Cover art an original work by Neal Aspinall. Magazine title, Summer Homes For City People was borrowed from a 1898 real estate brochure called “The Story of Geneva Lake,” written by F.R. Chandler, under the auspices of the Lake Geneva Village Association.
This magazine was printed by David Curry of Geneva Lakefront Realty, LLC. Any questions relating to this magazine or to future advertising may be made directly to dave@genevalakefrontrealty.com. Reproducing any of this content without owner consent is prohibited.
This magazine is published for information and entertainment purposes only. Geneva Lakefront Realty LLC is not responsible for any claims, representations, or errors made by the publisher, author, or advertisers. For specific details, please consult your attorney, accountant, or licensed Realtor. Geneva Lakefront Realty LLC is a fair housing broker and limited liability company in the state of Wisconsin. Listings are subject to prior sale or price change.
Here we are again. At this lake. Under these skies. Feeling this breeze. Swimming in these waters. Sure, we’re stressed and busy and worried but how bad can things be when this is how we get to spend our summer? Welcome to summer 2025 and the 18th issue of Summer Homes For City People.
2024 was yet another spectacular year for the lakefront market here, that much is true. But optimistic seller pricing was met with repeated buyer rebukes, once again proving that a sparse inventory is certainly a tailwind for pricing, but it is not the magic elixir that many sellers and their representatives believe it to be. My involvement in the lakefront market during 2024 was once again meaningful, with more than $116,000,000 in closed transactions—a tally that will likely make me the top agent in the state for the fourth consecutive year and number one in Walworth County for the 9th straight year. I was honored to represent the buyers of the two priciest sales of 2024, including the buyer of the iconic Aloha Lodge. Beyond the residential lakefront world, I was chosen to represent the buyer in the sale of George Williams College as that venerable institution on our north shore is now slated to be remade into a world class country inn. While that approval process elicited plenty of rather vocal opposition, I am thoroughly and utterly convinced that this outcome was the best possible result not only for the village, but for all of us who care about this lake and seek to limit density while preserving open spaces in a way that elevates our lakefront scene.
As I write this foreword, the world feels remarkably certain. Tariffs and growth concerns have caused turmoil in our equity markets, with wild valuation swings from week to week. How then do we reconcile a near complete lack of lakefront inventory (just one open market lakefront listing as of today) with an equity market that is struggling to find its direction? How do we approach lakefront pricing when we know the world to be seriously contemplating risk? Does a lack of inventory truly overrule all other market influences? The answer, it seems, is we shall soon find out.
For now, let’s revel in our Lake Geneva summer. Let’s kick off our shoes and walk down these grassy lawns and jump into these clear waters. We are indeed the fortunate few. If you're new to the market, welcome. If you're like me, and a summer at Lake Geneva is as comfortable and understood as a dear old friend, welcome back. Whatever your aim, should you find yourself in Lake Geneva and in need of some real estate assistance, I'm here to help. I do hope you enjoy the new magazine, and I look forward to seeing you lakeside. Here's to a most outstanding summer at the lake.
David C. Curry
David C. Curry #1 Agent STATE OF WISCONSIN 2016, 2021, 2022, 2023
$116+ Million
TOTAL 2024 SALES VOLUME
1 MARKET SERVED #1 Agent WALWORTH COUNTY 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
$620+ Million
TOTAL SALES VOLUME 2020-2025
Thometz
FEATURED
LISTING of
REPRESENTED
EXCLUSIVELY
BY David Curry, Geneva Lakefront Realty
PIER 8C
The Work
It's the middle of May now and in five months it'll be the middle of October. The bright green lawns of May will be replaced by the dull lawns of October. The flowers that are trying to bloom soon will have long since lost their petals. The leaves that we root for today will be browning and dying. The spring wind that whips the warmth up from the South will be turning and will, instead, bring the cold and damp from the North. The piers that are soon to be painted white will be chipping and peeling and they'll be stacked messily on the lakeside lawns, atop that dead grass and next to piles of once thriving leaves. The pier guys will trounce through your flowers, the ones that haven’t bloomed yet but will, by then, be dead and dying. The boats that confidently roar to life this week will sheepishly putter onto trailers before they're driven up the hill and around the corner where they'll sit for another seven months on a rack in a barn with thousands of other reminders of summer. The cushions that I haven't yet put out on my outdoor furniture will be right where they are today: In my garage, stuck up in the rafters where I hope the mice won't find them.
