Some interesting foreclosure proceedings are soon to come to a head in the Lake Geneva market, namely the Hillmoor golf course property owned in part by the Wight Group. This property should head to auction shortly, and it will be very interesting to see what happens to it. I believe the outstanding debt to be too high to warrant a sale at auction, meaning the property will more than likely be relisted as REO property and marketed in a traditional manner within the next several months. I wonder what will happen to this property, since the demand for condominium developments has waned, and there’s no good reason to think the market could absorb even a modest development of 60-100 units. We’ll watch this one for sure.
Outside of the Wight Canyon mess, the vacation home market continues to avoid foreclosure trouble. For properties posted pending foreclosure, there are two properties in Country Club Estates (we’ve been talking about these for a while), two properties in Geneva National, and still nothing to report in Abbey Springs. It’s important to realize that Geneva National has over 1100 units built, so to have two properties pending possible foreclosure is quite a feat. Abbey Springs has over 500 units, and has only had one foreclosure in 2009 that I’m aware of. The vacation home market is remarkably stable here, with foreclosure or otherwise distressed sales representing not even 1% of our total market here. Remember folks, stability is a close friend of your vacation home seeking dollar. New this update are a couple units at the Lake Lawn property on Delavan Lake. I suspect we’ll see a fairly regular supply of those properties on the foreclosure notice board, as rents possibly fail to cover ownership costs for the ownership groups there. There are a handful of time share properties at the Grand Geneva posted this week, which further proves my thought on time shares. Don’t buy them. They’re bad news, and most definitely not for the fiscally discerning.
Williams Bay has seen its first single family home foreclosure in a few months, the current property being located in Baywood Heights. Of surprise to me has been the relative strength of the market in Baywood Heights and Lakewood Trails, and the lack of foreclosure activity there on any widespread scale is a good sign for that market moving forward.
For the first time this year, we have foreclosure proceedings against a commercial property downtown Lake Geneva. The property is in a desirable location, and I suspect it will either avoid foreclosure, or be sold at auction. Overall, our market is resilient, and as I’ve written time and time again, the lack of significant leveraging and lack of speculation has saved us from being dragged down with other, lesser resort markets around the country.
Foreclosure information taken from the Walworth County foreclosure notice board, and is deemed reliable but is in no way guaranteed.