Blog : Country Club Estates

Countdown
David Curry

Countdown

It’s spring break, and everyone is gone. To the mountains. To the beach. To a different place with its own brand of monotony. In the mountains, it’s snowing again. Powder Day, the flat-brimming locals shout. But it’s more of a lazy shout, if there is such a thing. On the beach, more shells. Here’s one that looks like my dog, says some old lady, as she tucks it into her sack full of other shells that also look like her dog. It’s another place this week for many, a break from the monotony of our early spring, to enjoy the monotony of another place.

But while everyone is playing and traveling, I know that there’s something serious on the horizon. Memorial Day Weekend. It’s nine weeks from this Friday. It’s not going to be a normal Friday, that’s for sure. It’ll be you, your office, your co-workers, and there will be a decidedly pronounced difference in attitudes on that day. Some will have an energy, a desire, optimism. Others will behave the same way they did the week before and the week before. For some, that Friday matters. For others, it means only the turning of a calendar, from one season to another, unofficially.

The decision whether or not that Friday matters is yours, and yours alone. The market today is humming with activity, and while I particularly enjoy the activity on the lakefront, each segment of our market is bustling. There is no segment left behind this spring, each price range and housing category finding buyers and fielding offers. You needn’t be robustly rich to enjoy a weekend at the lake. So long as a $90k condo in Geneva National is in your range, you’re in play.

There are pending sales throughout our market, no matter if it’s a $198k cottage in Country Club Estates, or a lakefront estate on the North Shore of Fontana for $7.395MM. The best news for our spring market is that inventory is increasing, albeit slowly. New inventory in any category is a positive, as this market features considerable in-trading amongst vacation home owners. A new lakefront for $3.5MM is good, because it very well may free up a new listing of a $700k cottage with a boatslip. That boat slip property will be great to list, because an owner of a condo at Vista Del Lago might be looking to switch over to a single family vacation home. Any inventory is good inventory, as it lubricates the gears that churn this market forward.

For now, you have a decision to make. If you’re sitting in your office thinking about summer, this is fine. But if those summer thoughts lead you only to a Saturday rooftop dinner and a Sunday morning brunch line, then you’re not thinking as clearly as I had hoped. Dream of summer. Dream of that Friday, nine weeks from this one, but make the decision to make this summer different. I’m here to help, if only you’ll let me.

Above, the divine porch at 434 Oakwood in Fontana. Just sold last week for $1,150,000.

Lake Geneva Market Update
David Curry

Lake Geneva Market Update

It’s been a while since I’ve written a broad market update. It had also been a while since I felt the warmth of a bright sun on my skin. But yesterday fixed that latter absence, and today I’m sporting a proper spring sunburn. Sunburns are generally understood as being bad. Bad for your health, bad for sleeping. But an early spring burn, with just a slight sensation of sting, well, that’s something that everyone of our winter condition needs. It’s an event. A ceremony. A wonderful happening that signals the passing of winter with the emergence of spring. I don’t like sunburns, not one bit. Except in April.

The Lake Geneva vacation home market has endured quite a winter. Winter was fine, I suppose. It snowed a bit and it was cold a bit, but it didn’t snow a ton and it wasn’t cold all that often. That was winter. But March and April, the two months to which we generally assign some spring tendencies, they didn’t cooperate. The weather was awful. It was. Terrible, really. Rainy and windy or snowing and windy. Early ice out means nothing if the ice is replaced with snow. And so we endured. Showings were made and showings were canceled. Who could drive in this snow and that rain?  The market faced obstacles, mostly from the clouds above, and yet here we are. The market triumphed over so-called-spring, and is, today, poised to do some serious selling.

Because we’d be remiss to fail to recognize that the weather has indeed had an impact on our market. The market has performed valiantly, don’t be confused, but I can only imagine how much stronger the market might be today if not for the desperate grip of a belligerent winter. We’ve had sales, closings, showings, galore.  If I’m a buyer today, I’m worried. The market performed well in spite of the weather.  Can you guess how much better it might do if it were able to excel because of it?