So much work, for such a minuscule amount of time. Work, work, work, for what? For a little tiny bit of play? Spend, spend, spend, why? So that your friends can come up one weekend and eat your food and make a mess of your otherwise perfect guest room? Why do we struggle like this? What's the point of it all? It hasn't even started yet and it's pretty much over. Blink and it'll be Memorial Day.
Wake up tomorrow and it'll be Independence Day and my neighbors will be celebrating with all of the fireworks they smuggled up from in Indiana. Nap in the afternoon and it'll be Labor Day and the Water Safety Patrol will be running their reds, wrapping the lake to tell you it's already over. Why are you still watching, when it's obviously over?
So why do we do it? Why do we spend so much money and even more time making sure we have the best chance to enjoy the next few months? Is it really worth it? Millions upon millions of dollars allocated and spent for the hope of one perfect summer evening, when the hydrangeas are in bloom and the lake turns its deepest summery shade of blue. One perfect night when nothing could be better. One perfect night when your kids are at the house and they're grown but for a few moments your house feels like it did years ago: complete. One perfect night when the lamps in the screen porch cast the softest of incandescent light and your grandma tells the story you've heard thirty times and still don't believe. Why do we sweat so much? Because when it all comes together at the lake there's simply nothing better. Seneca said, "it's the superfluous things for which men sweat." I think he was wrong. We sweat for the hope of one perfect evening at the lake, and the promise that at this point in May, those perfect nights are right around the corner.
Originally written May 10th, 2024. It’s important to remember that it really is worth the effort.
Lakeside Charm
Photographed by Amanda Jen Photography
Annoyances
One year, spring came early. I was in my office looking at my screen and the sun snuck around the slightest opening at the edge of my drawn shade and caught the corner of my eye. Odd, I thought. That’s not the sort of sun I’m used to in February, but I dismissed it as an anomaly of angles and kept working. Maybe my chair was closer to my desk than normal?
The next day in front of the same screen, there it was again. An angle of sunlight, glinting through the slightest opening in the drawn shade, bombarding the corner of my eye in a manner which felt aggressive. I kept working, but the next day and the day after, there it was. I should have been happy about it, but I found it insulting. Annoying. Maddening. A spring sun in March, that I can contend with and maybe even celebrate. But in February? That means the spring sun would last three or more months this year and instead of delighting in my sunny luck, I decided that I would pull the shade closed even more tightly. No decent person has time for spring in February, so why shouldn’t that include me?
Originally written February 19th, 2024. I wasn’t in the mood for winter to end at that time, but I quickly changed my mind.
Ryan Lovell
Open House
There was a time in the town when the townspeople who had chosen real estate as their profession held houses open for the public to see. The sales people, with their logos emblazoned on their car doors or at least on the back window of their SUVs, made a plan on most of the Saturdays and some of the Sundays to stick signs in the yards of the homes that they were trying to sell in hopes that passersby would stop, see the home, like the home, then buy the home. This was the intent of the open. There were drinks at these opens, sometimes food, certainly brochures, and the agent with the car and the stickery adornment. At first, the open houses were few, seldom even, as agents fit them in when they could, to appease their sellers who demanded they do something. Who demanded they do anything
When these open houses were new to the town, the town paid them no mind. Who would want to see the Johnson’s living room? They wondered. And so they went about their weekend business, ignoring the once-in-a-while-open-houses, in fact, viewing them as annoyances. Some people from neighboring cities would come to town on those open days, and they would drive poorly and without knowledge of which streets were one way and which were both ways, without awareness of school zones. They would turn left when they should have only turned right, and when they did turn right they would do so on red, which everyone who was from the town knew was something that only people from the other town would do. The open houses, though despised by the local population, were increasingly popular amongst the be-dazzled Realtors, because they knew they could find people who didn’t know the town, people who didn’t know one Realtor from the other. They knew they were on to something.
