Skaneateles Real Estate - The Bi-Monthly Update (sort of)

This will take two blogs!  The number of new listings is very high.  I am sure people waited until it felt like spring and got summer instead.

The first group belongs to the village.  Of the current 43 properties listed in the Skaneateles Village area of the multiple listing service, two new ones came on.  One is a smaller village home with a great yard for $269,000.  The other is my listing of 5 Palmer Place, an adorable home tucked away behind Leitch and Academy.  The price is $366,000.

Five new waterfronts came on the market over the past 18 days.  There is one small one at the far end of the lake for under 200K.  Moving up the lake towards the village, but still fairly far down is a camp for $445,000.  Getting closer yet are two cottages right on the water for about $700,000.  Almost to the village - well, about 3 miles out - is another camp (a true camp, as the agent admits) for almost $800,000.  The final home is a multimilllion dollar (as in 3M) luxury home.

That leaves ten more town, not waterfront, places.  Two small ones just north of the village are in the low $100,000 range.  Four other homes that suggest affordable family living are priced in the $250,000 to $350,000 range, in varying stages of work that needs to be done.  Two others are re-lists, with prices staying relatively the same.  Another at $425,000 has pretty much only a view to recommend it - but what a view!  Still another is a classic brick, in the mid $500,000.  The last is a luxury home on 12 acres - sorry, no waterfront - for over 2M.

Next week - I will check the listings sooner!  Stay tuned for another blog with the contingent, pending, and sold listings!

Ten Minutes to Go!

I am sitting in the office in the Village watching the world go by.  I met with people this morning who took a careful look at a house for well over two hours.  We thought we would see more today, but they preferred to go out exploring on their own.  I wasn't sure what to do next - I had well over another hour until my next appointment - but then I got a call about a contract coming in.  So I am in the office, doing a goodly bit of work prior to leaving again.

It's amazing how much can be accomplished in a short period of time if there are no interruptions.  I processed the contract, printed it, called the agent to ask questions, called the owners to tell them and request a time to meet, printed flyers and the disclosures for tomorrow's open house at 5 Palmer Place in Skaneateles - check it out on http://realtor.com/ or http://cnyrealtor.com/ - and still had time to write this blog!

And no, I do not feel rushed at all.  I've left enough time to get to my next appointment, I know where it is without the Tom-Tom Bob gave me for Christmas, and I know the property I am showing.  (Just gorgeous - with VIEWS!)  The world is a good place, today, here, in the Village, on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.

The New Listing Watch

I am about to put on a new listing, just waiting for the paperwork.  It is such a lengthy project at times, and this is one of those times.  I can't remember when we first started talking about listing this home, easily months if not a year or so ago.  It's an estate, and because of that there are four children involved who all contributed to the process.

The woman with whom I've dealt the most, one of the sisters, and I have corresponded for years since she and her family purchased a camp through me.  We rarely see each other, but when we do it's like Old Home Days.  As with so many of my clients, she has become a friend more than a client.  So this was a great opportunity for us to spend more time together on a mutual project.

Since we started, the home has been vacated by its family tenant, the papers and belongings of her father have been removed I am sure quite tearfully.  It's always the hardest part of letting a home go because we all seem to be so involved with where we live, it defines us so much.

We had a pre-listing inspection done in early April which gave the family a new "To Do" list which they did.  We met several times about presentation.  Last weekend I came over with Jolanta and she cleaned it so the hardwoods would shine and the windows would show off the lovely view of the lake and village. 

Throughout it all we watched carefully the progress of other village homes, the pricing and the reductions.  We think we have found a number that is manageable and reflects the location - prime! - and the home itself. 

So now the draft of the listing is written, the photos all taken when the sun was out and the flowers were in bloom, the signs are on the floor of the back seat of the Scion, the open house riders resting on the seat.  The lockbox is ready to go - and so am I!  Once I hit the "submit" button the listing will be there for all the agents to see and I will hurriedly put in the photos and the open house (Sunday, 12:00 to 2:00).

We are launched!