Current vacation segment activity knows no limit. The entry level lake access market is active, with pending deals in Country Club Estates and Cedar Point Park. Country Club has had the hot hand of late, with buyers greedily gobbling up any bits of inventory, with few exceptions.  Further up the price scale, there are three off-water homes pending sale between $800k and $1.5MM. Those homes include one in Wooddale ($899k), one on Hunt Club Lane ($1.3MM), and the long-listed, renovated Loramoor home ($1.499MM). These homes are all fine in their own right, and each sale will ultimately make plenty of sense to me, and to the market.

There was a time back during the prior market cycle when the least expensive listing on Geneva Lake was right at $2MM.  If you liked that market, you’re in luck, because today there are just two true lakefront homes available priced under $2MM. The bulk of the lakefront inventory today is priced between $2-3MM, with several fine offerings in that mix. Some of those properties have been listed for quite some time, others are fresh to market this season.  My predictive qualities are quite refined, and as of now I’m going on a limb and guessing we’ll see two or three new accepted offers out of those nine lakefronts in that particular price range by Memorial Day Weekend.

There are two lakefront spec homes being built in Cedar Point Park. Both of those homes are listed at $3.85MM and both have been under contract since last summer. The first one is now finished, and just closed for full price. I’m not going to elaborate on these sales publicly (you should be working with me if you want to know what I think about them), but I’ll just state the obvious: this market craves new construction. It loves it. It needs it. It cannot live without it.  $3.85MM x 2 proves it.

The top end of the market has been quiet in terms of new inventory, and just two long-contracted deals remain to be closed. Those are of the Born Free property on the North Shore of Geneva ($5.75MM) and Clear Sky Lodge ($6.5MM) on the South Shore. Sometimes I randomly capitalize the shores to make them feel more important.  Both of those sales will be fine, though both feel somewhat pricey given their prior, recent sales prices. That’s $3.5MM for Born Free in 2011 and $3.7MM for Clear Sky in 2012 (I represented the seller in that sale).  Still, the market is hot and these two properties prove that appreciation over recent years has been, in some cases, quite impressive. The best remaining upper bracket offering is my Basswood listing.  Watch the video here   to remember what summer looks and feels like.

Inventory remains the biggest concern as we transition into the summer market.  This concern isn’t limited to the lakefront market, as there are lots of buyers in search of a reasonably priced ($500k-$1.3MM) off-water home with either a lake view or a boat slip. But the lakefront is the market that generates the headlines, and the lakefront could also use an injection of new inventory. What segment has buyers waiting? Um, all of them? There are active buyers right now in every price range, from $200k cottages in Country Club to $10MM lakefronts. If I’m a seller today I consider the market and wonder if I should sell (maybe). If I’m a buyer I consider the market and wonder if I should jump (probably). But if I’m me, I’m just concerned about hanging on to this new spring-time tan (unlikely).

Above, sunrise from my 274 Sylvan listing in Fontana’s Buena Vista.
2017 Upper Bracket Lake Access Market Review
David Curry

2017 Upper Bracket Lake Access Market Review

It’s well known and generally accepted that anyone with a lakefront budget will wish for lakefront. There were some people who lived up the road from my parents’ lakefront house in Williams Bay. Those people would tell me how they were glad they didn’t live on the lake. Too much noise from the boats, the waves, the sound of all that enjoyment. They preferred, they said, to live away from the lake, where it’s quiet. Where the lapping or crashing of the waves cannot find them. I remember that even as a young child I knew those people were lying. No one would prefer to be off the lake, and if a budget allows and the aim is true, then lakefront is the result. Or is it?

The upper end of our lake access market is unique in the flexibility such a budget might afford. A lakefront buyer with a budget up to $2MM might very well, and usually will, choose lakefront. But what will that lakefront be? Will it usually be nice? Will it be large? Will it afford privacy? Well, no, not usually.  The concept applies to those with lower lake home budgets as well. If you’re a $1.2MM buyer, I can typically find you lakefront. But will that lakefront be a beautiful house with two car garage and a pool? Of course it won’t. It’ll be a cottage, with some questionable structural supports and tight neighbors. But for $1.2MM an off-water buyer can find something quite unique. They can find a boatslip, maybe a view, maybe privacy, maybe a pool, maybe five bedrooms. This is why even when market segments overlap within the same price boundaries, many buyers will opt off water in order to gain something the on-water home cannot offer.