After a season or two of these opens, the towns people began to venture out, because the Johnson’s living room had been the buzz at church last Sunday, and why should the tour only be for those from other towns? So they started to make a practice of visiting these houses, when they were
open. Saturday morning was for soccer, or baseball, but mostly, soccer. Then, lunch. Sometimes only ice cream. After ice cream, it was open house time, and such a great flood of traffic would arrive at the doors of those agents who parked their tattooed cars in the driveways of those houses. After some outcry, there was a demand that the after soccer ice cream be skipped, and that the Realtors, in exchange for being visited by so many potential clients, should provide lunch and desserts, drinks, too. So the Realtors engaged companies to bring food over, small food for napkin eating. Desserts, sure, but those were just homemade bars with nuts and raisins. The next Sunday, everyone talked about how the house with the raisin bars would not be visited again unless the dessert was changed.
The Realtors, awash in new people who purported to be clients and buried deep in catering bills, decided that it was time to ask visitors to bring a dish to pass, something savory for those whose last name started with any letter between A and M, and something sweet from those who had any other last name that started with another one of those later letters. The towns people grumbled at first, thinking that the open house was merely a chance to accumulate decorating ideas from their neighbors, and to ooh and aah at the splendor of the Miller’s dining room chandelier. But slowly the dishto-pass idea caught on, and the Saturday pot-luck was a raging town success. Mrs. Huffaker brought her potatoes, and Mrs. Wilderman brought her famous deviled eggs. At church on Sunday, it was decided that the best open house of the weekend was the one at the Sterling house, because they had both the potatoes and the eggs, and the Realtor was there but he wasn’t all “you should buy this.” How best to eat and drink and view the incredible pool table room of the Farrel’s if not without the constant badgering from the host Realtor?
Everyone decided that it would be best if the Realtors were no longer involved in these open houses. The brochures, the name-tags, the sign in sheets, the cars-with-websites; it was all too
much. But the Realtors persisted, and though the people wished them to just leave the houses open and return to the house when the food had run out, the Realtors stayed. Sunday, it was agreed that the Realtors must be selfish, certainly a very un-Christian characteristic, and that they should be chastised by the minister. The minister, having heard the complaints, sided with the townspeople. The Realtors were greedy, and this sin would not be tolerated. The next weekend, there were open houses. The food was plentiful, the drinks flowed, and the homes, without the annoyance of the Realtor and the brochures, was much easier to wander through.
The Realtors were perplexed by this development so they called a meeting. The restaurant parking lot
was filled with stickered cars, and the waitress had no trouble calling each patron by name, on account of the name tags. The Realtors, after a season of open houses, of providing food and drink and tours and brochures, realized that the homes they had been holding open in August were the same homes they held open in May. It was decided then and there that no further open houses would be scheduled, hosted, or allowed. Open houses, they realized, didn’t help sell a house, they just helped feed the neighbors. The next Sunday at church, the minister heard complaints about how the Realtors had selfishly decided to stop holding open houses, and the minister agreed that selfishness is a sin.
Originally written May 27th, 2015. Open houses are lame for many reasons.
Ryan Lovell
Testimonials
Our relationship with David Curry began over 10 years ago when my wife walked across the street to tell David (who was selling a lakefront home at the time) how much she enjoyed his article regarding the charming sound of a screen door closing. This was in reference to one of the first issues of his magazine, Summer Homes For City People. He not only took time to speak to her, but came over to our little cottage in Cedar Point and sat on our screened-in porch to discuss childhood memories and mutual love of Lake Geneva. My wife introduced me to Lake Geneva, and I grew to love it as well. I would run along the shore and wonder if I could ever be as fortunate as these lakefront homeowners, but it was always out of reach. A small window of opportunity seemed to open, and I reached out to David mentioning how he had taken the time to talk with my wife. He immediately returned my email, stating he definitely remembered talking to her, and a week later was back on our porch talking to us about our lives, our interests, and what we were looking for in a home. We were definitely at the lower end of his clientele in terms of assets; however, over the next five years he continuously kept in touch, showing us home after the home, thinking one just might meet our tastes and budget. We came close several times, but it was again just out of reach, until finally he called and said, I have found you the perfect home. We were fortunate enough to obtain it after closed bidding with other families. On top of this, he sold our little cottage in less than a week, with multiple offers to consider. David made us feel just as important as his most exclusive lakefront clients. We will always be grateful and consider him our friend. We highly recommend David if you are considering buying a lake front home at Lake Geneva.
