Circle Parkway Sells

What is it that you want? Do you want a sanitized existence smothered in perfection? Do you value things and places that make you feel sterile and secure? Do you want a house that’s always straight and tidy, where imperfections are constantly discovered and cured? Do you want a house with a sewing room and an office and a guest room with four beds with trundles, just in case? How does that perfect house make you feel? Do you sew in the sewing room? Does the guest room give you joy those 50 weekends a year when it lies fallow? Does the office look good when you walk past it with your laptop to sit on the porch where you’d rather send your emails?

Or do you want a house that’s not a house at all, but really just a cottage with some creaks in the floors and a screen door that binds at the bottom? Do you want that cottage to lack a sewing room and maybe a guest room and do you need the kitchen to be big enough to host an extended-family-Thanksgiving, or just big enough to store the buns for the burgers that you’re thinking of grilling this Saturday? Do you care that there’s no office and no guest room and none of the spaces that we file under Just In Case? Do you care that there’s a little dip in the floor where the basement stairs meet the hallway, or some rough patches in the porch where the summer rain pools for a while before it can dry?

Do you want a lake house that’s high on utility or high on emotion? Do you want to feel like you’re in Naperville or like you’re at the lake? Do you want that second home to feel different, or the same? The answer, it seems, is that while most people want the sewing room and the sterile space with a spot for everything, there are still plenty of us left who want a weekend home that compels an emotional reaction. A weekend cottage that isn’t quite perfect, doesn’t quite have the space we need, or the kitchen we want, but one that makes us feel like we found something that we were missing. 241 Circle Parkway in Williams Bay was a cottage like that. And that’s why after a few days on market and a handful of offers and a frenzy of interest, it has closed for $965k, $66k over its ask.