In 2017, the upper bracket lake access market experienced a strong influx of buyer traffic and closed the year with a significant volume total. 2017 closed 27 off-water homes priced over $500,000. That’s a huge number, but what’s most remarkable is the presence of liquidity in the $900k and above segment.  This lofty segment closed nine homes, including two in the $1.5MM range.  During 2016, the same segment closed 22 properties, with just five selling for more than $900k.

Thirteen of those 27 homes sold with transferable boat slips. Two of the sales were in our co-op communities, one in the Congress Club for $1.53MM and one in Belvedere Park for $564k. There were no public sales in the Harvard Club for 2017. Associations with volume in this segment included Geneva Oaks, Cedar Point Park, Country Club Estates, Indian Hills, Oakwood Estates, Black Point, The Lindens, Knollwood, The Loch Vista Club, Sybil Lane, Oak Shores, The Lake Geneva Club, Forest Rest, Maytag and Sylvan Trail Estates. That’s some widespread activity, and the market should be pleased for producing such strong volume.  Oddly,  there wasn’t a single residential MLS sale in this segment in Glenwood Springs last year.

Most of these sales made good sense to me. I was involved in six of these 27 sales, which means that at least six of the sales made perfect sense to me. Of the other sales, I was surprised at a few of them, including an off-water home with no slip that sold north of $1MM. Another shocker, at least to me, was the sale of a hilltop home in Fontana that closed over $1.5MM and was subsequently torn down.  That property lacked a slip, but the lake view is, as a point of fact, one of the best off-water views I’ve ever seen.

I was asked this week what I thought would be the better buy with a $1MM budget: an on-water cottage or an off-water home. I admitted I’d always look lakefront first, but I would consider a larger lot off-water, so long as I had a boat slip and was located in a high quality neighborhood (think Black Point, Lindens, Glen Fern, Loramoor, 700 Club). In those settings, I would happily consider off-water to be a near equal trade off. This segment today is light on inventory, as is the rest of the vacation home market. Just 16 off-water homes are available priced in excess of $500k. Of these available properties, my favorite is the modern home (my listing) on  South Lakeshore Drive that’s been reduced to $1.095MM. This is a lot of house in a rare location, and while it’s off-water it feels like a private lakefront home. It’s unique, but it’s a winner.

This particular segment is heavily influenced by overlapping lakefront inventory, which is, at the moment, similarly low in inventory. If entry level lakefront properties continue to be difficult to source, and the off-water market in the $900k-$1.8MM range provides some nice options, expect this market to benefit. If you’re a buyer in search of a lake house around the million dollar mark, I’m here to help.

Above, an idyllic cottage I sold this summer in the Lake Geneva Club.
2017 Entry Level Lake Access Market Review
David Curry

2017 Entry Level Lake Access Market Review

That’s a mouthful. I’m sure there’s a better way to say it for search engine optimization, but the market is best defined in that way.  The market isn’t particularly flashy. It won’t make any headlines. It won’t be in Crain’s or in Architectural Digest. But the entry level lake access market is the market that’s as important as any other here. These are the homes available to people who have enough fiscal power to make a vacation home a reality, but don’t have lakefront budgets.  For the purposes of this post, this segment remains at $500,000 and under.

All of these 2017 market reviews are going to tell similar stories. It’s all about inventory. About volume. And about how the inventory is either going to build and feed the market or shrivel and starve it. Today, there are just 12 homes priced under $500k with access to Geneva Lake. Remember, these are not municipal access homes- these are private, club style access points.  These are the associations you know, the associations that can offer a path to the lake, a park, a pier, a diving board, maybe some summertime geraniums in pots.

Those 12 homes vary wildly, just as this market varies. A $200k cottage in Country Club Estates is not at all like a $500k home in Country Club Estates. A small cottage in Oak Shores with a slip for $450k isn’t much dissimilar to a small cottage without a slip in Cedar Point Park, except that the Cedar Point cottage will be 50% cheaper. This is a market that I’ve gladly served for two decades, and it’s a market that hinges on a very important question: Do you want a nice house or do you want to be close to the lake?  You cannot choose both.

