Buyers are not generally pleased with the way this market is performing. Buyers want to know when the market will shift in their favor. When the inventory will increase. When the skies will clear and the sun will shine on them, not on the seller. To be a buyer today is to assume the seller has the upper hand.
Last November a small house in the Highlands came to market for $1.2MM. The house was about what the market expected for this price. 45 feet of frontage, some basic things like a sort-of kitchen and some bedroom-ish spaces. It was fine, this house. And the market was hot, especially on the heels of my closing of the lakefront down the road on Lakeview right around that same time.
But the house didn’t sell, because it didn’t have any sort of sizzle. Buyers looked at it, often, because it was, at the end of every day from then until now, cheap. But was it cheap enough? After all, the house down the road closed at $1.26MM and had a bit more frontage, a boathouse, better finishes and it was clean and easy. This house wasn’t clean nor was it easy, and so, in spite of this dynamic seller’s market, the house sat.
I was working with a young couple last summer and fall, a couple who, in spite of their newness to our market, felt compelled to pull something off. They didn’t want to spend a lot, though in Lake Geneva even our little is a lot, so we targeted the entry level lakefront market, looking for value even as sales printed all around us. Patience, even in an escalating market, would prove to be the right practice.
We bid low in March, or maybe it was April. Pretty low. Quite low. The seller responded. We negotiated some more. A bit more. Just a tiny bit more. We closed that purchase on Monday for $925k. The new buyers are into a lakefront home for the lowest amount that anyone has paid for 45 or more front feet on Geneva since January of 2013, and that, no matter how terrible the kitchen, is a value.
There’s something especially rewarding about placing a new Lake Geneva owner into a lake house. This sale was not the largest, nor was the house the fanciest. But the house allows a young couple an opportunity to experience the lake for the first time, in a way that will be completely and utterly new to them. To this new buyer, a big congratulations and many thanks for letting me help with this lakefront purchase.
To the buyers who claim this is a seller’s market, what of the sale here on Lakeview? If you liked your down market in 2010-2013, that’s fine. I liked it quite a bit, too. But the market today is robust and healthy and yet still discerning buyers with enough vision can still secure lasting and permanent value. Don’t let the headlines get you down. Every seller has their own circumstance, and every home its own unique set of challenges. Our job is to discover those homes and those sellers and do our best to print value.