– Mike and Chris, Chicago
“In a competitive high-end market, like Lake Geneva, you need a professional who understands what you want and can generate ideas that are not necessarily in the local listings. David has the experience, knowledge and network to get things done.”
– Ed, Connecticut
Carrie Koster
Frogs
My older brother was, and is, a solemn type of guy, unable, or unwilling, to get uniquely excited about anything. This is why in, or around 1988, while at our summer vacation spot in northern Minnesota, I told him that a northern pike ate a frog right out in front of the pier.
It didn’t happen, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted him to be excited about something, and so I lied. There weren’t many frogs in Williams Bay in those days, or at least not near our home, so frogs in those Northwoods were part of our unique summer experience. The issue was my older brother, having heard the news about the frog being eaten by a large fish, decided to catch a frog and thread a large barbed hook through it. He cast it out beyond the pier and waited. I was on the shore, nervous and guilty. He never caught a fish. Even though I carefully unhooked the frog and let it “swim” away, I knew then that I had killed that frog. The grief was overwhelming, and I spent the rest of my life intentionally avoiding the murdering of any more frogs, which isn’t as easy as you might think.
My property has a large lawn, and in an attempt to simultaneously force myself to exercise, retain some humility, and continue a tradition that has found me mowing lawns every summer week of what is at this point the vast majority of my life, I mow that lawn myself. My walk-behind lawn mower forces the exercise, and even though my grotesque and nearly crippling phone-checking habit continues throughout the mowing, I enjoy
a little bit of mental down-time while I stripe that lawn back and forth. The issue is my lawn is overrun with small frogs, and the combination of thick grass, lots of frogs, and 50" of whirling blades has forced my affection for frogs and my pledge to not harm them very much into the fore.
When I first discovered these lawn frogs, I made a concerted effort to avoid them with the mower. I would see one hopping and would then stop the mower and usher that frog to the safety of the adjacent woods. After some time of this, it became an arduous task, as the lawn is large and timeconsuming even before accounting for stopping constantly to allow the small frogs to find safety. And so last night I did the previously unthinkable. I just mowed. I paused to let the frogs that I could see flee my blades, but I didn’t make any unique effort to avoid the rest. I just mowed and mowed, back and forth, my mind saddened by thoughts of the innocent amphibians that I was methodically murdering. Worst yet, my blind, bald, deaf, diabetic dog likes to chew on grass clumps left behind by my mower and it only now dawned on me that the real reason she eats the grass is because there are ground up frogs in it, which adds to the horror of this entire situation.
I look forward now to fall and to winter, when I get to forget about the frogs for a while, and I’m sure the survivors look forward to this seasonal reprieve as well.
Originally written August 9th, 2024. I’m not joking about any of this.
BUYER REPRESENTATION
by
BUYER REPRESENTATION BY David Curry, Geneva Lakefront Realty
Marked
There once was a walnut tree in my front yard, long before it was my front yard. To clarify, as a point of fact, where there is one walnut tree there are always more, a detail owed to the prolific re-seeding nature of the walnut tree.
When my son was young, a mysterious condition befell him on a random day late one summer. The condition had but one symptom, that being a concerning pattern of bruises and subcutaneous blood pooling on the undersides of his feet. At first, the marks appeared to be mere stains, something that a simple bath might cure. But after the bath the condition persisted. My wife and I examined his feet, asking him if this hurt or that hurt when we pressed on the marks. Was it Lupus, I wondered. Could it be some variety of Leukemia? That seemed likely to me. I had read extensively on people who travel to foreign beaches who then contract insidious illnesses caused by parasites in the seemingly clean, sunbleached sand. We had been on such a beach earlier that year, so that also seemed a near certainty. Perhaps some horrific blending of all three causes and conditions? Possibly.