For the year just ended, we sold 61 lake access homes of all makes and models, priced under $500k.  The 2016 total was 56, so we’re heading in the right direction.  Just three of those homes had transferable boat slips, proving how hard it is to find a slip in this segment. Perhaps best of all, I personally sold all three of those homes. Why did I sell those homes? Well, because I know how valuable a boat slip is. I know owning a home here is wonderful, but if all you really want is to hang out on a pier and boat, then you’re going to be miserable in your off-water slip-less home, even if it has some stone counters and a master bathroom.

The key to understanding this segment comes back to that bold question about proximity. That drives this particular market more than anything. You can buy a nice house in Country Club Estates for $500k. It won’t be remarkably close to the lake. Or you could buy a small cottage in Knollwood for $500k that might be 900′ from the water. Which do you value? Do you want to walk down to the pier in the morning to cast your line a few times, motivated by the hope that something might bight? Or would you rather sit on your screened porch, reading a book thinking about where fish fry will be on Friday night? Answer those questions, and you’ll have a clear direction for your pursuit.

2018 should be just like 2017. Inventory is terrible now, yes, but it won’t be that way forever. This market might be more sensitive to the new tax law, but if inventory builds there’s nothing stopping 2018 from falling in the 2016/2017 volume range. Prices are increasing, albeit modestly. Value still exists here, and I’ll be here to help you find it.

Fontana Lake Access Market Review
David Curry

Fontana Lake Access Market Review

In Fontana, there is a question. Country Club Estates would have you believe that it is the king of Fontana’s lake access world, while Glenwood Springs feels the same. Which association reigns? And while they’re battling, Indian Hills asks for merely consideration in the conversation.  Fontana, unlike Williams Bay, has three large lake access associations, four if you count Brookwood, which I’m not going to for no other reason than I don’t feel like it. Buena Vista should be included, but Buena Vista, while large in overall size, isn’t an association that likes to turn over very often, so in a market context Buena Vista is actually quite small. No matter the association in charge, Fontana is a supremely desirable municipality with numerous lake access associations, all of which deserve your attention.

Country Club Estates tends to have good years. When the markets are down, Country Club prints volume. When the markets are up, Country Club always seems to have inventory. It’s just a good association with nice scale that buyers tend to like. The neighborhood feels interesting, owing that in large part to the hills and the winding roads and the forested yards.  Country Club printed 27 total sales (per MLS) in 2016, priced from a modest $98,500 all the way to $585k. For those who continue to think that Geneva is only a playground for the rich and richer, consider 18 of the sales in Country Club closed below $300k.  Do you get a boatslip with your purchase there? Of course not. Do you get some lush parkways and a large lakefront park? Don’t be silly. What you do get is simple lake access through a park and beach system that’s not entirely exclusive to Country Club Estates. Still, the access is good enough and buyers find Country Club to be desirable.

In part that’s because of the Fontana location, because of the harbor at the end of the road where a buyer can moor a boat, or because of Big Foot Country Club. There’s a golf course and a tennis court, and it’s close to everything else that Fontana has to offer. Of note is the absence of higher priced sales last year in Country Club. Typically, sales can print in the $700-900k range without terrible difficulty, but last year the highest MLS sale was at that $585k mark even though inventory over that mark did exist. Today there are just eight homes available per MLS, offering less that four months of inventory based on the 2016 production.

If you like Fontana and you want a boat slip with your purchase, you’d be wise to consider Glenwood Springs. Located just to the East of Country Club Estates, Glenwood offers plenty of price points and plenty of frontage.  Unique to Glenwood is the abundance of private piers that accompany off-water homes. I sold two such homes last year, one on Oakwood for $1.1MM and one on Linden for $871k. Both of those homes were off-water, but both had private piers. In addition to these homes with piers, some have slips and most have a buoy available through the association. There are two pier systems for swimming and boating, and members can walk to the sand beach that the Country Club folks use (but don’t use their pier). The association has a way about it that just feels right.

For 2016, there were just seven MLS sales in Glenwood Springs, and I was happy to have sold three of those homes.  Prices ranged from $365k for a funky cedar-y cabin, to $1.1MM for my gem on Oakwood. Today, just four homes are available per the MLS. Something to remember with Glenwood Springs- there is a “good” side and a “not as good” side, as Glenwood is bisected by South Lakeshore Drive. Both sides are fine, but I don’t need to tell you I’d rather walk to the lake with my kids and not have to cross a sometimes busy-ish road.

