In the South Shore Club, there are 40 total lots. Most are built on, a few are not. At present, there is one new construction underway. To date, there had been one sale, that of an aged inventory home near the back of the lakeside circle. While there are 40 total, there are only four built homes that play as true lakefront homes. Those are the front homes, the homes you walk into and see the water, unavoidably. Those are the homes that function as their own market, and the home I sold this week is part of that elite group.
There is some confusion over the South Shore Club, and how to come to a valuation. Will the market pay lakefront prices for these lakefront homes? The answer is yes, and no. The yes part is obvious, because there’s a sales pattern now that didn’t exist prior to 2012. The no part is less obvious, and it might not be a negative in the way you’re suspecting. The market won’t pay true lakefront prices for these homes because the prices paid for them represent a discount to what those homes would trade for if they were on their own private lakefront parcels. So the market respects the South Shore Club, but buyers still expect a slight reduction over private frontage valuations. This is all good news.
Consider one way to look at this closing at $4,175,000. The last front house sold in 2014 for $3,591,000. For 2014, the average price paid per lakefront foot was $21,144. 2017 YTD through October 10th, 2017, the average price paid is $27,743. That represents a 31% increase in valuation. If we apply the same appreciation increase to the South Shore Club lakefront four, we’d see a valuation $4,704,210. Is this the only way to compute value? Of course not. A lakefront in Fontana sold in the high fours this fall, and that home, with a very small lot, sold for $713 per square foot. The South Shore Club home was 8736 square feet, which comes to a $477 per square foot.
A sincere thank you to the buyer and seller who let me help with this transaction. It was not the easiest deal I’ve ever worked on, and that comment may win Understatement Of The Year. That’ll put a wrap on my 2017 sales production, unless someone needs to close on a new house by the end of the year. Put a big red bow on it, like a Lexus. The year ends for me with $44MM in sales, which makes me the #1 individual Walworth County agent for 2017, and in that top slot for the third year in the past four. Combined with the 2016 volume that’s $106MM in the past 24 months. And that isn’t so bad. The address being written wrong on the property below that just sold, now that’s bad.