone entry, and you’ll end up on the dead end of Bluff Lane. A few lakefront houses, not much more. It’s quiet, down here on Bluff. If you think the name is cute but not meaningful, you’d be wrong. Bluff Lane is indeed a high lane, with elevated frontage. That frontage creates steps, yes. But that elevation creates a most unique perch through which to absorb the lake. It’s a tree house setting, which is unique on this lake but highly interesting.
The house has five bedrooms, four baths. A two car detached garage is a newer addition to the property, along with a full lower level that opens to the lakeside for water toy storage. There’s off-street parking, a small lakeside yard, and 76 feet of private frontage. The house was renovated and added onto in 2009, leaving this once basic property with a fresh look and a beautiful new master suite. There are three fireplaces here, which should interest you if you like the idea of sitting in a tree house overlooking the lake while the snow piles up outside. It’s a good feeling, a good scene, and with a 30 day close you could be enjoying New Year’s Eve in that exact fashion.
At the lakefront, there’s a massive pier, complete with oversized canopied boatslip and a large swim deck. It’s Linn Township, so the taxes are just $16k and change. This home is in terrific condition, ready for immediate use. Why wait until May to join the race for summer? Start the race now. Tweak your new house over the winter. Some new paint colors here, some new couches there. Do the work in the off-season that so many people put off until the in-season. Take the winter to enjoy the scene, decorate the house, and prepare. When Memorial Day Weekend rolls around, you never again have to wonder which suburban BBQ you’re going to attend.