While there is not a lot of new home construction going on in the Lakes Region of NH, it is nice to see that there are some homes being built despite the depressed housing market that we are currently struggling through. It is even nicer to see that some of the developments are actually moving product!

The busiest new home development right now is the Villas at Paugus Bay off White Oaks Road in Laconia. These are entry level modular homes priced starting in the 160’s and offered with either two or three bedroom floor plans, two baths, stainless steel appliances, a full basement, and a two car garage. There are several plans to choose from and a few upgrades available including granite countertops and hardwood flooring. These homes are great as a primary residence, retirement, or vacation home. It certainly doesn’t feel like we are in a down market when you drive into this development; there’s a lot of activity going on there! Sales have been brisk. One point worth clarifying on this project is that you actually don’t own the land your home sits on, it is a land lease; kind of like a condominium form of ownership. There are minimal HOA fees to cover lawn care and road maintenance so you won’t need to mow your lawn! The project has 24 acres of conservation area, but the homes are a little tight to each other so you will get to know your neighbor quite well. That’s great if you both root for the same ball team and bad if you don’t.

Another great development that has had extremely strong sales this year is at Willow Pond in the Long Bay section of South Down Shores in Laconia. These high quality, stick built, cape style homes are available in either 1,775 square foot or 2,230 square foot versions starting at $279,900 for the base model. There is a long list of luxurious upgrades so you can individualize your home just the way you want it. The homes have a bright and open floor plan with cathedral ceilings, first floor master suites and laundry, full basement, and a two car garage. The homes have great curb appeal and the builder has paid a lot of attention to every detail. Sales have been strong over the summer and there are only seven lots remaining. This is the first time single family homes have ever been offered in this price range in Long Bay so the response has been tremendous! And with all of the great amenities provided, why wouldn’t they sell ? Long Bay has 1,500 ft of shorefront, a fantastic lakeside pool, beach, walking trails, clubhouse, tennis courts, and dry berths available at the South Down Boat Club. When you package quality new construction, a great price, and outstanding amenities together you get great results.

This developer also offers the same homes at another development called Nature’s View located off North Street in Laconia. Prices here start a little less at $259,900. You obviously won’t get all the amenities offered in Long Bay, but you will get the same quality home in a great new neighborhood. Homes here have sold very well and there are still plenty of lots available. The builder also offers a ranch style home with a base price of $229,900.

The Villas at Paugus and Willow Pond demonstrate that new homes will sell even in difficult market if the builder provides consumers with a truly great value…

This wonderful log home in Tilton NH has so much to offer it is tough for me to put it into words! So, let’s hear the seller tell you about this special home:

For more info on this great property, just click here!

You know, sometimes you just don’t need to say anymore…

For more information on this fabulous property, click here!

Classic Country Cape

7059 Pleasant Street Extension, Loudon, NH

MLS #4004940  Offered at $345,00

This new three bedroom cape has wonderful curb appeal & sits at the end of a charming country lane on a beautiful 5 acre lot surrounded by stone walls.

This is a high quality home featuring a large kitchen/dining area with granite counter tops, beautiful cabinetry, tile floors, & upgraded lighting fixtures. The huge living room has gleaming wood floors as does the adjacent master suite. The master has 3/4 bath but is also plumbed for a jacuzzi or hot tub. French doors in the master lead out to a farmer’s porch overlooking the back yard & is the perfect spot for morning coffee.

Upstairs you’ll find two additional bedrooms & a full bath. There is a full walk out basement and an attic that could also provide additional living space.

Heat is provided by an energy efficient high tech gas furnace with hot water baseboard plus in floor radiant heat in the tiled areas. There’s also a single stall garage/barn and car port to keep your vehicles or toys under cover. If you have got some horses, this property would a be perfect place as it is fenced in.

Enjoy country living at its best!  Come check it out today…

In search of an immaculate home...

