381 Lakewood Lane: What It Takes to Sell When the Market Isn't Cooperating

Selling real estate is relatively easy when demand is high, inventory is low and buyers are competing for every good property that hits the market.

The real test comes when none of those things are happening.

We recently closed the sale of 381 Lakewood Lane in Honey Grove, a lakefront lot in the Shores at Peninsula community on Bois d'Arc Lake. The property had been on the market for more than a year, carried a $750,000 asking price, and was competing in a lakefront market that had cooled dramatically from the excitement surrounding Bois d'Arc Lake just a few years earlier.

It would have been easy to put the property in MLS, wait for the phone to ring and eventually tell our sellers that "the market has spoken."

We didn't do that.

Instead, we spent more than a year actively looking for the buyer ourselves.

And eventually, we found one.

Bois d'Arc Lake Isn't the Same Market It Was Four Years Ago

When Bois d'Arc Lake began filling and development around the lake accelerated, interest in the area exploded. Buyers, investors and developers saw an opportunity to get into a brand-new North Texas lake market early, and lakefront property attracted considerable attention.

But real estate markets change.

As the broader housing market slowed, demand for recreational and lakefront property cooled with it. Buyers became more cautious, financing became more expensive, and many lakefront lots that came onto the market simply didn't sell.

That created a particularly difficult environment for 381 Lakewood Lane.

Within Shores at Peninsula, only a handful of recorded sales had occurred over the previous few years, and those sales had been below $300,000. Our property was listed at $750,000.

We weren't looking for the typical buyer.

We needed to find someone who understood why this particular piece of lakefront property was different and was willing to pay accordingly.

A Listing Isn't a Marketing Plan

One of the biggest mistakes sellers can make in a slow market is assuming that simply putting a property in MLS constitutes a marketing strategy.

MLS is important. Professional photography is important. Online exposure is important.

But when you're trying to sell an unusual property at a price significantly above recent comparable sales, those things may not be enough.

For 381 Lakewood Lane, we knew from the beginning that we couldn't sit around waiting for the right buyer to stumble across the listing.

So we went looking for that buyer.

We promoted the property consistently through social media. We marketed it directly to our sphere of influence. We contacted real estate agents who might have clients interested in lakefront property. We reached out to potential buyers. And week after week, we continued prospecting.

Some weeks produced conversations. Some produced potential leads that went nowhere. And plenty produced nothing at all.

Then we did it again the next week.

That's the part of real estate marketing sellers don't always see.

More Than a Year on the Market Requires Patience

There's another side to a difficult sale that doesn't get discussed enough: managing expectations.

When a property sits on the market for months, sellers understandably begin questioning everything.

Should we lower the price? Is something wrong with the property? Is the market going to get worse? Should we take an offer we don't really like? Should we pull the property off the market entirely?

Those aren't unreasonable questions.

Our job isn't to tell a seller to blindly "stay the course." Sometimes the market is telling you something important, and a price adjustment is exactly what's needed.

But unusual properties don't always follow the same timeline as a typical house in a subdivision.

A higher-end lakefront lot has a much smaller pool of potential buyers. When you're trying to achieve a price well above recent neighborhood sales, that pool gets smaller still.

We believed the property justified continuing to look for the right buyer, and our clients gave us the time to do it.

That patience mattered.

Then We Found the Buyer

After more than a year of marketing, prospecting, phone calls and follow-up, we found the buyer we had been looking for.

The transaction closed, and the result was significant.

381 Lakewood Lane became the highest recorded sale in Shores at Peninsula in the past two years, selling for more than twice the price of the other recent recorded sales in the community.

That's important for our sellers, obviously. But it also matters to the neighborhood.

Comparable sales help establish the market evidence that buyers, sellers, Realtors and appraisers use when evaluating future properties. Until a higher-priced property actually closes, there's very little evidence demonstrating that buyers are willing to pay at that level.

Now there is.

One transaction doesn't suddenly establish the value of every lakefront lot in the community, and every property still has to be evaluated on its own characteristics. But this sale provides a new data point that didn't exist before.

For owners of premium lakefront property in Shores at Peninsula, that's meaningful.

The Market Doesn't Always Bring You the Buyer

There's a lesson from this sale that applies well beyond Bois d'Arc Lake.

When the real estate market is strong, agents can sometimes look better than they are. A desirable property hits MLS, multiple buyers see it immediately, offers arrive and the home sells.

A slower market exposes the difference between listing a property and actually selling it.

When buyers aren't plentiful, somebody has to create opportunities.

That means making calls when there hasn't been a showing in weeks. It means following up with agents who expressed interest months earlier. It means continuing to put the property in front of people even when the previous round of marketing didn't produce a buyer.

And it means being willing to do that for as long as the listing requires it.

381 Lakewood Lane took more than a year.

We didn't stop working because the listing wasn't new anymore.

We didn't stop prospecting because the lakefront market had slowed.

And we didn't assume that because the recent sales were below $300,000, nobody would pay substantially more for the right property.

We kept looking until we found the person who would.

Selling a Unique Property Requires a Different Approach

Bois d'Arc Lake is still a relatively young real estate market, and determining value can be difficult when there aren't many comparable sales. That becomes even harder with premium lakefront properties, acreage, unusual homes and other real estate that doesn't fit neatly into a neighborhood price range.

Those are exactly the properties where active marketing matters most.

If you're thinking about selling property at Bois d'Arc Lake, Honey Grove or elsewhere in North Texas, we'd be happy to talk with you about what it may take to get it sold.

We won't promise that every property sells quickly, and we won't pretend that marketing can overcome an unrealistic price.

What we can promise is that we'll keep working.

Because sometimes the right buyer isn't searching MLS today.

Sometimes you have to go find them.