Doug's on a Thursday Evening

I went out to the lake today to mow.  It's a new project this year to force me into some much-needed exercise and also to visit the lake.  I can get overwhelmed, and not make it out there, but this year I am determined not to miss summer.  So I mow with my electric mower, (I call it vacuuming the lawn) and get very hot and very sweaty....and stay current with the phone and e-mails thanks to my new iPhone.

On the way back through the village I stopped at Doug's for salmon, 2 cole slaws and a fish sandwich for Bob.  I happened to get Mark Edwards, the owner, to write my order.  He took a moment to tell me how much he enjoyed this blog.  I felt so guilty, because, like the lake, there are times when I don't write for days at a time.  But hearing his praise - even though he didn't buy his beautiful new house with me - sent me to the computer.  (Salmon takes a while - and they know that I will be back to get it.)

I forget sometimes that real estate is about people, too.  I forget that what I do, how I express the world around me, matters.  Thank you, Mark, for reminding me.

Skaneateles Real Estate - The Bi-Monthly Update (sort of) - Part Two

This is the second half of the update for May 1st through the 13th or so.  I like the split - it makes it manageable.  The first half was the plethora of new listings, and now I will explore the contingent, under contract, pending and sold listings.

There are currently 6 homes marked contingent under Skaneateles.  Three of these are new, and ALL of them were listed in the mid-$100,000 range.  Coincidence?  I think not!  I think this is the range in which people may be buying a first home and therefore have nothing to sell.   They are all on the periphery of Skaneateles and each one has a bit of land.  Two of them need a bit of work and those are the ones whose price was reduced from previous attempts at sales.

The two that are under contract or pending (of the 7 altogether) are in the mid-$300,000.  Nothing remarkable here - the coincidence of price is just that.

We now have 16 closed sales for the year.  Three of these occurred in the past two weeks.  One is a village home that was listed, I believe, for at least two-plus years with two different Realtors.  I showed it multiple times and it closed about 10% under its list price.  The second one was a newly built home that I loved, and it came in right around its list price of $450,000.  Builders generally stick to their prices which are reflective of their costs.  The third was a home previously listed and now sold by the listing agent - lake rights, in need of work - but rented while it was marketed around $300,000.  Again, a 10% reduction brought the sale.

Since this is not very long, I want to check some of our neighboring communities.  As it stands now, Skaneateles has exactly the same number of closed homes as last year!  Marcellus has only 14, as compared with 18 the previous year.  Camillus is also going the wrong way, with only 53 as compared with 63 for the beginning of 2010.  Elbridge is basically Elbridge, with 8 this year and 7 last year.

I have one solution for that - buy my listing at 1 Orchard in Marcellus please!  Only $125,000 - and everyone who has seen it agrees it is wonderfully decorated and masterfully maintained.

Skaneateles Real Estate - The Bi-Monthly Update (sort of)

There is so much going on and I love every minute of it!  I heard from an old e-mail friend (never have laid eyes on him) about my listing down Firelane 21B, now that summer is almost here.  I told him I was "crazy busy" and he said that's a good thing.  I do agree!

One of the crazy things this week was Tuesday, the day of the brokers' opens.  In Skaneateles alone, there were 11 houses, and a friend said he counted 12 actually.  I ran through 6 of them before going off to my dentist appointment with Dr. Swartwood (teeth are fine, for once!).  I kept thinking back to the winter, and how there were weeks without a single home open.  I heard from some people that other agents brought buyers with them.  The world is changing - things are moving.

There are currently 134 active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service.   Of these, 44 are in the village and 40 are published as waterfront.  Now here's a spoiler alert!  After I finish writing about the new listings, I will tell you what the median (as in middle) prices of these four categories are:  village, waterfront, neither WF or village, overall.  Try to guess the prices - it's an interesting exercise.

Three new properties came on in the village.  A cute little house sort of tucked away is on the market in the mid-$200,000 range.  Another massive place has the unheard-of price in the lower $300,000.  This is possibly an early sign of a trend - sell it now, do not "try it higher."  The agent hopes for multiple offers at this price.  We will see.  The last is a re-list that had tried it higher, unfortunately, and is now around 300K.