I was searching the MLS last week for a home between $250,000 and $450,000. A home that you would consider to be of high quality, great condition, wonderfully maintained, and that has lots of character and charm. A home that I would call special. I was only looking in three or four specific communities but I really didn’t come up with much. Undaunted, I broadened the search to include all the homes in Belknap County and Moultonborough regardless of price. Fortunately, the MLS search system we use allows me to search for very specific keywords within the public description of the property so I can zero right in on the type of property I wanted. I picked “keywords” that would describe a desirable home and searched through the 1300+ homes currently on the market. The results were surprising and yielded two obvious conclusions.

Was the maid off last week??

Of the 1300+ homes available there were only 27 “immaculate” homes found! Can you believe that? Does that mean there are 1273 less than stellar house-keepers out there, or perhaps some of the homes were listed the week the maid was off, or maybe the agent just didn’t want to mention the state of cleanliness of the home? I’m not sure what keyword to use to look for something less than “immaculate”. I tried “well kept” and only 9 homes came back (one being “well kept immaculate”—I liked that one!). The search revealed only 16 homes when I plugged “pristine” into the search. That’s not a real common word to use, but who wouldn’t want a pristine home? Of the 16 homes that came up only 3 were “pristine homes”. The rest were describing the setting, the frontage, the water, the lot, and so on.

How about “high quality” homes? There were only 3 out of 1300! What quality were the rest? I tried “well built” and found only 4 properties. Now I am getting really concerned that the remaining 1293 homes are all of inferior construction…or is it again a case of vague property descriptions? It was hard to tell by some of the photos of the homes that I looked at.

What about a “like new” home. I found a mere 19 and some of those only “looked” like they were new, some “showed” like they were new, and some were in “like new condition”. All the rest of the 1281 listings therefore weren’t “like new” and had to be just plain “new”, “young”, “older”, or maybe even had Indian Shutters and an outhouse.

I found just 48 of the 1300 to be described as “well maintained”. That can’t be good. However, only 9 needed “TLC”. I highly suspect that in reality both these results are much higher. That’s good and bad.

A real Charming house!

 There were 67 “charming” properties listed. Now anything can be “charming”, but I think this word gets misused a lot as some of the homes were not remotely charming based on the pictures I saw. I love homes with “character”, but there were only 18 homes that came up in the search. That means there could be 1282 lackluster, bland homes out there. There were 48 “cozy” properties starting with a $35,000 A-Frame home all the way up to a $1.4 million cottage on Governors Island. That’s a big range for the word “cozy”.

But, there were 133 “wonderful” results! There were wonderful “communities, lots, neighborhoods, spots, lawns, locations, gardens, and floor plans”. And there was the age old wonderful “family home”. It seemed though that you had to get up in the price range quite a bit before the true meaning of “wonderful” really kicked in…

And, lastly, the keyword “beautiful” yielded 334 properties. There were beautiful “floors, lots, woodwork,

Not the kind of character I was looking for...

waterfront, landscaping, yards, etc, etc, etc…”, but only 16 beautiful “homes”. The rest therefore had to be only good looking, maybe stately, or down-right ugly. But as they say: beauty is in the eye of the beer holder, I mean beholder, so this category is somewhat subjective.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to use multiple keywords in my search. It wouldn’t seem to let me do it. But I bet if you were looking for an immaculate, pristine, well maintained, and charming home you wouldn’t find any at all—at least by the description of the property.

So you could conclude that (1) there are few homes on the market that are really outstanding or that (2) the property descriptions could be improved. Perhaps it is little of both? There does seem to be shortage of really great, high quality homes with character and charm especially in the mid-price ranges. It’s not that there aren’t good solid houses out there, but as Realtors®, we don’t walk into too many low to mid-priced homes where the first word out of our mouths is “Wow!”. We rely on photos a lot to convey what a house is like and many times great pictures can make up for a lackluster description. But it would also help a great deal if there were honest property descriptions relaying more about the condition, quality, and how a property feels rather than something like: “This 3 bed, 2 bath, Colonial on nice 2 acre level lot, has new appliances and flooring, a large deck, plus a huge back yard. Great location. Hurry, won’t last long.” (and just for the record there were only 45 homes that had a “great location”).

