Caledonia house on edge of crumbling bluff has sold
This cliffhanger has a happy ending. A Caledonia house on the verge of falling off a crumbling bluff into Lake Michigan has sold after months on the market.
The new owner will likely demolish the house and reinforce the eroded cliff before building something new on the 11 acres of lakefront property.
The sale, in late April, hasn’t stopped people on social media from reacting with surprise to the dramatic drone photos included with the listing. Posts about the home from the account “Zillow Gone Wild” have garnered attention in recent days.
“Let me just step ou- OHMYGOD,” one commenter joked on Instagram.
The monthslong saga to sell the house at 7009 Novak Road was first reported by the Racine Journal Times.
The powerful winter storm in January 2020 that damaged South Shore Yacht Club also erased 30 to 50 feet of land from the owners’ backyard and put the house in jeopardy, said real estate agent Jo Ann Vetter.
Later, rains continued to compromise the stability of the cliff. Vetter recalls visiting in July, then again in autumn, and noticing a small gate on the back deck had disappeared while she was away.
Even as the housing market has been booming, it was important to explain the precarious situation to would-be buyers, Vetter said. She discouraged many of them from making an offer.
Vetter heard from a lot of couples from Illinois who saw the listing and thought it could make a nice vacation or retirement home on the water.
“Seriously folks, no. Sorry, you can’t do this,” she’d say.
Vetter would ask: did you see the photos showing how close the house is to the cliff?
“I was like, you may be using it as a houseboat,” she said.
She listed the property — which is actually five parcels of land — in early October with the caveat that it would require tens of thousands of dollars to reinforce the bluff. And if someone were to build a second house on the property,
they’d have to connect to city water pipes on the other side of the busy 6 Mile Road.
Plus, they had to pay in cash. No bank would be willing to give out a loan on a house that could fall into the lake at any
point.
Eventually, Vetter started taking down photos of the home’s interior. She wasn’t getting offers from the right kinds of people, she said, and she and the owner made the decision to list it as a vacant lot that could be redeveloped.
Initially listed at $430,000, it sold for $250,000 in late April.
The owner, a retired woman, had lived in the house a long time but was staying in Arizona when the storm hit. She didn’t return to Wisconsin for the summer because of the pandemic, and it was difficult to let the house go from a distance and at a much lower value, Vetter said.
For her part, Vetter, who has spent much of her time fielding calls for the property and searching for the correct buyer, is happy to have it off her plate.
And she’s a bit surprised the house got so much attention on social media only after it sold.
“I could’ve used all that free advertising when I was trying to sell it,” she laughed.