Archives for March 2019

2017 Recap:

Kingswood and Kingswood West have had two fantastic years in a row. 2016 was a record breaker when the neighborhoods collectively closed over $20m in property sales. 2017 followed suit with almost the exact same amount.

While these sales numbers are great, in total Kingswood and Kingswood West have over 700 homes. This means that relatively few sell each year. This is a great opportunity for those considering selling. To give you an example, at one point in 2017 there were just 4 on the market and the same amount were in escrow. See all active listings in Kingswood here.

See my Kingswood mid-year update and 2016 sales info at this link.

2017 Recap:

Dollar Point had an interesting year in 2017. Volume was down substantially. But the sales happened incredibly fast. Time on market was 2x faster than the rest of Tahoe Basin. Dollar Point homes averaged 35 days on market; the Basin was at 78.

However, there was typically very little offered for sale so options were not wide. There were stretches of time where there were only a dozen homes on the market. That number is usually between 15-20.  See all current listings here.

Higher-end Dollar Point buyers were very selective. Due to low inventory there were 5 homes between $1.5m – $4.3m which were rejected by the market. This was not the case the year before. 2016 saw multiple sales over $1.5m including $2.4m and $3.6m. In contrast, the highest sale in 2017 was $1.7m.

See my 2016 early summer analysis and comparison to 2015 at this link.

2017 Recap: The lakefront market had a solid year in 2017. There were 27 sales which accounted for $135m in volume. The lowest sale of the year was $1.54m (off-market) and the high was $29m – see Drum Estate link. Interestingly there were no sales between $7.2m and the Drum sale. As a comparison, in 2016 there were deals at $8m, $11m, $15.8m and $17.5m. 

When comparing overall market performance to 2016 it is critical to include the $22m in sales that occurred off-MLS in 2016. In 2017 there were 2 off-MLS sales including one very notable North Shore property which closed for $7.2m – reach out to me for details.

As you’ll see on the chart below, the number of 2017 sales was well ahead of 2016 (27 vs. 21) and the volume was up about 8%. The incredibly high lake level made lakefront showings especially enticing and there were a good number of buyers who had been waiting a few years before pulling the trigger in 2017. This far in 2018 there has been one sale for $7.5m – it was a listing which had been getting long in the tooth and price was reduced multiple times to eventually realize a sale.

Activity at the highest-end is typically an indicator of good things for the entire lakefront market. The 2017 Drum Estate was the highest sale in our MLS’s records at the time. It was $10m+ more than the highest sale of 2016. It also nudged out a 2015 Chase international sale in Historic Old Brockway for $28.5m. In our MLS there are three listings above $20m currently, the highest of which is a legacy estate with acreage on Sunnyside Lane for $39.5m which had been available as a pocket listing for almost a year.

At the end of summer I wrote about the connection between Tahoe’s lake level and the strong market that existed concurrently. Read that post here.

Tahoe is barely below the maximum legal limit. See the USGS lake level chart here: link

5240 West Lake Blvd. 50% share listed and sold by Alex.

A quick recap of 2016: There were 5 fewer sales and 16% less volume than 2015 (please note that I take into account sales which are not reported in MLS – there were 3 in 2015). Half of the sales in 2016 were at homes which had piers. 2016 saw 3 sales over $10m. In 2015 there was only one – the Chase International sale for $28.5m. On the opposite end of the spectrum, 2016 had 2 sales under $2m; 2015 had none. I sold a 50% shared interest in a 7th-generation family cabin in Homewood. There was one bankruptcy sale in each of the last two years. In addition, there were some very interesting transactional incidents that occurred in 2016. I had direct contact with a number of them – feel free to reach out for more information.