So if YOU are looking for any of the foregoing attributes in a home, call me! I know where all the beautiful, high quality, immaculate and pristine homes with character and charm are. It is not an easy job, but someone has to do it…

MLS #2836450    240 NH Route 25, Meredith NH, 03253 

Offered at $209,000

This charming two bedroom ranch truly shows pride of ownership throughout.

Built in 1930 (with a new addition in the 1960’s) this lovely home has a remodeled eat-in kitchen with stainless steel appliances that is perfect for entertaining, a cozy living room with a hearth and wood stove (that will easily heat the home), a nook that can be used as a den or tv area, two ample size bedrooms, and a nice enclosed front porch. In the basement you’ll find a newer boiler and a large root cellar that will hold all the canned goods that you’ll be able to produce from your great garden space outside.

This is a very pretty piece of property with a large field in the back, a nice stand of trees, tons of garden space, a large barn with water, tractor sheds, chicken coup, and an oversized two car garage. This is the perfect home to get back to basics. Maybe you’ve always wanted some livestock, a horse or two, and you’d like to do a little gardening. This is the perfect piece of property for that and more! Enjoy a little bit slower pace and a simpler lifestyle. . .

All right, I admit it, I am a little obsessed with real estate. Like the other full time agents that are making a go of it in this difficult market you almost have to be. You have to take this job very seriously or you won’t survive. It also helps to be a little crazy. You have to work long days, be available whenever and wherever at the drop of a hat for your clients or customers, and deal with new and bizarre issues or problems on every transaction. We also have to deal with the diverse personalities and opinions of our buyers and sellers. My broker said he read an article on-line this week that said being a real estate agent was ranked the 10th most stressful job in America. I looked it up and he wasn’t kidding. So at the end of a long day, I often sit down to relax and watch one of my favorite TV shows: HGTV’s House Hunters or House Hunters International. That’s how I know I am crazy.

I would think most people have seen House Hunters; it has been on the air a long time. But for those of you that haven’t, the premise is that buyers are looking for a new home so they enlist the aid of a real estate agent. They look at three homes in a given price range to compare and contrast and at the end of the show they buy one. Sounds pretty straightforward and simple. Every show someone buys a house! I wish my buyers could pick one out of three homes rather than one out of three hundred. I highly suspect that this feat is achieved through the magic of television rather than actually happening week after week. Either that or the buyers have been slipped something off screen. I may call to see what the producers use.

Anyway, it is very interesting to see homes in different parts of the country, the styles, and what you get for the money—or what you don’t get. That, in itself, is very educational. It is also fun to try and figure out which home the buyers will pick. I can tell you which home I would buy, and you would think, that based on what the buyers say they are looking for, and their reactions to and comments on each home, that you would know which home they will pick. Well, thing again. Maybe you have to be there?

House Hunters International is the same format, but much more interesting as you get to see homes in countries all over the world. The best shows to me are when they go to exotic places or islands like Fiji, Aruba, Mexico, or St Thomas (you know, somewhere warm with a beach and calm water). This week’s show had a couple from Detroit who have been investing in Florida vacation homes for years. They decide to take a quick trip down to Panama to buy a million dollar home. Their budget was $1.2 million and they wanted a large, open concept home, with a great kitchen, a pool, and an ocean view.

So house #1 was a $1.1 million home right on the beach with a great open concept floor plan. I don’t remember the square footage, but this place was huge and beautiful, and had a great view of the ocean but no pool. Darn. The second home seemed like a bargain at $800,000. It had the same great view of the water, a fantastic pool, was a little smaller than house #1, but didn’t have as much privacy because the house next door was very close. House #3 was way over budget at $1.4 million dollars, the largest of the three homes, and was really extravagant. The biggest flaws were that it was not an open concept home (which was one thing that they really wanted to have) and that it was $200,000 over budget. So I thought house #2 was a good buy, more manageable, and easier to take care of. House #1 just needed a pool put in, was priced right, and had everything else they wanted. I figured that’s the one they will go with. Nope, they go way over budget with house #3 and without the open concept plan that they really wanted!