Of the 8 listings in the town, three are re-lists at about the same price.  Two are waterfront - above half a million and the other above a million.  A gorgeous estate not too far down the lake is now under that half million mark.  Two beautiful watefront properties appeared - both going towards the two million dollar mark.  A newer home whose similar neighbor had sold several years ago is now listed about the same price, $300,000.  I tried to see a house just outside the village that has always intrigued me on Tuesday, but the sign was down and the doors were locked - price towards $600,000.  Too many open houses out there - and the agents holding them open were also trying to run around!

Back to my stats that I love so much - guesses in?  The median price for waterfront is $990,000.  Wow!  That means that about 20 are listed above this - and yes, 20 below.  Village homes have a median price of $365,000, which I think is an interesting number, personally.  If you remove village and waterfront from the criteria, then the price drops to $310,000 (town, not on the water.)  Overall - of all those 134 active listings - the median price in Skaneateles is: $413,000 - again, a personally interesting number.

So let's consider this as Part One of the update.  I have to go sell a house!

Photo Op

After the events of this week, this photo of a pretty Skaneateles Village home sums it all up, I think.

Rainy Days and Tuesdays

I know it's supposed to be rainy days and Mondays that "always get me down," according to Karen Carpenter - but this is Tuesday and it's raining and raining.  I'm not really down, just want to share a few things that are on the edge.

Bob made leek pesto on Sunday night and marinated the shrimp in it and then grilled them outside.  You remember Sunday - it was sunny and I got a bit of a tan.  Leeks are special to us because they were right under our noses on our hillside for years and we had no idea what we were seeing.  A friend, Mike, told us about them - to look for the leaves that are similar to tulips, then gently pull them out.  The bulb is like a garlic or onion with its own special flavor.  Since then - just last year - Bob has become a leek fiend.  This year we had to wait longer for them to be ready, but now there's a plastic container filled with them in the fridge.  The shrimp are lying on the leaves, just for presentation purposes, in the picture.  He also made a leek and potato soup that was magnificent.  Thanks, Mike, yet again!

I've wanted to say thank you to Kimmie, my sometime godchild and Alex's babysitter, for a while now.  I rarely see her any more, but she told me at her grandmother's funeral that she reads my blog and I know will read this.  She sent me this amazing card after Koko left us last month.  Bob opened it before I got home and he was excited.   "This looks just like Koko!" he said.  And it does - even though Kimmie never met her.  I keep the card with others on our bulletin board in the kitchen, and every time I see it I think of them both - and Kimmie's pug, whom I've never met.  And how far we all have come over the years.  Good thoughts.

Lastly, thank goodness for Panera Bread!  I had a broker's open today at my new listing at 158 Shire Way in Camillus and offered a chance for a $25 gift certificate to Panera Bread - so of course afterwards I had to go get it.  (Jeannine Larose from our office in Skaneateles won it - she doesn't know yet.)  I went to the other opens in Skaneateles - the ranch on Crow Hill and Peter Babbles' listing on Hawthorne Woods - and then ran back to Camillus.  I had earned both a coffee and a pastry for my many times there, and chose a croissant.  I made phone calls and texted and sent e-mails on my new iPhone and never felt like I was sitting too long.  The rain poured down outside, but inside the fire kept us patrons warm.  I can't wait until the new Panera Bread goes in by Staples on Grant Ave in Sennett!   http://www.panerabread.com/

Otisco Lake

The View from Glencove

I went out there today to check our camp after the floods and the wind storms.  Patches, our neighbor's dog, greeted Boo and me on the road.  The place looked fit and fine - certainly ready to be opened up and aired out though.  I also went through my listing on Glencove, wanting to make sure that it was sound.  As I put the key in the lock I heard music playing.  No one was supposed to be there today and I was surprised, to say the least.  I opened up and tiptoed in, calling so I wouldn't take anyone unawares.  It was only the radio - sigh!

Otisco Lake is about 6 or 7 miles long, depending on whether you count the south end beyond the old Causeway, or the north end in the narrows.  It's about a mile wide, and only 30 to 40 minutes southwest of Syracuse.  I can attest that Skaneateles is 15 minutes away from the west side.  And yet it is mostly a forgotten lake.