Indian Hills is adjacent Glenwood. The association there is nice, with a shallow but wide swath of frontage marked by a relatively ugly green fence. 2016 closed sales from $107k to $504k.  Ah, but Indian Hills is interesting because not all homes labeled “Indian Hills” have access to the private association lakefront. Of the six MLS sales last year, only three of those had access to the lakefront park and pier. Just three homes are available in the association today, including a lakefront owned by a baseball player who crushed most of my hopes and all of my dreams in game seven of the 2003 NLCS.

Working to the East, Club Unique is a nice association that didn’t have anything available during 2016, and the Harvard Club printed one sale in the fall ($510k). The Harvard Club is one of our co-op style associations, though during a showing a woman once told me, through her porch screens, that the Harvard Club is NOT a co-op. Sure thing, porch lady. But the association is sort of a co-op in that buyers receive membership stock rather than a warranty deed, and there are rules both tricky and nuanced that apply here. If you’re looking for something in the Harvard Club you should let me know, as I’ve sold three of the past four available homes there.

In my haste to tell you about the robust Country Club market, I skipped over two associations on the North Shore of Fontana. Buena Vista didn’t have a single MLS sale in 2016, cementing its position as one of our most exclusive and elusive associations. If you want to buy there, tell me. I’ll dig for you. Belvidere Park is another co-op style association in Fontana, and it’s really interesting to me. Like the Harvard Club there are rules here, but unlike the Harvard Club, Belvidere Park is serviced by all year water and sewer. The Harvard Club shuts there water off in the winter months, so unless you’re lucky to have an alternative water source, you’re not going to enjoy your winter visits all that much. Then again, the Harvard Club has a slip for every home and Belvidere Park doesn’t, so you’ll need to pick your poison.

Fontana is likely our most desirable municipality. The market respects the strides that Fontana has made over recent years to improve their lakefront and to improve their overall village aesthetic.  Having Gordy’s and Chuck’s anchor your lakefront isn’t a bad thing, and having the best beach on the lake isn’t terrible, either.  Throw in a diverse grouping of condominiums (Abbey Springs, among many others) and you have a market made for every budget. The most expensive home in Fontana was a lakefront I sold in November for $7.35MM. The least expensive was that cottage in Country Club Estates for $98,500. If you’re a buyer at any point in between, Fontana has something for you.

 

Above, the master bathroom at 434 Oakwood, in Glenwood Springs. 

 

Lake Geneva Foreclosures
David Curry

Lake Geneva Foreclosures

Lake Geneva Foreclosures. Those three words were types into search engines with terrifying frequency over the last decade. In the early part of the past decade, the 2006 part, those words were typed because buyers were looking for deals. They were looking for anything that wasn’t on the market, something rare, something unique, something in trouble that might spell opportunity. In the middle part of the past decade, those years of 2009 through 2013, the words were typed more solemnly, with purpose and diligence, seeking still opportunity. And now, the words are typed, but it’s half hearted, well intentioned but wishing more than expecting. There might be some foreclosures still lurking, but there probably aren’t. Still, the words are typed, Lake Geneva Foreclosures, hoping something might still be out there, something that the rest of the market hasn’t been paying attention to.

That’s why I’m here, fighting through this wretched head cold, scouring the lis pendens filings and the sheriff’s sale notices.  In an effort to make this somewhat concise, I kept my sensitive eyes peeled for signs of foreclosure activity in our most foreclosure prone associations. I don’t see a single unit in Geneva National pending foreclosure, according to recent LP filings. I also don’t see anything at GN scheduled for a sheriff’s sale. In the MLS, Geneva National has one short sale listed and one REO, that of a $150k type condo that doesn’t appear to me to be any particular form of value. Geneva National seems to have made it to 2016 damaged but unbroken by the foreclosure trouble that had plagued it from 2009 through 2014. The market has sufficiently absorbed most of the trouble there, though I’d still be keen to avoid newer enclaves so I don’t face a Foxwood type situation. Foxwood, for the uninitiated, was the latest and greatest thing in GN, a beautiful enclave of higher end homes and duplexes. And then the developer lost the project and all of the unfinished lots and now it’s in limbo. It’ll come back, sure, as a newer, better thing,  but we all know it won’t be.

