So very excited for my clients who’s offer was accepted on this beautiful Lake Oswego Craftsman. Located in the idyllic Lake Grove community, this 3 bed, 2.5 bath home is one of those homes that you don’t want to leave (I got real comfy during inspections). It’s cozy and peaceful, and was a great deal because at $875k, it came with a Lake Easement. My clients wanted to make sure that they had year-round Lake access.
So, what is a lake easement?
Easements provide access to property owners in the City of Lake Oswego who have special deeded lake access privileges. It’s like a small, private club that allows members to access the lake for water activities like swimming, kayaking, canoeing, paddle boarding and boating.
Lake Oswego Corporation (LOC) owns 20 lakeside properties at various locations around the lake to allow eligible easement members to exercise lake access privileges. Each easement is governed by its own individual set of by-laws and has its own volunteer board of directors, which can be found online. The people we reached out to during our search were always so helpful and friendly. Facilities and rate structures vary from easement to easement. Some have gas grills, picnic areas and playgrounds, while others have boat slips (these usually come with a long waitlist!) and kayak racks. Initiation fees range from $500-$3000 and annual fees are typically $225-$1000.
There are over 3,000 homes in Lake Oswego whose residents are eligible to exercise lake access privileges. Sometimes agents don’t advertise that the home they’ve listed has an easement, but this site allows you to see if a property has access to any easements. Just type in the home address in the box at the bottom.
Easements can’t be sold or transferred. Lake Oswego residents do also have access to two swim parks, although these are only for swim and operate in the Summer months as opposed to year round.
Interested in Lake Oswego home with an easement? Reach out!
My buyers Daniel and Vinci contacted me after being exhorted (their words) by a mutual friend (and client) to contact me. They were living in my neighborhood, Hosford Abernethy, on a smallish house on a busy street and were thinking they were ready for a bigger house on a quieter street. The catch? They only wanted to live within a 15 square block area. They had been spending a large part of the summer visiting family in California, but a fixer located in their search area came on the market and they were intrigued. I had also just listed my neighbor’s house and it was getting a lot of action, so Daniel decided to fly up to Portland for an afternoon to look at these houses. In the meantime, there was another house in the neighborhood they had been keeping their eye on- a large brick house on a corner painted a bright and cheery green. This house had originally been listed nearly a year ago at a pretty far fetched price- nearly $200k more than it was currently listed at. Two weeks prior the house had a dramatic $75k price reduction putting it within reach for Daniel and Vinci. So on a sunny summer Monday three days after contacting me, Daniel flew up to Portland for a few hours. We took a grand tour of the 3 homes- all within a few blocks of each other, including the fixer, my listing and the big green big brick house. The fixer was too fixer-y, and my listing was a little too small, but the green brick house was a match.
The very best call a real estate broker can receive is a call from a buyer where they let you know they were referred to you and want to work with you and they already found a house they want to write an offer on. In real life though, it’s never quite as easy as that sounds. When my buyer Brittney called me in late April she and her family had fallen in love with a house in Brentwood Darlington they just saw at an open house and they wanted to put an offer in, but she didn’t have a broker yet. Thankfully I was available and I high tailed it over to the house to see for myself, and then right afterwards met with Brittney and her partner at a coffee shop to discuss.
