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!

Skaneateles Waterfront Lots

Over the past 10 years I have watched lots come and go off the market.  I have personally sold the same lot a couple times.  I also participated in one of the last level waterfront lots to have been sold through the multiple listing service.  I can tell you that selling waterfront lots is difficult.

Currently there are 11 active lots listed as being on Skaneateles Lake.  They range in price from $69,000 for .4 acres to 1.5M for slightly over an acre.  One is on the market as a single family home and a lot, which I think is prudent.  I have my gorgeous 50 acres listed the same way, plus a separate waterfront lot for $250,000 (a bargain, I might add!).  Many of the lots come with names like "Bluff" or "Cliff" - but such is the lake.  The lowest priced one reminds you it is dangerous to go over the guardrail...

In the past two years three properties have closed described as Skaneateles waterfront lake lots.  Two were on the east side and again seem to involve a guardrail, though not for danger.  The third was actually lake rights, but in the Village and a prime location.

I have a good friend who refers to his camp as "The Lot."  The house would need more work than it is or would be worth, and he knows that once he gives it up the result would be a buildable empty lot within a year.  It is sad to see homes go, camps that were prized by families who spent summers there.  That way of life may be fading on Skaneateles, at least with the smaller, older places. 

Skaneateles Real Estate - The Bi-Monthly Update

Well!  All I can say is that it has been a very busy last two weeks, and the statistics bear this out.  Would you believe - 21 new listings?  7 of them in the Village?  Others have dropped out, been reconfigured and re-listed, so the current total is still only 110 with 37 of them in the Village.  Amazing!

I broke down the "new" listings into re-lists, Village, and Town in order to handle them.  In the Village, new ones are a gorgeous ranch listed in the mid-$300,000 that I had sold a few years ago.  The owners put in hardwoods and generally updated everything.  Another little house in need of some work is priced affordably in the mid-$100,000.  To round it out, the third is in the $200,000 and is within an easy walk to the Village center.  The other four are re-lists.

In the Town, there are therefore 14 more!  Of these, only 5 are re-lists, so here goes!  Out in the country there's a lovely home for $400,000 that was built only a few years ago on several acres.  It is joined by a very old farmhouse in good condition priced under $300,000.  Four waterfront properties came on - 'tis the season - all around a million, more or less, with one being half a million with, of course, less actual waterfront.  Oh yes - and a fixer-upper for the mid $200,000...also being sold as a lot, if that gives you any indication.

Four properties have been marked contingent - two smaller homes and a ranch that had been done and re-done.  The pretty home on 321 that was a model for Ryan Homes when they were building in Butters Farm now sports a SOLD sign on it.  Nothing new in the "Under Contract" or "Pending" categories though.

Sold and closed - hooray - are two homes that came down in price each about 30% because of their need for work.  One had lake rights, and the other closed under $100,000.  That brings to 12 the homes that have closed this year in the Skaneateles area. 

I still believe - despite these statistics - that it will be a good year and the next couple months (if the last few days are indicative of anything) will be amazing.  If I see numbers spiking again I may switch back to a weekly update.  Certainly that will be more manageable than opening up the MLXchange on a Friday evening and realizing we had been slowly inundated with new listings.

Skaneateles Lake Homes

A convergence of events has occurred - the temperature got warmer, the Village got busier, and I just spent a goodly portion of the weekend updating my listings on the multiple listing service as well as http://realtor.com/ and http://lakehouse.com/. I also showed waterfront this past week and will do so again this upcoming week. Summer is right around the corner! So it seems appropriate that I write about the lakes and the marvelous opportunities that exist to own waterfront. Lake by lake, starting with Skaneateles.

Today I'll focus only on single family homes, or "camps" as we call them here or lakehouses as the vast majority should be named. I used to own a "camp," but since we renovated it seems more like a lakehouse, even though it retains the small feeling and ease of care.

There are currently 38 properties identified by the multiple listing service as being on Skaneateles Lake. They are contained in three counties - Onondaga, Cayuga and Cortland. Prices range from the low of $159,000 to a high of 3.5M. The median price is $889,000. By way of a disclaimer, I have a property listed twice - once with 78 feet of waterfront and again, at a higher price ($950,000), with 153 feet of waterfront. I am certain there must be properties that are not lakefront, but only lake rights. Somehow that distinction dropped off our reporting criteria a few years ago, leaving us all with the dilemma of how to tell people that yes, you can gain access, but no, it's not right on the water. Hopefully that will be corrected at some point, but for now, I haven't gone through to check. Bottom line - consider the number "38" as an approximation.

Of these properties, 12 are listed over 1M, with another 5 barely under that figure. Six of the homes (actually, one is a lot without a house) have 0 to 1 bedroom. At the other end, 4 houses have 5 bedrooms.

Now the fun part! Taxes run from $4,493 per year (total) to the high of $56,900, appropriately attached to the highest listed home. Square footage starts at 404 feet and runs to 4,400sf (NOT the highest priced home, I might add). Assessments are as low as $105,000 (which I wonder about) or the next is $153,800 and the high is 2.2M which produced the 56K in taxes. List prices do not reflect the assessments - of the three I chose as random, one was $100,000 below, another about the same, and a third $400,000 higher!

Of these 38, four of the homes are in the Village, four are in Spafford down the east side of the lake, 2 in Niles on the west side (but that's suspect because we list them as being in Skaneateles for the exposure) and the remaining 28 are identified as Skaneateles. Eleven companies represent these properties, and at least two boards: The Greater Syracuse Association of Realtors and the Cortland Board.

