An article from my Wednesday Wall Street Journal caught my eye, and for obvious reasons. “The Shrinking Second Home”, written by Juliet Chung, possessed a title that looked promising to me, perhaps an insightful bit of foreshadowing that would somehow reflect what is happening in my very own second home market. I hoped there would be statistical appeal, showcasing a switch in buyer behavior towards smaller, more reasonable second homes. Instead, I found just a couple of sporadic examples where vacation home buyers are opting for smaller, but still luxurious homes primarily because of the price break that the lower square footage allows. This article wasn’t about a shift in desire, it was about a shift in spending.
One fella from Florida bought a vacation “cabin” in central Florida, which to me means he needs to go no further. I mean, have you ever actually been to central Florida? It’s like the most boring topographical wasteland, roamed by skinny, even sickly cows, and filled with Burmese pythons. It’s horrible. Anyway, some guy paid $700k to buy a cabin there, and outfitted it with some form of hybrid Florida hunting motif. There’s even a moose head hanging over the fireplace. Presumably not a moose native to the scrubby torched grasslands that make up central Florida. But the article isn’t about moose, it’s about cabins. And it’s supposed to be about how people like little cabins, because they can afford them and they’re quaint and simplistic and easy to own. Take the 1300 mile drive northwest and I’ll tell you what people want in Lake Geneva these days, and it most certainly isn’t a cabin. Or a cottage. And we especially eschew moose, heads or otherwise.
Those last couple statements weren’t entirely true. Buyers here do love cottages, but many times they only love them if they look like they were born of a Coastal Living magazine, a habitable offspring of a child between Ralph Lauren and Jackie Onassis. They want a cottage, sure, but they want one that oozes style and grace, and they certainly don’t want to employ much imagination in order to capture those attributes. What other reason would shining examples of cottage perfection like my Wilmette and Agaming listings fail to attract new owners like two scruffy mutt puppies in an animal rescue newspaper ad? Buyers don’t love the cottage, even if the Wall Street Journal says they do.
But even that isn’t fair. Buyers will indeed buy cottages, but usually only if price limits their selection.If you want to spend $400k and be close to the lake, chances are you’re going to have to fall in love with a cottage to make that price and location desire jive. Likewise, if you want to spend $550k and be close to the lake and have a boatslip, you better start flipping through Cottage Living post haste. Once you make it to the lakefront market, cottages are so 1953, and buyers want very little to do with them. Just look at the spate of new construction on the lake right now. Each home bigger than the next, 8000 square feet, 9500 square feet, 14000 square feet- these are not measurements that display a lust for cottage living. Simple cottages that offer lakefront on Geneva, like Sauk Trail and Cedar Point Drive and others, find little traction in this market, even though the prices are remarkably lower than the spectacular manses that may be literally right next door. No, buyers at Lake Geneva don’t love the lakefront cottage, even if I do. They’ll say they do, but they don’t.
If you’re reading this with objection in mind, please do come to Lake Geneva and prove me wrong. I’m begging for someone to call to say that all they really want is a 1500 square foot cottage on the shore of Geneva Lake, and they’d really like it if the home was in need of work. When that happens, I’ll believe the Wall Street Journal. Until then, I’ll keep watching stunning 9000 square foot homes pop up on Geneva like so many dandelions on a sunny June afternoon. Or to make the simile more relevant to the story, like so many moose heads hanging over fireplaces in central Florida.