I texted a photo of his feet to a few clients who are
also doctors, each of them more baffled by this rare condition than the last. The internet doctors suggested that if there was also a headache on the left side of the patient's temple, there would be no doubt: it's something serious, all right. After a troubling afternoon, we rushed him to the local clinic where the doctor pulled out a flashlight to more closely examine this rarest of conditions. The odds that this local doctor would know what this was felt dubious at best, as he certainly isn't the infectious or internal disease specialist we would need. Instead, he wiped at the marks with rubbing alcohol and they disappeared. He asked if we had any walnut trees on our property, which I assured him not only that we did, but that we have more this year than last year and the same was true of last year against the year before. The mysterious and malicious disease was nothing more than stains on my son's feet caused by walking around the fallen seeds from my walnut forest. When I sweep these cracked and rotting green pods off of my driveway every morning I think about that day, and I can't bring myself to forgive the trees for that stressful afternoon.
Originally written September, 2024. I worry a lot about my kids.
“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”
– C.S. Lewis
BUYER REPRESENTATION
by
BUYER REPRESENTATION BY David Curry, Geneva Lakefront Realty
SOLD
GEORGE WILLIAMS COLLEGE, WILLIAMS BAY
FEATURED LISTING of
EXCLUSIVELY REPRESENTED BY David Curry, Geneva Lakefront Realty
peter millar
Hopper
It’s a Thursday night and I’m parked on the street outside of my grandparents’ old house. When I close my eyes I can see my grandpa’s powder blue Dodge Spirit in the driveway. I can see my sweet grandma hurrying to the door to act surprised to see me, her fat arm stuffed into that doctor ordered compression sleeve. I can see the basement where the Bears played on Sundays, just below the stuffed trout and walleye, each with its own story. The trout was intentional, the walleye wasn’t. If I look closer, I can see that Christmas Eve snow that fell while we were having dinner and opening presents. My brothers with theirs and me with mine: a remote control car that had a wire between the car and the controller. I can see my dad shoveling that narrow driveway, the sound of his shovel fading in and out as he worked back and forth down the length of the driveway. He sits in his chair most of the day now, but not back then. I see my dad’s red station wagon and feel the bumps of highway 12 as I drifted in and out of sleep in that rear facing back seat. But that was all then and tonight I’m just killing time at the intersection of White Oak and Vail while I wait for my daughter’s plane to land so she can come home to see our favorite dog that’s lying under the coffee table dying.
Hopper 6/2/14 – 3/5/25
Corn
There are men and women in suits who trade in the futures markets. Some trade oil and some trade hogs and some trade wheat and others trade corn. If you’re a farmer and the spot corn price is high, it might make good sense to sell the crop you’ll be harvesting in November sometime in July. But if you think your crop looks especially good, you might want to keep the crop and hope that the rains skip over Iowa so your corn is worth even more by the time it’s ready. This has exhausted my knowledge of corn and the corn markets. But I lied, because I know even more of corn than the men and women who rush in their suits to their desks where four monitors show them the weather here now and the weather in Brazil tomorrow as well as the price of corn now and the price of corn in November.
I know that corn costs $10 a dozen in Lake Geneva this summer. If you drive 30 miles West, it’ll cost you $7 a dozen. Yes, the corn will be inferior, but you’ll be saving $3. If you drive 42 miles past the last stop it’ll be marked at $5 a dozen and if you’re really into driving you could end up in an unincorporated rural town near the Mississippi River where the corn will run you $3.75 per dozen. If you sneak that dozen into a baker’s dozen you have, without a doubt, cornered the market on sweet corn and you should be not only recognized, but applauded and appreciated by your friends, your family, and anyone who thinks about corn even a fraction as much as I do.
Written July 22nd, 2024. We are blessed to have delicious sweet corn in Lake Geneva. But it doesn’t come cheap.
FEATURED LISTING of
REPRESENTED
EXCLUSIVELY
BY David Curry, Geneva Lakefront Realty
CIRCLE PARKWAY, WILLIAMS BAY
Scott Olson
Science
In a matter of days, they're coming. I mean, they're already here, they're just sleeping. Or they're not even alive, but they will be, and soon. Any day now. The earth is awakening. The temperature is rising. The broods are coming. One brood for you, one brood for me. It's going to be memorable and terrible, the people in charge tell us. Don't plant things! They say. Because they're coming, and your new plants don't stand a chance. The birds will feast and the trout will rise and the panfish will munch all while wishing they had bigger mouths. I've seen it before, the swarm. I was young then but I remember it well. Even so, I’m here to tell you I don't believe in what happens next. Two broods at once? I can imagine it, but I've never experienced it. I'm probably not up for it, assuming it happens, but I'm here to tell you to stop worrying about it. Plant your plants. Plan your things. Imagine the brood, two if you must, but don't make it personal.
