Lake Vermilion Real Estate

The Lake Vermilion area real estate market now offers 862 lakeshore listings scattered among countless Northeastern Minnesota lakes.  Here’s some study material for you Buyers who like to shop and compare.  This list is sorted by asking price, lowest to highest, $13,999 to $2,900,000 and includes lakes from the Grand Rapids area, to the International Falls area, to the Ely area and beyond.

View the entire selection here in groups of 250 each:

$13,999 to $145,900

$148,000 to $264,900

$265,000 to $499,000

$499,000 to $2,900,000

Let me know if anything catches your eye.  (I’m not sure how long the links will remain valid.)

The questions always come up at some point during the summer months.

How’s the Lake Vermilion water level? How much does the water level vary throughout the year? Is it low or high for this time of year?

The short answer to all of the above is that Lake Vermilion is a very stable lake.  Historically, the lake has only varied 3.25 feet since water depths have been recorded.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources can verify the variation.

Bankrate.com has a few interesting articles about home purchase and ownership in their “most popular” section. They are…

1)  6 Steps to Making the Best Home Price Bid
2)  Poll:  Few Homeowners Regret Purchase
3)  Mortgage Rates Keep Falling

The Fourth of July is the holiday to spend at the lake. I hope to see you there!

There will be more local real estate opportunities coming after the long weekend so take some time off and we’ll see you back here soon.

When real estate buyers are unmotivated the sellers typically become motivated.

Anxious sellers always have the option to adjust the asking price of their offered property. In the current market some sellers are utilizing that action to attract selective buyers.

Take, for example, the current list of 89 road access Lake Vermilion homes and cabins. Of that group almost half have reduced their asking price from the original offered price. Within those price adjusted listings, almost a third have done up to a 10% price reduction, slightly more than a third have reduce their asking price by 10% to 20%, and the remainder have adjusted from 20% to 30%. It would be logical to assume that time on the market is what drives increasingly greater price adjustments.

Buyers and sellers are adjusting to the current market forces. A willingness to negotiate, on both sides of the transaction, seems to be a common element of the most recent sales.

So buyers… do your homework, find a property that meets your needs, and bring a proposal to the table. Your seller is waiting.

I stumbled on this turtle egg several days ago.  It was in the middle of the road.

I had to take snap a picture.  The intent was to relate the photo of the egg to the subject of real estate.  Well… it’s a week later and I can report there is no relationship between turtle eggs and the real estate business.

So… I surrender.

Here’s the egg photo… in raw form with no story to tie it to Lake Vermilion Real Estate.

It’s time to move on.

Update. There appears to be some skepticism in the viewing audience regarding the origin of this egg. Apparently, most turtle eggs are round and soft shelled. This egg is not. It is egg-shaped, hard shelled and about the diameter of a half-dollar. It was not in a nest but on a gravel roadway. Some are convinced this is a duck or bird egg. I’m not sure.

Any thoughts?

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has assembled a group of links related to the successful creation of Minnesota’s newest state park, namely, Lake Vermilion State Park.

Here is a group of handy links that tell the full story:

• Timeline on how the park was created • News items related to the new Park • A map of Lake Vermilion State Park • MN DNR archived items for the Park • Frequently asked questions • Photos • Videos • Fun Lake Vermilion facts • The Soudan Underground Mine (adjacent to the new Park) • An article in the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer entitled “Vision for Vermilion”

Here is some additional verification on the condition of the area lakeshore market.

This information is gleaned from our local Multiple Listing Service and it reflects the year-to-date activity for 2005-2010 for waterfront residential properties on all area lakes.

Based on the information, I would conclude that 2010 summer selling season offers Buyers two complementary opportunities:  1)  The available inventory is 4 times larger than 2005!  2)  Seller motivation and willingness to negotiate are at very high levels.

The trend also seems to indicate that the market has started a reversal in which those Buyers advantages may be starting to diminish.

Here’s a few quick notes on where the year to date Lake Vermilion area real estate market activity compares to 2009.  Although this market never produces high volume sales numbers, it is still valuable for Buyers and Sellers to understand the general trend of the market.  Here are some observations:

1) Lake home and cabin sales are up from 2009
2) Lakeshore lot sales are up from 2009
3) Residential home sales are down slightly from last year
4) Vacant acreage land sales are well below 2009
5) Inventory in all categories remains much higher than historic levels
6) Inventory continues to drift higher (typical for this time of year)

Please send me a note if you have a specific question on the Lake Vermilion area market.  I’ll do my best to send you additional information.

It’s popular these days to enhance the appeal of your service or product by claiming it is environmentally-friendly, aka “green”.

The list of our newly green products is endless. It includes everything from cars to shower curtains.

Evidence of our newly discovered need to be increasingly green can be found on National Geographic’s Green Guide, within the political mission of the Green Party, and at the center of all things green, Green.org.

Although it may be argued that some of these “green” initiatives might have a negligible impact on the planet… we might all agree that such efforts are worthwhile and a step, however small, in the right direction.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has a nice reference page that will direct you to a wide variety of stewardship related topics. Visit that site here.

I suppose it may also be argued there is no people-based activity that can be truly “green”.  Does our Earthly occupancy always impact the natural world in a non-green, unnatural direction?

These meandering thoughts are the result of a recent walk I took into an old, abandoned farmstead. This car was in the yard.  It might be said that this car is now going green.