Abbey Springs doesn’t have any foreclosure issues, which continues to amaze and impress me. Abbey Springs combines relatively high association dues with price points that range from the mid $100s to $1MM. That association is large (592 units), and it seems to me that some of those owners would have run into a bit of financial trouble over recent years. Alas, that has proven to not be the case, and Abbey Springs scoffs at your foreclosure interests. Country Club Estates has one sheriff’s sale pending, and that’s of our old friend on Shabonna that has been in and out of foreclosure trouble for as long as I can remember. As an owner, I’d imagine this sort of thing is exhausting. I once fought with Aurora Healthcare over an egregious medical invoice and after like a month of battle, I caved and paid the extortion. I can’t imagine the effort required to continually fight with a bank over a house.

With that theme in mind, the foreclosure in Williams Bay on Conference Point is still there. Still. There. It’s been years, or decades, maybe my entire lifetime, and it’s still there, still on the market, still listed as a Short Sale. I’m sure it still attracts the attention of the uninitiated, because it’s so much house in such a nice spot for a reasonable sum of money. Maybe someday that home will sell, but had we been holding our breath waiting for that day we’d all be thoroughly and completely dead. The same goes for the foreclosure that’s been on and off in Loramoor. It’s no longer worth thinking about. There’s an REO in Cedar Point Park that’s pending sale in the mid $100s, and that’s a home that I once made a personal bid on before realizing that the home, even with a substation renovation, will still be odd, still weird, still unloved by the market.

The IRS seizure of a lakefront house to the East of Cedar Point is still hanging out there, as best I can tell, still awaiting its turn on the IRS auction block. If you’re interested in this property, let me know and I’ll keep you posted on the progress of this interesting spectacle. All in all, there’s very little going on in our foreclosure market.  In 2012, Walworth County had one single family foreclosure sale every 1.3 days. In 2016, we’ve averaged one sale every 3.85 days.  Of those sales this year, the most expensive closed for $210,000, so it’s fairly obvious what sorts of properties remain sensitive to default.

If you fear you missed out on the foreclosure crisis and the buying opportunity that it sometimes presented, don’t fret. I saw several commercials over the weekend (On Wisconsin!) for Rocket Mortgage. Looks to me like you just punch in some numbers on your phone and then you get a mortgage, which sounds completely and entirely fantastic.  If Rocket Mortgage and their algorithms turn you down, you can then check with Sofi, which is another company making loans super duper easy. Or, if you’d like to go the stringent, more traditional route, FHA will still lend you 96.5% of the purchase price, assuming you have a rock solid credit score of at least 580.  So don’t feel left out, it won’t be too many more years before there’s a new foreclosure crisis waiting for cash buyers.

Lake Geneva Market Update
David Curry

Lake Geneva Market Update

The ice is weak. It has been weak all season, since it first formed, just that skim coat at first, then more ice, stronger ice, but still weak. It has proven this time and time again, first with the great car-on-ice-caper of Winterfest Weekend, then again with the unfortunate death of a snowmobiler just two weeks ago. This is ice that cannot be trusted. This is the ice that must melt and leave us alone.

It melted two weekends ago. It melted more last weekend. The wind whipped it open in many spots, and those spots grew and shifted as the massive sheets of ice broke free and floated the way of the wind. The ice this morning is weaker still. It will be gone soon, gone by next week, by next Thursday, to be precise. Then we’ll be free to carry on as though the ice never was, because we never liked it, we never needed it, we never trusted it.

Spring is coming, and it’s coming fast. The days are longer. The nights are shorter. The winter market, once momentarily filled with the sort of fear that accompanies a tumultuous stock market, has soldiered on. Is this market just okay? Just barely hanging in there? Or is it robust, bold, strong and decisive, filled with buyers who seem to know what they want and others who, if given seven suitable choices, couldn’t even agree on dinner? It’s both, all things, both filled with motivation and filled with procrastination. As with all markets, the motivated are reaping the spoils of this market that is, as of this morning, in spite of the weak ice that still clings, alive and well.