My name is David Curry, and I'm a double brood cicada apocalypse denier.
Originally written May 6th, 2024. The cicada did arrive, but meh, I wasn’t impressed.
Eric Thometz
Well, I can't keep it a secret anymore. It's time to share with you the thing on which I've been working. It's groundbreaking. It's transformational. It's otherworldly, really. And lest you think I'm merely jumping on the AI bandwagon with this new launch, I assure you I've been working on this nearly as long as Jensen Huang. And so, without further ado, I offer to you the newest, latest, greatest, real estate tool that AI can muster. Here's how to use it:
On your cellular phone (land line option is available, but works differently), raise the phone to "wake" it. Then, type in a simple line of code within your messages app. This works on android and iOS, thankfully. Type in 1 2 6 2 7 4 5 1 9 9 3 (messaging and data rates may apply). Once keyed in, go ahead and ask Lake Geneva AI anything. Yes, anything!
Want to know what the market might bring for your particular home? No problem. Just give the AI program your name and address and let it do the rest. Want to know if that house on XYZ Street is still available? Just ask!
Curious about how the vacation home market behaves in the summer versus the fall versus the winter? AI can handle this request as well. Would you like to see a house that's for sale? My scheduling bot can handle this with ease! Want to know if that house is overpriced? My proprietary code will generate an incredibly accurate answer within mere moments!
No more scrolling Zillow endlessly to find listings that I've already sold. Now, just connect with Lake Geneva's newest AI bot and all of your questions will be answered with incredibly sentient candor, a dash of humor, and even a light sprinkle of snark. Snark!
Originally written June 21st, 2024. This is satire. I thought it was obviously so, but based on the texts I received it appears that I’m not very good at satire.
Advice
One of the more interesting aspects of an entire life spent selling real estate is the oft fielded request to meet with a younger person intent on doing what I do. I used to view these requests sheepishly, for who was I to tell someone else what to do? My wife and children will read this with bemusement, or perhaps anger, because they know that telling people what to do is, indeed, my favorite pastime. But I considered career advice for those to whom I am not related something of a reach and, up until recently, decided against it. Ever since I agreed to indulge in meeting with youthful sorts who wish to find their way by selling homes and condos and sometimes even vacant lots, I have found the experience to be somewhat delightful. I would gladly retell stories of my younger days in this profession with great nostalgia, even when those younger days were mostly filled with ineptitude, failure, and financial distress.
I took a meeting once with a young man who had only recently moved here from a terrible southern state where it was so hot, he said, that the summers were obviously unbearable and even though the winters were better, they, too, were unbearable. The shoulder seasons were also mediocre at best, he said. He liked the seasons here, he told me, and I nodded in agreement. We sat at a coffee shop, me with my wisdom and stories and he with a notepad and a freshly sharpened pencil. Odd, I thought, to bring a pencil to a meeting such as this, when my intellect and success was sitting across from him at his personal disposal. A pen, filled with ink, would be a better medium, I figured. Maybe not just one pen, but two. Nonetheless, we chatted and I pontificated, of my younger life and my struggles
and my sorta success, offering up antidotes and advice of all varieties. I explained what it would take to find success, and how long it might take, and even what not to do if he wished to be of the rare real estate ilk that might be respected, or at least admired, in their community. Towards the end of our conversation, I noticed that not once did the youngster put his pencil to paper, and it had me wondering if my advice was only valuable to me, and if my words were only poignant and cleverly arranged in my own mind.
In my closing remarks, with his pencil still sharp and his page still blank, I told him of one of my favorite bands, a quasi-punk rock group named Blink-182. I quoted a lyric of a song that I felt applied to this situation, “with many years ahead to fall in line why would you wish that on me, I never want to act my age,” was how it went. I told him this to help him realize that his life would be long and varied and he had no reason to jump into work at such a young age, as I had done and at this point in my life, deeply regret. It was during this recital of a late 90s punk rock lyric that his pencil finally found the paper, and after nearly two hours of conversation about the ins and outs of this career, the only thing this kid thought to write down was the only thing I had to tell him that wasn’t even my own advice.
