Sullivan County Real Estate

Any Market for Upper End Lakefront?

It's always a little bittersweet when I call to set up appointments for some of my favorites, and find they're gone. Bitter because I don't have a favorite to show. Sweet because it shows that there's movement and activity. That's just what happened last week when I called about some moderately priced lakefront houses. I found out that my favorite under $300,000 lakefront show, an adorable little two bedroom seasonal cottage on Division Pond at Wolf Lake listed at $279,000, had a deal on it, and another, a renovated 2 bedrooom + loft on the main Wolf Lake listed at $385,000 just closed at $350,000. A third house in this general range, a charming 3 bedroom privately set on Forestburg Lake, closed a couple of weeks ago at $430,000. I have a deal set to close in the next few weeks on another lake house at Edgewood Lake in the mid $300's. So while there hasn't been a lot of lakefront activity, there has been some.

That's not the case with higher end lakefront. I've been out with a few folks in the last month tire kicking in the $600,000 to $1M lakefront range. When I call on those houses, they've always been available. (Click here to see the 16 lakefront houses in Sullivan county currently listed above $700,000.) There just doesn't seem to any activity in this range. And when you move to the very upper end, above $1.5M (the Chapin range), I'm not even seeing the tire kickers.

The dilemma is where should prices be if there's no market? From the current (albeit small) group of lakefront sales in the $400K range and below, I can extrapolate up to different houses on different lakes into the $500K range to mark out some parameters of value. But get much above $500K and I'm at a loss. For example, a new listing just came on the market on Black Lake, the first listing on the main lake there in a couple of years, at $875,000. It's a comfortable lake house, 3 bedrooms, 1,700 sq. ft., not over the top (like a Chapin lodge house) with a nice, private lake setting. And there's a spacious classic 4 BR lakefront ranch on Lake Devenoge with 3,000 sq. ft. listed for $899,000. Where should they sell? I gotta tell you, I don't really have a clue. I wish one or two of these $700K+ lakefronts would sell to give a few data points as to where value and prices will settle.

On the Hunt

I haven't posted here in a week. I've been busy, and when I write that I'm going to stop qualifying it with "believe it or not" or "surprisingly", because being busy has become more common than being not busy.

The last couple of weeks have been very interesting. Almost all of my appointments have been repeats, folks who have been out with me already once, twice or even a half dozen times. There's a noticeable pickup in seriousness and intent. A number have thick folders or binders filled with listing sheets and notes on properties they've seen or are interested in seeing. As we're traveling around, I'm hearing about their scouting trips to other areas — Columbia, Duchess, Delaware and Ulster Counties and even the Berkshires. They are on the hunt.

One couple I'm working with has been out house shopping every weekend since June, exploring every non-shore area within 3 hours of NYC. Another planned their summer vacation around house hunting. There's also been an increased frequency of 'checking in.' I'm pretty good at getting in touch with my clients when a new listing comes on the market that I think may fit what they're looking for, but in many categories there just aren't a lot of new listings coming on the market every week. So many are calling or emailing me, sometimes every week, to ask "Anything new?"

Related to this pickup in intent is an increased flexibility about price. Over the winter and into the spring, I blogged a couple of times about the firmness of buyer price ceilings. If a buyer said their top is $250,000, it was $250,000 period. Even if there wasn't much chance that they'd find what they were looking for at that price. The general attitude was "We'll wait. If it's not there now at that price, it will be." Buried in that sentiment was the belief that the market would continue down to meet them.

I'm sensing some shift in that attitude. Most of my regular clients have edged their budgets up a bit in the last month. What I'm hearing is "We'd like something with ... a little more privacy, a little bigger, in better condition needing less work, etc. What if we moved out budget up to, say, $300,000? Would that open up more options?" The tone of the conversation has changed, every so slightly, from "This is what we want and this is what we want to pay for it," to "What will it take to get what we want?"

Across the board, buyers are still very value focused. And sellers who are in la-la land with their pricing shouldn't take heart in my observation. A buyer who's been looking around $300,000 for a renovated farmhouse might consider $350,000, but they're not heading to $400,000 or $450,000.

The question is, of course, is all this shopping activity leading to buying, or is it just a nice way to spend a summer vacation when it's too cold and rainy to go to the shore? The answer to that is a qualified yes. I wrote two offers last week, and came to terms on one. And given this weekend's showings, I expect to write another one in the next few days.

Flooding - This Time It's Jeff

This summer, at times, has seemed like a passion play of the Biblical 40 days and 40 nights. Rain, rain and more rain. The miracle has been that with the repeated deluges we haven't seen much flooding. Until now. On Wednesday, the Little Beaverkill overflowed its banks and sent a few feet of water through the center of Livingston Manor. Although a cleanup headache for local businesses and residents, the flooding in the Manor was far less severe than in 2006, and businesses were back up and running pretty quickly.

Then on Friday morning, an unexpected deluge swept through the western part of Sullivan, dumping what may have been a couple of inches of rain in an hour or so over Callicoon, Callicoon Center, Jeffersonville and Youngsville. (The total rainfall for the entire day had been predicted at less than an inch.) With the saturated ground and high running rivers, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Areas from Youngsville through Dewitt Flats into Jeffersonville and out the other side along Route 52, and into the hills along CR 164 and along the Callicoon Center Road, along with Fulton Hill Road from Kenoza Lake, flooded. (Read this morning's Record article.)

The flooding created a lot of mess and inconvenience, but luckily was not as widespread or severe as in year's past. Since 2006, there has been a major flood mitigation effort, and in some areas that's paying off. Neither Hortonville nor Callicoon, both very flood prone in the past, had any significant flooding this year. Hopefully those efforts will expand to curtail flooding in some of the county's remaining troublespots.