This morning there are four properties with lake access pending under $300k. This is never a surprise to me, as it should always be an active, consistent market.  Interest rates are low and this range of buyer always has inventory to pick from. Fixer uppers and finished products alike, the former being in that price range with better locations, the latter being farther from the lake but shinier, prettier, less troubling. From $300k to $1MM, just three properties are pending, one in the Loch Vista Club, one in Country Club Estates, and one to a buyer of mine in Glenwood Springs. This market segment is light on inventory, as buyers are interested in $500-600k homes with slips, they just don’t care much for the limited active inventory.

Over $1MM is where the real action is today. The single family condo home on Wrigley is pending with a $1.1MM ask. I showed that home far too many times to not be the broker with the buyer, but alas, life, like primary season, is unfair. There’s a deal on Forest Rest of an off water home just over $1MM, and the curiously goofy little lakefront in Knollwood is pending in the $1.1Ms. Last week, the Dartmouth Woods lakefront home that I tried so desperately to sell last summer finally closed in the $1.2s, and that buyer did well to join that nice enclave of lakefront homes on the north side of Fontana Bay.

The newer lakefront for $2.125MM that rests in the shadow of Vista Del Lago is under contract, that to a move up buyer from another area property. The Conference Point lakefront with an old red brick house and 200′ of frontage closed last week for $3.2MM, which is now our second lakefront sale at $16k per front foot this year. In case you’re wondering, no, that doesn’t make it a trend. While I love that location on the lake, I don’t know as though I’d be a dirt buyer in the $3s over there. That will make whatever is built on that property the most expensive property for at least a mile in either direction of shoreline, and I’m not convinced I’d want that distinction. If I’m a lakefront buyer, I want to be surrounded by like kind properties. That’s why 1014 South Lakeshore in the $7s makes sense. That’s why my lakefront lot in Loramoor at $2.34MM makes sense. That’s why my beautiful lakefront on Pebble Point for $4.475MM makes sense.  I like to sell properties that make sense.

The Lackey Lane lakefront in the $4.5MMs is still pending to my buyer, and a new deal this week brings a buyer to a high $2s home in the Geneva Manor. That’s a home assessed at $2MM, so it’ll be fun when the reassessment of that property is done by the city, based on the new sales price. I have little else to say about that sale.

I will add that our local market loves it when out of town brokers show up with buyers. They generally buy things that don’t make tons of sense, which is why we love them. If you’re a buyer, read what I just wrote again.

Inventory hasn’t yet built, just in the way that it didn’t really build last year during this typical spring sales period. I expect lakefronts to trickle on to the market over the coming weeks, as I know I have at least three lakefronts coming soon under my brokerage. If you’d like to know about those before everyone else, you should be working with me. It’ll be fun.

Lake Geneva YTD Performance
David Curry

Lake Geneva YTD Performance

The year is young now, but not so young that we can’t judge it.  One year old children are young, so young that we shouldn’t judge them. But two year olds? Judge away. The market is now in its second month, and with a lifespan of only 12, our market is as a 7 year old, and we know very well that we can judge 7 year olds. If a kid is fantastically smart and sweet as a 7 year old, chances are that behavior will stick through his or her life. If the 7 year old is horrible, mean and ornery, we can, sadly, assume that this 7 year old will grow to be a horrible, mean and ornery adult.  The 2016 Lake Geneva real estate market is old enough now that we must judge it.

January was not a kind month to my biotech heavy portfolio, in fact, it was ruthless and homicidal. The year started with big index declines, and continued in this most miserable lower for longer pattern. The good news might be that the bottom seems to have held for now, so buyers have not been scared away in the same way that they would have if we remained in that free fall. Most segments are doing just fine today, with individual markets performing better than others. Remember, cheap oil means your portfolio looks awful and you won’t be retiring on time,  but never underestimate the life affirming power of $1.49 gasoline.