I’ve since stopped taking meetings with young aspiring professionals, as the damage to my ego has yet to fully heal.
Originally written February 4th, 2025. This is a very true story. If he wanted advice like this, he should have just asked Tom Delonge.
Ryan Lovell
Endings
There is some question as to where the practice of providing those condemned to death a “last meal.” Some say it started with the Roman Gladiators. Others claim it began in Greece, well before Christ. Others still say those are wrong, and that it was really a hangman’s meal in 1700s Germany. Regardless of the origin of the practice, the idea is obvious: Let’s give the soonto-be-dead, no matter how wretched, one last nice thing. If you’re about to be dead, you might as well eat some good food first.
There’s a unique energy to a late October day when the temperature swells to 79° at the lake. On a day like this you could blindfold me and strap me to a chair and I could still tell you that it’s a late October day. When the wind feels more like a breeze and the waves look more like July than they do November, which starts very, very soon. The clean cars are out—the convertibles and the turbos and the collector cars with blue plates—it’s time to drive those cars before you can’t anymore.
The leaves are changing. Is it peak? No one can tell. But the sky is blue and the leaves are gold and brown and red and yellow and orange. If you live in the upper Midwest, you know a day such as this has to be seized. Dammit, man, seize it! If you had work to do, it can wait. If you had plans that seemed very important when you made them, 79 degrees and a dose of sun at the end of October tells you they’re not that important. If you didn’t ride your bike very often this summer, you have another chance today. So go for a walk and kick some leaves. Drive the car. Ride the bike. Back the boat out of your slip one last time. You might be acting like it, but you’re not dead just yet.
Originally written October 21st, 2024. Everyone quits on the lake way too early.
BUYER REPRESENTATION BY David Curry, Geneva Lakefront Realty
Interesting
In a particularly important segment of the television show “Seinfeld,” George’s friend Gary Fogel confesses that he has been living a lie. Unbothered by the admission, George responds, “Just one? I’m living like 20.” I bring this to you today in order to admit something rather devastating: I, too, am living a lie. Fogel was lying about having cancer, but is my admission any more benign than is? Am I any better than him? Is my lie lesser than? You see, I know there are but two types of people in this world. I have tried to be part of the important group, playing along with intentional pronunciation, but I know it’s always been a lie. On one side are the well-mannered elite. The Proper. The High Brow. Those who pronounce interesting as it is spelled. In-Ter-Est-Ing. Each and every time I say the word, I think about the word ahead of time and make sure I hit all of those syllables. I’ll enunciate clearly and pretend that I mean it, but I know that deep inside I really don’t. I’m an In-Tresting guy, and I know it, and now you know it. No matter of pretending can overcome what I am deep inside. I’m just a guy who belongs to the group that pronounces interesting as intresting, and that’s who I’ll always be.
Kyle Miller
Over 40 Years of Commitment to Craftsmanship and Dedication to Building Excellence.
FEATURED
LISTING of
REPRESENTED
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2024 Lakefront Market Review
The equity market rally from 2023 and a slow decline in long term interest rates should set up 2024 to be another solid year for the lakefront market here. Buyer demand has softened modestly, but inventory remains constricted. A glut of buyers during the covid-era was nice, but I believe in 2024 we’ll prove that an even pace of supply and demand is more than enough to keep our lakefront prices stable. The key for 2024 will be a controlled supply of inventory and pricing that accurately reflects recent comparable sales. Aspirational seller pricing will likely be met with buyer resistance, but proper pricing of lakefronts in quality locations will undoubtedly be absorbed with ease. If the equity markets hold up and rates continue to soften, I think 2024 is going to look a lot like 2023.
I wrote that on February 1st, 2024. If you know one thing about me, it should be that I am not shy
about saying “I told you so.” If you didn’t yet know that, you could have asked my wife and kids. On my tombstone, please leave out any flowery, uplifting messages of hope or love or endurance and just write “I told you so.” Alas, my prediction for 2024 came true in a most accurate fashion. When you have visibility into nearly all off-market transactions and insight into the mindsets of both buyers and sellers, you, at the very least, have a good chance of making accurate forecasts, and I’m happy to be the one to deliver those outlooks. Other agents are happy, too, as they get to use my insights in their own sales efforts, and so to that what can I say except, you’re welcome?
