The Unicorn – A Real Estate Saga

 

I was born in a little town in northern Wisconsin that’s literally surrounded by thousands of small glacier formed lakes. The first place I ever came home to was my grandparents’ small cabin on Stearns Lake. I spent at least one week (usually many more) there every summer until I left for college. The cottage, as we called it, was a unique part of my formative years and has been the root cause of a lifetime of searching for a place on a lake that I can call my very own.

Whenever presented with an opportunity to be near or on water, I always jumped at the chance. Whether it was waterskiing at a friend’s cottage, spending time at the Lake Michigan beaches, living close to the Pacific in Los Angeles and western Washington, I’ve always enjoyed being by the water. I’ve even infected my wife with the same disease.

So why the hell do we now live in the desert? Long story short, I detest cold, wet weather. That makes a very large portion of the United States unsuitable to live in.

What about the other warm climates that are close to water? The high cost of housing in California kept us away from there. The heat, humidity and redneck factors kept us away from the southeastern US and gulf coast. And Hawaii is just too damn far away from everything. Arizona seemed like a good weather compromise with constant warmth and sun and then we could go find water as needed. But despite time spent at various VRBO and Air B&B rentals on different lakes, the desire for waterfront property of our own has never gone away.

It’s not for lack of trying. When we lived in Bellingham, WA, we tortured various realtors with our endless quest for the perfect lake house. We put offers on several properties that never panned out but never stopped looking. Finally we moved away and the search ended. But the desire never went away.

Our continued failure to buy a lake house can be boiled down to one simple thing. And pay close attention because this is the result of 20 years of research, open houses, internet searches, getting excited, making offers, trying to sell our existing house, getting outbid, overthinking, second guessing our decisions, rationalizing not buying, pulling our hair out, drowning our sorrows in copious amounts of wine, etc. etc. etc.

Affordable waterfront property in a desirable location is as rare as a unicorn.

There. I said it. I even published it right here on this blog. It’s now on the Internet and therefore must be true.

Pshaw you snort as you read this blasphemous statement. I’ve seen many reasonably priced cottages and cabins out there you say. You must be too picky. Too particular. Champagne taste with a Pabst Blue Ribbon budget. But that’s just not the case.

Let me illustrate with a recent example. We’ve been vacationing in the Coeur D’Alene area of the Idaho panhandle for the better part of 13 years. We’re on our fifth vacation rental and we absolutely love it up there. It has hot, dry, sunny summers, deep blue lakes, incredible bicycling roads and trails, and a ton of great golf courses. And did I mention there are no bugs? If we could design a perfect place for us to own a waterfront home, it would be there. So, after years of renting, it was time to restart our search.

I scoured home listings for most of the summer, watching places come and go as the months went by. We shopped a few homes when we were up on vacation, but nothing was quite right. As summer drew to a close, there seemed to be more and more properties coming on the market and prices were dropping as the season was coming to an end. Things were falling into place. Finally, a week ago, it was time to fly up and go shopping.

I had a list of 20 potential properties that all fit the bill on paper. Some were little cabins with their own docks, some were larger homes with shared boat facilities, some were newer places, some dated as far back as the 1930s. There were things of all shapes and sizes to look at.

My plan was simple. I would go up, give cursory looks at everything on the list, weed out all the crap, and then my wife would come a few days later and view the potential winners. So I looked. I weeded. And out of 20 prospects I ended up with a grand total of… one. One lonely cabin on Hayden Lake, just sitting there waiting for us to buy it.

My wife flew in and we went over to see it. She liked it. I liked it. We were pretty sure the dogs would like it. So we made an offer. Our realtors advised us that they felt it was a bit overpriced, so we put a competitive bid on it with every intention of negotiating with the seller to meet somewhere in the middle.

Then we find out there’s another offer that’s been on the table for a month. A lowball offer that the seller was not interested in taking. We still felt we had a good chance of getting it so we pressed on. Then the old offer suddenly became a new offer for full asking price. Cash buyer. Fuck. Game over.

We flew home to Arizona disappointed that our quest was foiled yet again. We had a brief glimpse of the unicorn as he was being led away by someone else. Curses to the waterfront gods!

But we will soldier on, licking our wounds, lowering our standards, raising our price ceiling, emerging even more hardened and tougher than ever. We’re ready to hunt down that waterfront unicorn. And shoot him right between the fucking eyes.