When I requested how many Skaneateles Lake properties had sold, I got the number 135. Of these, 25 closed in the past 12 months. At this rate we then have about 18 months of inventory. The median list price was $500,000; 5 were over 1M.

So as I go off this week to show lakefront, I can bear in mind these figures. And now, so can you.

Brokers' Opens

10:28 AM On Tuesdays in Skaneateles and the western suburbs new listings are opened by their agents so other agents can come and preview them. This has been an ongoing tradition since long before I started in real estate. It helps to see homes - I guess this is a given.



50 West Genesee



In the old days when houses came on and houses sold within a month, it was vastly important to get the news out to potential buyers about what just came on the market. While the urgency isn't there, homes are still selling. Until today there have been few Tuesdays when a full slate of homes have been open. Last week we had three - my lovely 50 West Genesee Street and two others. Our times are usually 12:00 to 2:00, so doing an open makes it difficult to get to others. I ended up previewing one of the homes at another time. Today, due in part to the weather, I decided that I was not going to submit two of my homes waiting for brokers' opens, and see others instead.

I PLAN (and plans change rapidly) to get down the lake to Spafford, back to the Village for one off East Lake, and then out to Fisher Road. There are actually 13 homes, from Cazenovia to Skaneateles, being held open. I chose not to see the other property in the area because I have shown it several times; it is now being listed by its third Realtor.

1:00 PM I returned home having gone to all three. The first was an absolutely lovely home that I had seen years ago when it was sold. It only got lovelier in the years during which the present owners had it. The den was gone and in its place was a bedroom, making it seem like a true four-bedroom home finally. The dining room was immense, the decorating perfect throughout. Truly a pleasure to view - almost $500,000. 
The second was a great little village home with such potential!  It even had a swimming pool that could be resurrected.

I saw the third house and had a good time talking to the other agents I ran across there. I've missed the socializing aspect of real estate, I discovered. I'm glad spring is here.

The Syracuse Symphony

Last Friday evening Bob and I went to the Civic Center for a performance of the orchestra with Elliot Fisk, guitarist, and JoAnn Falletta, guest conductor. We had seen Fisk before - he graduated from Jamesville-Dewitt and so came back here on occasion. His wife joined him, a brilliant flower in the midst of all the black and white. Ms. Falletta is the conductor of the Buffalo Symphony. Our tickets had been graciously given to us by two of my clients. We had looked forward to going all year. The performance was wonderful - absolutely entrancing. We sat in the first row of the balcony and just enjoyed, but also worried that the people around us seemed to be older than we had remembered in the past. The audience was aging. But then, so were we. After the Intermission Ms. Falletta gave an impassioned speech addressing the financial woes of the Symphony. She begged the audience "Don't let them go" meaning the musicians. In the silence that followed a woman spoke up quite clearly, but not meaning to be heard "The symphony and museums make Syracuse bearable." There was an intake of breath, and the orchestra began playing, drowning out all our thoughts - sort of. A few days later it was all over. The Symphony members and the Board could not find a reasonable way to continue, and the season was cancelled. This was the 50th Anniversary season - Yo-Yo Ma would not be coming. Sales would not be refunded - purchasers were directed to send their requests to the Attorney General. I grew up with the Symphony. As a little girl I watched my best friend's father, Dr. Ian Henderson, play master-of-ceremonies for the annual school production. We were there the day Kennedy was assassinated. My parents always went to the symphony, I believe at Central Tech now the Greystone Building. My teachers - Elizabeth Mann, Mr. Schermerhorn - played in the orchestra, as did Alex's strings teacher from Skaneateles. I can't believe it's gone and won't be revived. It was such a gift to the community. While I totally disagree with the elderly woman who so inopportunely expressed her opinion, I do know that for many people of her age the Symphony's performances were a high point. This means they won't be playing in Skaneateles the third week in July, or at Emerson Park for the 4th with the William Tell Overture reverberating across the water. Sad. Very, very sad.

Skaneateles Real Estate - The Bi-Monthly Update

I looked back to last year's blog about this time. It was "Basketball Day" and I wrote in orange...sigh....but like the housing market, SU will come back, too! The spring listings have started, and I must admit I've been among the crowd to bring them on. Currently there are 101 active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service (even if they are in another county). Of these, 33 are in the village and 28 are waterfront. Ten - count 'em! - 10 new listings came on this past week. Of course, 3 were re-lists - an over 1M waterfront, an almost $450,000 town house with acreage, and a village home in need of care for the low $200,000s. The others were three waterfront homes ('tis the season) ranging in price from $525,000 to $985,000. Another has lake rights but looks lovely for the mid-$200,000. Going out a bit there's a very pretty newer home with acreage for around $500,000 but you can always stay in the village and enjoy my listing at 50 West Genesee Street for a mere $420,000 (yes, I am advertising it here...) There are no new contingent properties - the old three remain. Of the five marked "U" - under contract, do not show - one is new, a gorgeous village house that had incredible work put into it and listed almost at $700,000 and sold almost immediately. There are buyers out there. So far this year 10 properties have closed, and 3 are new in the past two weeks. One is a lake rights home that had been on the market for a bit, and closed in the lower $400,000, about 12% off its original list price. A poor house that stood vacant for a long time closed under $100,000 while it had been listed about $200,000 to begin. Staging could have helped it immensely. The third was a home in the town that closed around $200,000, about 10% off its list price. Last year we had closed 7 homes by this time. I think our improved number indicates a swing towards the market coming back in Skaneateles. And why not? Our homes are lovely, the lake is beautiful and pure, the village a great place to live as well as vacation. Plus mortgage rates are low - so come on down and see what we have to offer!