You’ve likely already read the article. Lake Geneva Mansions Are Having A Year. Crain’s likes to talk about Lake Geneva, but only sometimes. That’s because the Crain family is from Michigan, and so they love Michigan, in the way that some people love their dog even though the dog smells and has bad teeth and fur that’s coarse and smeared with whatever that is it rolled around in last night. Michigan is the favorite, and so I appreciated the time that Dennis Rodkin spent with me discussing the state of the Lake Geneva market. Dennis is the real estate writer for Crain’s, and he couldn’t help but take notice of our robust upper bracket market. Our market that printed three sales over $5MM this month. Our market that printed six sales over $3.9MM since June. And if he was going to write about this market, he was going to talk to the agent who sold five of those six lakefronts. That’s why we spoke, that’s why the story was written.
But the strength of the market and the three heavy sales this month were just the fluff in the article. The real buried lede was this: If you want future liquidity in your high end Midwestern vacation home, you better buy it in Lake Geneva. That’s all the story needed to say. Because when Dennis asked an agent from Michigan how their market was doing, he wasn’t regaled with stories of high prints and hefty price tags. He was, instead, met with silence. It seems that Harbor Country doesn’t do so well over $3.5MM. The agent who was questioned found it astounding that Michigan, for all its wonderful somethingness, could fall so far short of Lake Geneva. When faced with the startling reality that Lake Geneva attracts the wealthy in a way that Michigan can only dream of, she resorted to name calling. But, but, their lake looks like a go-kart-track! This was all she could muster.
And so today, I bring you some snapshots of our go-kart track operations. For instance, here is a picture of two of our karts. These are the upper end models that you can only rent if you’re a scion of Chicago business, with a giant building and stadiums named after you, or if you’re a entrepreneur with a go-kart-track-record of immeasurable success:
Here is a picture of one of our go-kart-track-clubhouses. Coincidentally, I sold this one in September for $9,950,000. In Harbor Country, that number is better known as “four or five of our nicest homes, combined”.
Our go-kart-track is unique because we get to observe sunset, but we also get to observe something else that’s super rare in Harbor Country. Sunrises over water. This picture was snapped on our track during a morning ski session:
The pic below I took after a sunset track run aboard a sailboat. The interesting thing to note here is that we allow our karts to be stored on site, not in a harbor. Want to race right from your own pier? Our track allows this.
Speaking of piers, this is what they look like. They aren’t docks. When you join our track, you get your own pier. To stand on. To tie karts to. To sunbathe on. To swim from. No sand in your hair here, no dunes to swallow you alive.
In summary, our track is nice. It’s great for swimming in and racing over. It’s great for sailing and for fishing and for boating and for swimming without fear of a riptide. It’s also wonderful if you ever want liquidity in your vacation home purchase, because unlike Harbor Country, we can actually sell homes for more than $3.5MM. Here’s an aerial view of a small section of track, in case you were considering a whip around the course.
Aerial Photo courtesy Matt Mason Photography.