It’s cold this morning. I had forgotten how it felt to pull up my cold office chair and type on this cold keyboard with my cold fingers. I’m not a big fan of this cold. If we weren’t paying close attention we’d think that is is November and that we had missed all of October, but we are paying attention so we’re certain that while the temperature feels like mid November it is still very much early October. November is a great time for contemplating Thanksgiving sides, while October is better spent buying lots and lots of houses.
There is activity in the market today, though that activity seems less to me today than it did a month ago. I expect a rush of sorts of the available inventory yet this year, but that rush hasn’t happened yet and likely won’t happen until price reductions permeate the market, which is what they’ve been doing all summer to some degree and will continue to do as sellers make one last push to liquidate while your calendar and mine still read 2012. There have been sales, and there will be more sales, but this sales activity will stem from August showing activity, so sales today are not necessarily a solid indicator of recent activity.
Fontana Shores had a sale last week, which is wonderful. $475k bought a three bedroom penthouse unit there, a unit that was sort of renovated but sort of wasn’t, and I guess it was a fine sale even if my first floor three bedroom would have been easier to buy and move into. Easier mostly because there isn’t a single step from the parking space to the living room of my unit, and if you’ve ever been in the Fontana Shores elevator or exterior stairway, you know that it’s a benefit to avoid both if you can. If I could pull one single market up it would be this lakefront condo market, as I see reason for this segment to have buyers, even though as I look desperately to find one or two I haven’t had much luck of late.
It shouldn’t be expected that inventory will build before the end of the year. Many sellers will wait right now, content to sit it out until January when the spring selling season begins in earnest. There’s plenty of inventory now, and with reductions coming our way there should be plenty for motivated buyers to sift through. I’m bringing at least two new properties to market this week- one a lakefront in Loramoor that you’ll hear about soon enough, and another a charming cottage in the Lake Geneva Club that I plan to debut on this site Tuesday morning. I’m sure that cottage is just a mess of anticipation today. Will they like me!? Yes, they’ll like you. Settle down.
I’m also going to contribute to the reduction trend and drop the price of Sauk Trail yet again. It’s getting a bit ridiculous, these reductions, so when I drop this Fontana lakefront to $1,329,000 later today, please pay me at least some attention. There’s reason to believe this cottage is the finest entry level deal on the market today, and when you combine that price point with a Fontana location, well then it’s sort of obvious that this is a property that should be sold by the time 2012 meets 2013. If it’s not sold by then, the seller will likely hate me so it won’t matter much after that anyway.
A new foreclosure in Cedar Point hit the market late last week, and it’s a pretty good one. I remember this house from when I was a high school kid, mowing lawns all around it but never having a chance to mow that lawn. It wasn’t a big lawn, probably a twenty dollar job, but I always wanted it, badly. So I’d mow and I’d mow, and I’d come around Birch Walnut after mowing a parkway lawn there and then wish I could mow the lawn at this house with the pool and the fancy looking design. But I never did get to mow that lawn, so now I would like to sell it in order to exact my revenge. It’s $270k or so, and when you consider the previous owner paid around $465k for it in the mid 2000s, it isn’t all that bad. Still, the house needs some love and the pool has never seen a worse day, but even so. Maybe you should email me right now and come look at it.
This week should be fun, with a handful of deals needing some negotiating and a handful of new listings poised to hit this mid-fall market. Oh, and there’s a few guys with some hammers and nails starting to work on my new house this week too, so that’s something. The fall colors at the lake are probably peaking this week and the water has never been a deeper blue. It’s going to be a good week, even if it feels like November I assure you it’s barely October.