I had a closing last month in Geneva National. GN, as you may recall, had a fantastic 2015. The carry over has not yet been evident. Today, GN has the rare condition of owning 71 market offerings (single family and condominium) but not a single showing as under contract. I have little doubt that something is under contract there, but the MLS isn’t yet reflecting that. That’s rare, that’s odd, and it’s not good. Sellers in GN who entered 2016 thinking that things have been completely healed should rethink that supposition. The market is better, yes, but if a particular seller has not yet succumbed to the pricing realities that cemented in 2015, then don’t expect buyers to be rewarding GN with liquidity in the way they did last year. GN, pay attention and don’t get smug just yet. YTD Grade: D

Abbey Springs has somewhat high inventory at the moment, with 36 offerings. The good news for AS is that they also have at least five of those properties under contract. If GN boasted a similar ratio, we’d see 10 GN properties under market at the moment and everyone would proclaim the market as hot, hot, hot (Disclaimer: Many agents do this regardless).  Abbey Springs has just one single family home under contract, that of a reasonably nice home on Saint Andrews listed at $699k. It’ll be interesting to see if 2016 delivers some upper bracket buyers in Abbey Springs. That didn’t happen in 2015, but we’ll see if ample inventory provides a few of those rare $800k+ buyers to Abbey Springs. YTD Grade: A-

The lakefront condo market on Geneva has, since its heyday of 1998-2006,  stalled. Spurts of volume here and there do not heal a market particularly well. But alas, prices in this segment never cratered in the way that the residential lakefront market did, which always perplexed me. If you’ll remember back then, I was perpetually wondering why there weren’t more foreclosures in the lakefront condo segment. I was happy there weren’t, but still surprised. Today the lakefront market has some nice movement, with a bit of aged inventory in Fontana Shores under contract and a townhouse in Somerset that just closed this morning for $725k. Inventory remains light in this segment, which is good. The lakefront condo market chokes on inventory. So far, so good. YTD Grade: B

The lake access market surrounding Geneva is off to a quick start, with five properties pending sale today. A few new ones- a contract with buyer of mine on a Glenwood Springs property, and a new contract on an off-water home in Cedar Point. That home is listed for $825k. It’s a charming home, but off-water with no slip and a somewhat limited cottage design. It had sold previously in 2007 for $1.15MM. That was a peak price, and then some. Other pending properties are in the lower reaches, including on in Indian Hills in the $400s, and three more under $250k in Country Club Estates and Cedar Point Park. YTD Grade: B

Lastly, the king, the lakefront market itself. Inventory is tragically low, with just 23 true lakefront homes listed (and four vacant lots, including two that are my listings- Loramoor $2.34MM and North Shore Drive $4.475MM). Of those 23, six have contracts. That’s really quite remarkable, so let that sink in for a bit. Out of 600 or so lakefronts on Geneva, just 17 homes are for sale. If you think you’ve found an exclusive market somewhere in some mountain town, I assure you we belly laugh at your exclusivity. Pending today is the small odd home in Knollwood ($1.125MM). That home is proof that if you just wait forever and keep dropping your price, you’ll sell. Dartmouth Woods is pending ($1.35MM), and that’s a nice little place that I like quiet a bit. A newer build on LaGrange is pending just over $2MM. If you don’t know the house, it’s the one that sits in the shadow of Vista Del Lago.

Bonnie Brae has a pending sale in the low $2s, and once that closes we’ll have seen a rather significant turn over on that Snake Road street. In the past several years, the market has closed three other lakefronts on that short road, with this pending ranch about to become the fourth. That’s nice to see, as new owners generally undertake some level of beautification of the home, and the market benefits.  In the upper reaches, the old brick home in Williams Bay formerly known as Towering Elms (until Dutch Elm Disease killed them all) is pending with a $3.85MM ask. Expect that home to be knocked down once closed. Finally, I have my sale on Lackey Lane in the mid $4s pending to  buyer whom I’m proud to represent.  YTD Grade: A-

One small lakefront closed last month, that of the skinny lot on Outing, just to the West of George Williams. For $800k, a buyer snuck onto the lake. It’s a curious property sure, but it’s $800k and that, is that. The lakefront market won’t be making an encore of the 2015 volume totals if this inventory stays low.  I have some exciting lakefronts coming to market in the near future, and I expect other agents have their own off-market properties on their radars.  The South Shore Club continues to be absent a single offering, which means that club won’t be lending too much to our inventory totals unless there’s a sudden influx of inventory, which I’m betting there won’t be.

For now, so far, so good. No after school tutoring or behavioral sessions necessary for our little seven year old.

 

It’s Lake Geneva’s Winterfest Weekend, so please do come to the lake if you like cool things, like snow sculptures. It’s a really great weekend. If you’re planning on waiting in line for brunch tomorrow, you can do so much better.