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Posted on Thu, Jul. 02, 2009 11:06 PM
Lake luxury homes will be auctioned off — just to be sold
OSAGE BEACH, Mo. | Beneath the free-standing porticos, on the stone path leading to the cut-glass double front door, Lisa Elliott greets me on a muggy afternoon wearing a black, sleeveless dress, as if she were on her way to a cocktail party.
No doubt the big empty house at 86 Woodhaven Lane will hold many soirees someday — if and when it ever sells.
“It’s one of the finest houses on the lake,” Elliott says as she takes me on a tour of what, from the outside, more resembles a four-story office building than a vacation home at the Lake of the Ozarks.
Inside, there’s no mistaking it for anything but the 7,823-square-foot pleasure palace that it is, one of four luxury lake homes up for an unprecedented auction in a couple of weeks.
The walls on all four levels are stuffed full of wires to power the 138 speakers and 10 flat-panel TVs, all of which can be controlled from a central electronics closet hidden in the 4½ car garage, where there is, of course, a hookup for yet another big screen.
I guess just in case you want to watch the game while polishing the Lamborghini. Or so you can stay tuned in to what’s going on in the rest of the house via the security system, wired with six movable cameras.
Six is also how many bedrooms there are — three with private decks. Then there are the two full and two half indoor kitchens. Another is on the patio, just beyond the kidney-shaped pool, hot tub, telescoping fountain and gas fire pit.
“It took 2½ years to build it,” Elliott says as we breeze through the hearth room, with its polished limestone floor tiles “imported from Israel,” she notes cheerfully.
We settle for a moment in the main kitchen, with its Wolf range, Subzero refrigerator/freezer, custom knotty-alder cabinets and a serpentine sink sunk in the granite countertop. Fill the sink with ice and it’d be perfect for a party-size shrimp cocktail, she says.
“Or beer and wine,” she says. “Doesn’t that sound good?”
Sure looks like a house that took two-plus years to build. But how long will it take to unload?
The house has been on the market since last fall. Unfortunately for Elliott, her husband and their four partners, the spec house they built in a neighborhood called the Villages came on the market at exactly the worst possible time.
The economy had tanked. They had no takers when the house was listed at $3.7 million. And there’ve been none at the current list price of $3.35 million.
That’s why this house and three other luxury vacation homes are being auctioned off July 18 at the Lake of the Ozarks. You’ll need $25,000 in earnest money to bid.
No, it’s not because they’re in foreclosure — they aren’t.
But this once-hot market has cooled, and the owner/builders need to unload some of their pricey inventory before yet another winter comes — and goes — forcing a genuine distress sale.
“There’s a lot of money tied up here,” says Bruce Elliott, Lisa’s brother-in-law and partner, as we look out on a cove off the lake’s main channel at the 20-mile marker.
“It’s just time to move on.”
• • •
Here’s what they say about people who stay and play at the Lake of the Ozarks: Some water-ski, some fish, others golf.
Then there’s that other sport: real estate.
Houses change hands on average every two years, it’s said, as people continually trade up.
To reach Mike Hendricks, call 816-234-7708, or send e-mail to mhendricks@kcstar.com.
Posted on Thu, Jul. 02, 2009 11:06 PM
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