I wanted to think of a better title. Something clever. Something snappy. Maybe something a little less descriptive and a little more simple. But alas, this really is about old lakefront homes. Not regular old homes, mind you, as an old lakefront home with a 70′ lot that wants to sell for $2MM can do so. An old lakefront home anywhere on this lake can, will, and has sold. There’s a market for the old lakefront home, so long as the lot is reasonable and the setting acceptable. But not all old lakefront homes fit into our market without a time consuming, expensive, depressing effort.
Allow me to explain. Pricing is everything on the lake, and if pricing finds an older home on that aforementioned 70 foot lot, the price should be in line with market expectations. Older homes on lots like this will sell for land value. Newer homes on lots like this will sell for a premium. This isn’t the sort of older lakefront home I’m talking about.
Legacy estates exist on Geneva in magnificent numbers. These are the estates that get talked up on boat tours. The sort that people pause in front of on the shore path and frame in their selfies. These are the Wrigley’s and the Ryan’s and the names that no one knows but the names that sometime, some long while ago, made a fortune doing something that people valued. They took that fortune to these shores and established their lakefront space. Their retreat. Their legacy.
These legacy homes traded with some regularity up until the very early 2000s. Since then, I wouldn’t describe any of the sold lakefronts with this title. Was Hillcroft, those 19 acres along Snake Road that sold in 2018, a legacy estate? Well, maybe. The property certainly fit the description, but this is a post about old lakefront homes, not old dirt, and the home itself was no longer P.K. Wrigley’s manse, but instead a modern manse built in the 1980s. Surely no structure built within my lifetime could be adorned with this lofty descriptor.
The only true legacy estate to sell in the last twenty years is Alta Vista, that Van Doren Shaw home on the North Shore that closed in the year 2000 for a paltry $3.45MM. I’d argue that we need a new legacy listing. Something on this lake that has history that even the most modern among us could not bear to tear down. The trend, in case you’ve missed it, is for Lake Geneva to loudly pay homage to history but then, once history comes to market, we just knock it down and build something shiny. I’d love to represent a true legacy estate someday soon. Everything I’ve sold on this lake is nice, but I’d like to set my aim at selling something that can be preserved and restored, rather than demolished and rebuilt. But today isn’t about the legacy estates, just as it isn’t about the 70 foot lot with an old home on it. It’s about old lakefront homes with large lots that fit somewhere in between these two stated examples.
The market, while light on legacy offerings, has been historically heavy on another sort of offering. The old lakefront home on a large lot offering. The sellers know what they want. They want lots of money and they want you to see the value in their home. It was built in the 1980s, after all, or the 1970s for that matter. Maybe even the 1950s or earlier. These are the homes that aren’t new enough to substantially remodel (as would be the case with 1990s or newer construction), and they aren’t old enough to be considered architecturally meaningful. These are the in between. The large lot having, no architectural pedigree sporting, big old lakefront homes.
And the market doesn’t like them. Not. One. Bit. The sellers force feed the market, saying, come look at my big old home on a reasonably large but not overly impressive lot! And the market yawns. That’s because the market either respects a home or it doesn’t, and as soon as it doesn’t, it’s land value, and land value only. The gulf between land value and a number that shows value for the structure is the issue. Sellers fight this. They scratch and they claw and they switch brokers and they beg you to appreciate their Reagan administration raised ranch. It’s big, after all, and the lot is, too. Look at me! I have two Sub-Zero refrigerators from 1981!
This isn’t a new issue for our market, but it is an issue that’s presenting more frequently as prices increase and large lots because more and more rare. Expect this trend to continue, and the battle between buyers and sellers will persist. As for me, I’ll be here, stuck in the middle, wondering if those old Sub-Zeros might work better if we just get the vents vacuumed.