When Alex was little he was upset that Otisco wasn't considered one of the Finger Lakes proper.  Someone must have told him that - not me!  We thought about the legend that a giant had swooped down and with his fingers carved out the lakes and that is why they are called the Finger Lakes.  I placated Alex by saying that there were no rules where giants were concerned - he might have had 6 fingers or even more. 

And if you'd like to own a place...back to the subject...there are only 6 properties available at this time.  The smallest is on the market in the low $100,000 range.  For that you get a very steep access hill to the camp, 50 feet of lakefront, no running water (read also no septic or outhouse?) but it does have electricity and a great view.  The most expensive is my lovely Glencove listing at $494,000.  It's a three story home, rebuilt from the bottom up in 1991, with four bedrooms and three full baths, over 100 feet of lakefront and half an acre of land (double lot).  It's designed for year-round cozy living and in the Marcellus School District. 

The other four are basically camps of all sizes.  The square foot costs range from a low of $149 to $339.  Last year there were 13 camps listed for most of the summer - maybe more will come on the market.

In the past 24 months 17 properties on the lake have closed.  A small one south of the Causeway closed at $55,000 and needed a lot of work, but it at least had a holding tank.  The most expensive closed at $420,000 fairly rapidly and was built new in 2009.  While we don't have the huge houses and lakefronts that Skaneateles boasts, we also do not have the high prices.

As Boo and I left today I went north to drive into Marcellus and put up signs for my open house this Sunday at 1 Orchard Street.  (Just saying.)  Along the west side in the Narrows whole pine trees - five or six? - had been uprooted by the winds and just lay there.  The winds must have swept over and caught them just right, or they were waterlogged from all that rain.  We considered ourselves lucky, Boo and I, that we had no damage and neither did our neighbors.  It wasn't always that way after a major storm....but that's another blog....

Skaneateles Real Estate - The Bi-Monthly Update

I spent today in a tale of two rental homes.  The first one hadn't been cleaned out when the new tenants arrived, so the owners and I worked to make it presentable.  And worked and worked.  The new tenants continued with us, bringing in furniture while the floors were being scrubbed with Murphy's oil soap.  After three hours I went to check on the next home that had been vacated yesterday - and actually was.  It was the proverbial "neat as a pin."  I found a few cobwebs in out of the way places, but that was about all.  I kept thinking that the owners of the first place would have cried.  Just another Sunday in the life of this Realtor!

On to the update.  There are currently 124 active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service.  Of these, 43 are in the village.  Seven "new" ones came on this past week.  I say quote-unquote because five of them were in the same subdivision on the edge of the village, and range in price from a low of the mid-$300,000 to over $415,000 for a new to-be-built home.  The other two listings are new - one in an older community for $400,000 and another on the water for well under one million.

In the town there were eight new ones, of which half were re-lists with slightly lower prices.  I take that back - one went up in price, a house in the country with acreage.  The others are waterfront, anywhere from under 300K to almost a million.  New homes listed include a waterfront (seven feet) with acreage for the low $300,000, a fairly newly built home not far from the village in the mid-$400,000 and an old farm for $400,000.  But the greatest of them all is an incredible waterfront home built recently that reminds me of a castle - now on the market for the cool price of slightly over 4 million. 

There are eight properties marked contingent, two of which are new.  A waterfront property listed just under a million and recently listed is now a "C" - continue to show but under contract.  My crazy Sugar Maple Lane (the photo above) - a shell of a house - garnered multiple offers at its list price of $99,500.  Backup offers are still being taken!

There are no new "under contract, do not show" homes or pending homes.

We now have 13 single family homes closed so far this year.  The most recent was a sweet little house that had great potential and sold in the low $100,000.  Last year at this time only 12 homes had closed, the year before an amazing 23 (and then it stopped).  The 2008 year began with only 15 closings by the end of April.

Spring has yet to fully envelop us - the streets aren't packed like they usually are on a Sunday.  The rain in April was an all-time record - one I'd like not to repeat for a while please!  But April showers bring may flowers....and sales!