Lake Conroe cash flow
Many flocked to area seeking outdoor refuge during stay-home orders, travel restrictions
For July Fourth, Bruns Powers, her husband, Steve, and their four sons were to reunite with her mom in Daytona Beach, Fla. Concerns over COVID-19 transmission, however, grounded the family at home in Spring.
They instead took in a professional fireworks show from the waterfront house on Lake Conroe they purchased during the pandemic.
As travel plans have been stymied by COVID-19, the Powers find themselves among a sizable group of people in the Houston area who have invested in turning Lake Conroe into their backyard vacation destination. It’s a crowd seeking fresh air and socially distant leisure on the 22,000-acre lake surrounded by parts of Conroe, Montgomery, Willis and the Sam Houston National Forest.
“At first it was just memories in a boat, and now we have this fantastic house,” said Bruns Powers, whose other summer 2020 purchase for the lake was a 23-foot-long Moomba.
Real estate agents, boat dealers and others catering to the lakefront lifestyle have profited from this surge of interest in the Houston area’s largest lake, calling this past summer their busiest yet. In some instances, Lake Conroe’s allure of wet summer fun actually dried up the inventory.
Mike Goins, a Lake Homes Realty associate broker who has been selling homes on Lake Conroe since 2006, said he expected 2020 to be a bad year due to the pandemic’s damaging im
pact on the national economy.
Then his phone started ringing. From California to New York and in between, people outside Texas were calling him for a Lake Conroe home to vacation at or relocate to.
“I’ve never been busier,” Goins said, noting he is on track for closing on 60 homes this year, compared to the 45 he closed on in 2019.
“You couldn’t fly anywhere, you couldn’t cruise anywhere, you couldn’t really go anywhere, so Lake Conroe became really more of a hot destination,” he said.
Powers bought her home from Connie Santiago and her husband, Jerry, of the Santiago Team, a real estate partnership at Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Gary Greene.
Many of Santiago’s clients work in professions not negatively impacted by COVID-19. Santiago managed to sell homes on Lake Conroe this year for at least $500,000 with the standard 20 percent down payment.
She estimated a house on Lake Conroe that last year sold for more than $600,000 would now sell for between $50,000 and $60,000 more.
“There’s so many buyers and no inventory,” Santiago said, adding one client bought a home without seeing it first. “That’s how crazy the market is.”
By the end of July, the Santiago Team had completed as many transactions as they did in all of last year.
Outdoor refuge
All six Powers family members found themselves under the same roof after the two eldest sons, who attend college out of state, returned during the stay-at-home phase in the spring. It was then when the water started calling out for them.
“I thought, no better time than now to go buy a boat and create memories for staycation,” Bruns Powers said.
As families sought refuge from the great indoors, Rinker’s Boat World owner Chris Rinker added hours and employees to the Lake Conroe store and a northwest Houston location.
He said his stores, which also sell roundabout vessels, pontoons and bay boats, sold a year’s worth of inventory during the spring season alone. Boat makers told Rinker a nationwide uptick of interest in boating led to a shortage. “Inventory in the field is at an all-time low,” Rinker said, noting that 60 percent to 75 percent of the country’s fall season production has already been sold.
Permanent home
As autumn sweeps through, life on Lake Conroe is a little less crowded. At least for the Powers.
Their two oldest boys have resumed their studies in Colorado and Oklahoma. Come next year, the third oldest will be going to college in Arizona. Bruns and Steve, a Klein ISD high school football coach, will be left with an 11-year- old son and two homes.
But the Powers have plans for their 2,500-square-foot lake house in Montgomery’s Walden subdivision. The new two-story abode — with a balcony overseeing the water, a spacious kitchen and an expansive deck — will in two years’ time become a permanent home for them.
In a year that uprooted so much for so many, the Powers in 2020 have chosen Lake Conroe as their final place to settle down following nearly 25 years of marriage.
“We have bought a slice of heaven,” Bruns Powers said.