A watertight investment

From Cape Cod Bay to Nantucket Sound, shoreline homes remain hot properties

By North Cairn

They’re like diamonds. Or gold. Or fine art.
They just never lose their luster.

Luxury waterfront properties all around the Cape are more than holding their own in these otherwise lean economic times. These homes and estates in many cases are increasing in value – despite the slowdown in the real estate market in Massachusetts and around the country, say Cape Realtors from Sandwich to Provincetown. In waterfront offerings that run from $2 million all the way up to a recent $32-million deal, sales are as good as – if not better than – they’ve been in the last five years.

“You hear all this negativity” in other areas of the real estate market, says Jamie Regan, owner of Century 21 Regan Realtors in Mashpee Commons. But it’s not hitting the “luxury second-home market.” In fact, says Regan, “the thing I’m finding interesting is … that the highs are higher than they’ve ever been.”

“I read all the gloom and doom and horror stories, but that is not what’s happening on the Cape,” says John Leaning, a Realtor with American Heritage Real Estate in South Orleans. “Virtually anything on the water, particularly salt water or a salt-water view” is always in high demand.

“There’s a flight to quality right now,” says Jack Cotton, manager of Sotheby’s International Realty, Cape Cod, in Osterville. Waterfront property priced from $5 million up is really hot, he says, and in contrast to other areas of the state that saw declines in real estate values last year, luxury waterfront homes on the Cape enjoyed “a fabulous year.”

And that’s not the case here alone. High-end real estate in many markets worldwide has sold in record numbers and at record prices, according to a survey from Christie’s Great Estates in New York. “Recent news stories about housing prices have failed to report on the robust sales achievements in the luxury real estate sector,” says Kay Coughlin, president and CEO of the firm, the world’s leading luxury real estate organization. “The high-end category worldwide continues to outperform expectations.”

“Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely,” the Cape is a great place to buy property, says Bob Churchill, owner of Buyer Brokers of Cape Cod/Churchill Associates Inc., of Yarmouthport, which represents buyers exclusively. “The Cape has become a very sophisticated destination. It’s becoming a cultural center; the business community is very active; the towns are establishing growth-incentive zones.” All this makes the peninsula an outstanding place in which to invest in property and “will bode well for the future.”

To read more of this story, see the May issue of Cape Cod VIEW on newsstands now. Don't miss a single issue of the VIEW, subscribe today.