Now see, that’s a spring weekend. When I write about how much I dislike spring, I should be clear: I am not an opponent of seventy degree April weekends when the trees are blooming and the tulips are blooming and anything that was seemingly dead has now come to life. I dislike early spring, ugly spring. March, you know what I’m talking about. This is the spring I love, and this is the spring we’ll have from this day until the last day, when summer arrives. If you don’t feel the immense buildup towards another Lake Geneva summer, then I’d only ask what it is you’re doing with your life.
Last week, two lakefront sales. My listing on Park Drive on the south shore sold Friday for $1.2MM. That’s a 60′ level lakefront lot with nice views, a three bedroom house and a two car garage. To be sure, there’s nothing super fancy here, but there is a solid house on level frontage with a private pier. $20k per foot is a price the market will pay often for such a property. I was pleased to get that property sold, both for the long time owner and for the new buyer. This is also my first lakefront closing of 2017, but rest assured, there are more to come.
The more interesting sale last week was not mine, and even mentioning this brings me and my extended family intense, enduring shame. This was not my listing and it was not my buyer. Ever notice how you get emails from agents or you see their “sales” on social media, and it seems as though one agent is selling absolutely everything? That’s because agents like to disguise the fact that the sale was not actually theirs. I can’t be like that, I won’t be like that. So I’ll tell you when I sold a property or when someone else sold it. This seems the only honest way to approach this. Oh, and those Facebook ads you see where an agent is advertising a particular property? That’s not always their listing, either. The online and print real estate game is changing, and the lines of what is and what might be are increasingly blurred. Onward towards the sale that wasn’t mine.
Sidney Smith is a nice lane. There are nice houses and super nice houses here, nothing bad. The lakefront, East of the Smith house, was always nice, but never particularly improved. Decent houses occupied the strip of land between the Smith estate and Loramoor, but nothing had been built there for several years. A couple years ago two lakefronts sold on Sidney Smith, both homes that were either tear downs or renovation candidates. Alas, as this is Lake Geneva and the year is post-2012, the two homes were torn down and two new homes were built. One of the new owners was just beginning construction when they had a change of plans, and the house hit the market.
Now, it should be noted that Sidney Smith is nice, which is why I already noted it. It should also be mentioned that these lakefront lots measure 105′ in lakefront width. They are nice lots, but they are not estate lots. The closest comparable lot size would be found on Lackey Lane, both in terms of front feet and overall land size (about three quarters of an acre). As you may know, I sold a stylish Orren Pickell house on Lackey last summer for $4.275MM, and in the same year I sold two land value deals on Lackey in the $1.9MMs. The land on Sidney Smith had sold for $1.925MM in 2015, further solidifying the comparable status of Lackey and Sidney Smith.
This home that hit the market last summer did so at $3.895MM, and sold after a short time on market. The buyer was not buying a finished product here, rather she was contracting on a house that would be finished the following April. The sale closed last week at $3.8MM, though I understand there were added upgrades that may have impacted the actual buyer cost. Still, we can look to this sale and see how it makes sense, especially when compared to the Lackey sale from last summer.
That said, this Sidney Smith house was not on par with that Lackey house. On the exterior, it was more basic, less ornate. Though the square footage was similar, it was less of a house. But the SS sale proves one thing about this market, and that’s the level of construction that buyers are willing to trade for their four million dollars. The homes do not need to be stunners. The lots need not be estate quality. The houses need to be nice enough, the land nice enough, the location nice enough. Long gone are the days when $4MM bought an estate. This was the case as recently as the early 2000s, but this is not the case today. Four million dollars will buy a good property with a good house, or a great property with an okay house, or a great house with an okay property, but rarely will it buy a great house with a great property.
The sale matters if only for the fact that it solidifies what the market can offer a buyer for $4MM. This also reinforces the smart decisions being made by those who have purchased 100′ of land in the last few years and are, or will be soon, building new homes on those parcels. The market is rewarding new construction, so if you have it and have a hankering to sell it, let’s talk. If you’re a buyer and you’d like newer construction but you can’t find it, we should also talk.