Besides being entertaining, these shows highlight some of the things REALTORS® deal with on a daily basis and how differently people can view the same property. There is an old saying in real estate; “Buyers are Liars”. I don’t think that is really true. Most buyers are never 100% sure what they want until they see it and sometimes they will spend a lot more than budgeted when a property really grabs them. Buying a home is very much an exercise of personal taste and emotions. We often see buyers start out with one set of criteria for a home only to end up with something else entirely different because something really clicked about the property. I just don’t think they do it after three houses, or do they? Call me to be on the premiere of House Hunters Lakes Region.     

I have three houses to show you…

This affordable and cozy waterfront cottageon Silver Lake in Belmont, NH is the perfect place to create some lasting memories of the family having summertime fun in the Lakes Region of NH!

The cottage sits literally only steps from the water on a gently sloping .22 acre lot providing  great views of Silver Lake from the large 24′ x 10′ deck as well as from inside the home.

This cottage features two bedrooms, a nicely remodeled kitchen, a large three quarter bath, and living room. There is also a full attic that the current owners have utilized for additional sleeping space for the kids.  The home sits on concrete posts and piers.

Enjoy barbeques on the deck or play horseshoes on the lawn. With 100 feet of shorefront there is plenty of room for your new dock.

While currently utilized as a seasonal cottage, it is heated and partially insulated and could be easily be made suitable for year round use. The property is serviced by town sewer making the addition of more bedrooms much easier. It is also located close to shopping at Exit 20 providing easy access to Rt 93.

Get on the lake in time for summer!

MLS #2830831 10 Silver Lake Dr, Belmont, NH   Offered at $189,900

Are you looking for an affordable Lakes Region of NH waterfront on a great lake? This year-round waterfront retreat has 52′ of frontage and a dock on beautiful Crystal Lake and is ready for summer fun!

The main level of this updated home features a  huge living room area with a hearth and woodstove, a dining area, large galley kitchen with all new stainless stell appliances, a den/additional sleeping area, and a huge full bath with laundry hook ups. There is also a 9′ x 20′ enclosed porch leading on to a 8′ x 14′ deck overlooking the lake.

Upstairs there are three bedrooms and a full bath plus another room that can be used as additional sleeping quarters. The master bedroom is large at roughly 20′ x 22′ and looks out at the lake. There is new carpet, linoleum, and laminate flooring throught the home.

Outside there is generous lawn space that leads gently down to the lake and your dock.  So spend this summer (and every summer hereafter) enjoying boating and waterskiing on Crystal Lake which covers 440 acres and is one of the nicest lakes in the region.  This is also a great base for your winter snowmobiling or skiing adventures as well! So call to schedule your showing now!

MLS #2826113    27 Wakeman Rd, Gilmanton, NH 03837

Offered at $239,000

This wonderful waterfront property will take you back in time to when life was simple and things on Lake Winnipesaukee were just a little slower. You can almost picture a horse and buggy or your grandfather’s old Packard parked in the driveway. The kids would be playing on the beach and the barbecue would be smoking away as the old wooden boats full of island folk headed out from Glendale for the weekend…

There are simply magnificent views from this tastefully renovated 1930’s Victorian cottage in Gilford, N.H. Watch the comings and goings at the Glendale Docks from your front porch or from the sandy beach. There is 249′ of fabulous frontage on this .7 acre lot plus a wonderful 38′ boathouse with outside docking.

Just down the beach is a seasonal guest house that would be perfect for the kids or your in-laws. In addition, there is another out-building that could be converted into a bunk house making this a roomy family compound. You can put all your water toys in the 2 car detached garage/barn out behind the bunk house.

The property is service by town sewer and an drilled well. It is also located in the resort/commercial zone which allows the property to be used for a variety of business purposes if desired. This property is located in the heart of the Lakes Region and is close to all the area amenities including shopping, restaurants, and entertainment facilities.

What would be your dream business here in the Lakes Region? This property could just be for you…

MLS #2825345  Offered at $979,000

Give me a call anytime to view this and other great Winnipesaukee properties…