1 Anchor Drive, Lake Tapawingo

This was not a house you could sell with a few photos and a sign in the yard.

1 Anchor Drive is a three-story home built in 1930 on 1.33 acres at Lake Tapawingo, with a second-tier lake view, a grandfathered oversized dock, and a fireplace Harry Truman was photographed in front of. Behind it sat 26.41 acres of managed land across six parcels, on a separate listing, reached only by the drive through the home lot.

What made it hard

Most of the value was invisible. New plumbing, new HVAC, two radon systems, a generator, a 2021 roof, a six-inch driveway, and years of stonework do not show up in a listing photo. A buyer touring a hundred-year-old house assumes a hundred-year-old house’s problems.

It also was not lakefront, and I was not going to market it as if it were. The land and the house were two listings that made the most sense as one. And every sale at Lake Tapawingo carries a right of first refusal for the lake club and the neighbors on either side, which most buyers have never heard of.

How I marketed it

• A printed improvement sheet for every showing, so the work behind the walls had a list and a price tag buyers could take home.
• Parcel maps for the land, built from county records, with each of the six parcels outlined over an aerial photo.
• Professional photography, drone aerials, and video that led with the lake and the acreage.
• A dedicated property page with a private-showing request form, plus a Facebook campaign that presented the house and land as one estate, built under the housing ad rules.
• Private showings by appointment.

Getting it closed

The right of first refusal gives the club and both neighbors 15 days’ written notice to match the terms of any sale. I built that notice into the contract timeline from the start, so it never became a surprise in the last week.

If your home has a story the photos cannot tell, that is a pricing and marketing problem before it is anything else. That is the work I like best.