Million-Dollar Lake Homes in Montana and Idaho Sell For Double What They Did Two Years Ago

[mahatmakanejeeves]

A private island on Flathead Lake in western Montana is coming on the market for $72 million.

Link to tweet

Spanning around 350 acres, Cromwell Island contains an unfinished villa measuring approximately 45,000 square feet. The property also has a roughly 5,000-square-foot guesthouse. https://on.wsj.com/3LrlvW9

Link to tweet

The island is on Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. Spanning roughly 200 square miles, the lake has about 185 miles of shoreline dotted with log cabins as well as larger homes that sell for millions of dollars. https://on.wsj.com/3LrlvW9

Link to tweet

REAL ESTATE | HOMES

Million-Dollar Lake Homes in Montana and Idaho Sell For Double What They Did Two Years Ago

Demand is high for luxury homes in northwestern lake regions, which have experienced an influx of buyers from ‘everywhere around the world’

By Amy Gamerman | Photographs by Rebecca Stumpf for The Wall Street Journal

Apr. 28, 2022 12:00 pm ET

This week, The Wall Street Journal’s Mansion section is rolling out stories from our special waterfront issue. Be sure to check out this one on homeowners trading beaches for lagoons, why you should consider getting a special inspection for your waterfront home and more.

Jordana Woodland, an entrepreneur and designer, spent more than a decade jetting between Los Angeles, where she owned a sprawling boutique on La Cienega Boulevard, and her Montana vacation home near Whitefish Lake, a glacial lake wedged between two mountain ranges. The two places were a study in contrasts: West Hollywood glitz versus Western rustic, with “deers popping out of walls and wood-everything,” Ms. Woodland recalled.

TO READ THE FULL STORY

SUBSCRIBE
SIGN IN

[snowybirdie]

1. What is given

is taken away. Housing prices are likely close to the top now. Nowhere to go but down. In 2010, we bought our home at less than $100,000 in a very desirable area. Previous owner needed to bring over that same amount to the closing. His mortgage was upside down. He'd bought in the go go market of the early 2000s, and couldn't sell without lowering price drastically. I'm thinking the same thing will happen soon again. I'm afraid many will fall victim to the seductive lure of rising prices again.

[cbabe]

2. Global (dark) money looking for a place to park.

[yonder]

3. For now, developers have been beaten down in their latest push to swap

state-owned endowment lands around west-central Idaho's Payette Lake area for less desirable property elsewhere.

These development efforts have been going on for years and will likely be eventually successful despite (or because of?) red-state Idaho's long time, bottom of the barrel standing in public education metrics which endowment lands are constitutionally required to support.

Also constitutionally required is equal, per pupil funding for Idaho's schoolkids but every year that is conveniently overlooked by Idaho's extreme right legislature. You know, taxes. You can bet though, they will use the constitutional, best-bang-for-the-buck endowment lands argument when it comes to satisfying hungry development interests.

So it is profit for the wealthy few while keeping Idaho school kids wallowing at the bottom.

[SWBTATTReg]

4. And where are the lower income people who work in the restaurants, gas stations, etc.

going to live at? Pricing out everybody else in the meantime. Nice. Really nice. A way of live is disappearing.