Waterfront Lake Geneva Estate Lists as Hotspot’s Priciest

A lakefront retreat hit the market in Lake Geneva to claim the crown as the area’s priciest active listing, with a nearly $11 million ask.

Tricia Forbeck of Compass is the listing agent for the 9.2-acre estate at W2908 Walcowis Drive, which offers 160 feet of shoreline on Geneva Lake.

The acreage is divided across five separate parcels, and the main home includes five bedrooms, three of which feature lofts for extra sleeping space, along with four full bathrooms and one half bath, an open great room with floor-to-ceiling windows, a wet bar, a screened porch and an expansive deck. The estate has been held for decades by Janice Van Dyke Zeilstra, following its purchase in the 1980s alongside her late husband, William Van Dyke, public records show.

The primary 1.53-acre parcel, held under the entity VanDyke Lake Geneva LP, shows a 2025 total assessed valuation of $5.43 million, bringing a net property tax bill of $51,180. Forbeck didn’t return a request for comment Tuesday morning after the listing hit the market late Monday evening, and attempts to reach Van Dyke were unsuccessful.

If the Walcowis Drive property fetches anything close to its asking price, it will mark the largest residential sale on Geneva Lake since March. That’s when Sprout Social founder Aaron Rankin and his wife Yeming Rankin sold an 11,000-square-foot lakefront mansion on the other side of the lake in Fontana for $14.3 million to Eagles Wings Trust, an entity that shields the true identity of the buyer. in an off-market transaction. That property is at 389 North Lakeshore Drive, on the west side of Geneva Lake, while the Walcowis Drive listing sits near the body’s southeastern corner.

However, the Walcowis listing will test an ultra-luxury market that has shown signs of sluggishness since that big Fontana closing. The next two most expensive properties currently on the market — both new-construction homes listed by David Curry of Geneva Lakefront Realty — have lingered for months and recently undergone notable price chops.

“The only reason it looks slow is there is no inventory,” Curry said in an interview. “If I had five listings between $15 million and and $25 million, I could sell five in the next 30 days.”

The slow movement of these high-end, brand-new builds presents a stark contrast to the rapid, lucrative flips that characterized the high end of Lake Geneva’s market late last year.

The area’s second-priciest listing, an eight-bedroom home at N2017 South Lakeshore Drive asking $8.5 million, has been on the market for 256 days and took a $500,000 price cut last month, listing data shows. Despite boasting 160 feet of private frontage, a custom kitchen with Wolf and SubZero appliances, and a walk-out lower level with a sauna, the property is still searching for a buyer.

Similarly, the third-priciest listing at 1572 North Creekside Lane has been on the market for a full year, though it isn’t on the waterfront. The Michael Abraham-designed five-bedroom home, which features a screened loggia, an in-ground pool and a deep-water boat slip, cut its asking price by $130,000 on June 4 to land at $6.6 million.

Curry called the listing for the new construction “aggressive pricing,” insisting the lakefront market remains in high demand among luxury buyers but for the lack of available homes.

Yet the Walcowis Drive home’s listing on the public MLS is unique for Lake Geneva, where quiet, off-market transactions are the norm for existing waterfront homes. Most such properties that test the open market have already been shopped through their broker’s private listing channels.

“Until now there hasn’t been any open market inventory,” Curry said. “There is a little bit of price discovery going on. After a pretty strong run from Labor Day through October last year, we’re trying to figure out if pricing accelerated over the winter, settled, or dropped off.”