It appears as though the Geneva lakefront market has closed its final transaction of 2009. Last Friday, a lakefront home in Trinke’s Estates closed at $1.7MM. If we dig a bit deeper into this property and its history, we can glean quite a bit more information on the lakefront market as a whole. This lakefront was the 12th lakefront home to sell via the open market this year. That’s not a great year by any means, but when compared with higher end sales in other Midwestern resort towns, the 12 sales represent a pretty solid market. I wrote a few weeks ago about how the lakefront market is void of many quality offerings priced in line with true value, and that lack of inventory has really stifled a market that has had active buyers in significant numbers all year. We’ll talk more about the trends for the year in a couple weeks when I provide my market by market breakdown of the individual vacation home markets here, but for today, it’s all about one little lakefront home on a big lot in Trinke’s.
The lakefront that sold last week was one that I developed a nice familiarity with over the past several months. I had a couple different buyers poking around it, including one who looked at it on couple different occasions. The house was small. Very small. It had a northwoods sort of feel to it, with small rooms and a small footprint, but a big water view. The lot was big by most standards, and for those of you playing along at home, the price per front foot registered a Dave Ramsey (or Larry Burkett for my old school readers) pleasing $14,782. The property was a nice value in the $1.7MM range, but the lot wasn’t without some drawbacks. First, a caveat. There are not bad locations on Geneva Lake. Any lakefront home here is a lakefront that you’d be blessed to live in. That said, there are several factors that can increase or decrease desirability. For this home, it was the adjacent boat launch and parking that ran the length of the eastern boundary of the property serving as the detriment. In the absence of this boat launch, this would have been a $2MM+ property. The location was the issue, and the seller found a buyer who was willing to deal with the annoyance in return for owning a beautiful piece of property with 115′ of level frontage.
According to the MLS, this property was on the market for 225 days prior to selling. Thanks for the statistic MLS, but we know better. Or at least I do. If you look at the RDOM (real days on market), you’ll see that this property was originally listed in October of 2008, which pegs the market time somewhere north of 400 days. The property was listed for $1.749MM at the time of sale, recording a very impressive (from a sellers point of view) 97% LTS (list to sale) ratio. Just like the DOM figure, if you look further into the LTS, you’ll see that the original list price was $2.25MM, which would reflect a RLTS (real list to sale) ratio of only 75%. I’m giving myself a headache.
The seller had only owned this home since 2004, when he paid $1.4MM for it. The fact that this seller got into the market at a time when prices were near their market high for this sort of property, and was able to sell it in this down market and still get out with his shirt and pants, and shoes, is a testament to the strength of the Lake Geneva market. For the seller, a nice pat on the back for selling in a difficult market. To the buyer, a great big hug for buying a beautiful piece of property on the best lake in the country. (Lake Tahoe, you’re just too darn cold.) If you’re new to the lakefront, your life is about to change in ways that you can’t really fathom.
I hope you’ll stay with me during this Holiday shortened week. I’m going to write about some great Holiday traditions at Lake Geneva (maybe not), and try to post another Lake Geneva centric video. This is the slowest real estate week of the year, so if you’re taking a little time off work and feel like a touring some Lake Geneva vacation homes, I think you know who to call. In case you don’t know who to call, it’s me. Call me.