We started 2024 with a few left over 2023 contracts, the most important of which was my sale at pier 501. That sale just under $13M was the second highest sale of 2024. But we also started
PRICE PER FRONT FOOT
Price Per Front Foot
the year with a few bits of aged inventory. That was the inventory introduced in 2023 with wildly aggressive seller pricing, the sort that assumed the covid mania was never, ever, going to end. Those agents and their sellers were wrong, and 2024 forced them to acknowledge their error. By early summer 2024, we had cleared much of that aged inventory, and introduced a few more bits and pieces of lakefront opportunity. The market plodded along without any unique urgency or excitement. I then sold Aloha Lodge for $22M, making it the most expensive sale of the year and the second highest priced lakefront sale of all time, riding shotgun only to my $36M sale of Glanworth Gardens in early 2022. The summer wore on and some buyers bought homes for too much money and others negotiated nice 2024 prices. And then something happened.
Everything sold. Off market listings that had been for sale quietly for many months or a year, sold. New inventory was nonexistent. Sellers didn’t find aspirational pricing interesting. Buyers asked what happened. The market locked back up and started to look more like early 2022 than late 2024. Was the
cycle aging or stalling or did it just re-set entirely?
Let’s consider what we learned in 2024. We learned that pricing needed to reflect comparable sales. We learned, or were at least reminded, that inventory overcomes all other market conditions and factors. We learned, or were at least reminded, that Lake Geneva is the absolute, unchallenged king of the luxury real estate market in the entire Midwest. And we learned that even in a year when inventory grew (at times) and the market stalled (for a while), pricing remained stable. What more could you ask for of a market? Are you not entertained?
The average lakefront sales price increased from ever so slightly from $6,382,895 to $6,406,652. The price per front foot, one of my most hated metrics but still the market favorite, increased from $72,000 to $72,896. Meanwhile, the price per square foot decreased rather dramatically after spending the last two years around $1400 per foot, now measuring $1152 per square foot, which is closer to the 2021 average of $1008 per. The market phenomenon of compression when viewing parcel size and frontage width remained constant, as did the proliferation of
Price Per Square Foot
*
Frontage Feet Sold
off-market sales, though there were fewer in 2024 than in both 2023 and 2022.
I should note that for all of the lovely sales, I didn’t enjoy 2024 very much. I also don’t really enjoy what the current market conditions are going to do to seller expectations. Even though 2024 was a stable year with strong production, we still closed just 17 true residential lakefronts (Information is from MLS and known true lakefront sales). Sellers should be aware that even though the valuations were similar, the market temperature was still cooler in 2024 than 2023.
I’ve used this market comparison to help both sides understand the dynamic that we had in 2024, which is going to be a similar dynamic to 2025, and this is in spite of a lack of inventory. In 2019 we had 100 buyers looking for lakefront houses (the numbers here are for comparison’s sake). Of those buyers, 22 were uniquely motivated to purchase. In 2021, we still had 100 buyers, but 86 of them were uniquely motivated to purchase. And in 2024, we still had 100 buyers, but 28 of
them were uniquely motivated. The buyer pool for Geneva never changed, nor did the total number of participants. But their motivation waxes and wanes on a whim. Equity markets up strong on the week? You might see some more motivation. BTC and friends charging to new highs? Maybe a few buyers engage. Interest rates drop below some meaningful benchmark? Maybe someone joins the ranks of the motivated. This is how our market works, and it’s going to keep working that way until further notice.
For my involvement in the 2024 market, I closed the five most expensive lakefront sales of the year and eight of the 17 lakefronts that sold. My sales volume was once again in excess of $116M, which was more than double the next highest producing Walworth County agent. That sales volume will likely place me as the top agent in Wisconsin for the fifth year in a row, so that’s all nice. I’m grateful to be here in Lake Geneva, doing what I do best: Serving my lakefront buyers and sellers with the highest level of service I can muster. If you’d like some help at the lake, I’ll be here.
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