Rant #2 for the day: Lake-house only…not boat related.
New lakeside neighbors since last August. Seemed really nice, and we thought we were developing a friendship with them. I gave them all our lake contacts up here, and helped them with many things last summer…including connecting them with a DEAL on a used jet ski lift from someone else we know up here that gave them a great deal since they were our new neighbors.
They tell us last year they are leaving their dock where it has been the previous 4 years with previous 2 owners. That puts it about 30’ off our propertly line, and they have 97’ of frontage, so still off to the side of their cottage, but also way off the property line. They are also excited they will be extending it out another 60’ to 100’ total. Nice given our shallow shore line. We only go 70’ and have another 150’ to go before it starts to drop in depth. We were happy for them.
We are also like “good to know”. We have always put our dock in its sea wall dock notch as recommended by other neighbors when we bought our place in 2016. It is unfortunately only 10’ off the line, so barely enough room to park our boat on the left side of the dock for port door access dockside. Never an issue before as we had plenty of space for docking. Our lake can be rough at times and close quarter docking is often not doable on the main body of the lake that we are on.
Our dock goes in 2 weeks ago in normal spot. New neighbors are waiting on their new additional sections of dock, so there’s is not put in yet.
Apparently (per another neighbor) they put it in this past Wednesday morning. We happened to be downstate at home. They put their dock in about 1-2’ off the property line. They moved it over about 25-28’ towards us. It leaves us with about a 25’ approach alongside their dock to even reach our dock, in about 1.8-2’ deep shallow water, and with just 1-2” of leeway to pull between our docks and theirs when we get up to our dock. So another 24-25’ of that to get beside our dock.
Our dock on right. Our boat center. Their dock boxing us in on left. Picture taken on fortunately a calm day.
Anyone that know’s the main body of Houghton Lake knows that much of the time you are not on a dead calm. Lots of summer northerly directional wind and waves on the main body of the lake. I cannot really dock it there now without using their dock to “walk it up” and into our spot, or getting off in water and walking it up.
Our dock also has a 6x10 end L’s platform that L’s off to the right. Until I remove it and reconfigure the end piece and leg supports, I cannot just pull up on the right side of my dock. Again, they knowingly boxed us in.
They could have warned us whenever they changed their mind on their dock placement (we exchanged phone numbers last summer And have talked MANY times throughout this past summer, fall and winter). Lots of opportunities to warn us we’d need to move our dock or get boxed in. Ideally they could have held off one more summer with the changes, and put theirs where it has been in the past so we could game plan where we’d be moving ours to along our 50’ of frontage next year.
Neither was done. Instead they boxed us in without notice or warning. They did it after ours was already in for the season. I got up the same evening they had done it for our boat inspection the next day, and found the docks in this state.
My full time neighbor on the other side walked over when I arrived. He said he had walked over and gave the new neighbors a heads up if they continued putting it in at that spot (they had the first section in the water), they’d box us in. Our friend and full time neighbor said the new neighbor was pretty undiplomatic and unconcerned with the “insight” so our full time neighbor walked away, and the new neighbor continued.
I called the new neighbor after this to see if they were upset with us, why they boxed us in, see if he know how it would impact us, and why they didn’t at least warn us in advance of our dock going in so we could have put ours somewhere else. Literally all I got, three different times!, was “I am legally on my property. I don’t see what the problem is.” and then silence. He never uttered any other words, and had a very cold and passive-aggressive tone. Us high school teachers certainly recognize passive-aggressive tones; it’s the staple of many high schoolers. Ha!
I ended the call flabbergasted and fuming before my tone and word choice changed.
However, as actions speak louder than words, I now know what type of people I’m dealing with. I cannot believe we went from a problematic STR with pervious owners from 2019-2021, to these people.
The first neighbors were wonderful. Everyone else on our street is friends, and we all do things together periodically. Some amazingly nice people on our small dead end street.
But for the life of us, for...the…life…of…us…we keep getting the short end of the “neighbor stick” with the lakeside cottage on our north property line.
After 3 and a half years of crazy, problematic but unrelated events up here (STR issues next door, drunk snowmobiling crashing into our cottage and catching the lakeside from on fire, storm damages roof and interior from water form that storm, faulty pontoon welds and losing last month of 2020 summer boating to get it repaired, and losing all 2021 boating due to fired electrical system repairs, and now this most un-neighborly of lakefront moves…
I am considering selling it all and moving on with my life. Drastic? Yes! However, I am giving it some serous thought.
Already got a market analysis on lake house on friday. Dealership salesman I have dealt with on other purchases is putting together estimates on the Bennington for me: if they buy it, if they consignment sell it, suggested market value if I sell it myself (my plan if we move forward with this idea).
Everything else (dock, supplies, cottage toys, home furnishings, etc…) I know the value of and could sell off independently. I have approximate values for all that.
Wife says it’s too soon and too knee jerk. She is right about that.
However, I have really reached my breaking point as another summer season dawns with more issues (for context, our boat is fixed but with MANY minor damages all over it from careless handling by serivce department this past year while they had it).
At the same time, boat and lakefront market is insanely hot still. A total sellers market. My lake house market analysis is slightly higher than double our purchase price in 2016 + all major updates since then. Given that value range alone, there is an nice incentive to cash out and leave these troubles behind. We could earnestly say we gave it a serious try and tought it’d be our ideal future retirement plan (although I’m retired, my wife has about 8 years and younger two kids are in/going in college so grounded down state a lot). However, I am really feeling like the heavens have spent 3 years telling us that it is not the move to make. Maybe it’s time I/we listened?
Anyway, I promised my wife I will only collect estimates and data, and we can circle back to this in late July after we’ve had time to absorb everything and make a clearer headed decision. We will see what the summer head leads to.
For now, I am mentally exhausted with everything up here.
