LakePlace.com in the News

Surfing 'Up North'
MARKETPLACE MAGAZINE - MARCH 2006
By Amy Spreeman 

Minnesotans call them cabins, while Wisconsinites fondly refer to them as cottages. Both states are hands down the cabin/cottage capitals of America, with one in five family owning a lake home. The laid-back "up North" lifestyle is appealing to many people who enjoy the outdoors. But for those wanting to dive in to the blissful waters of ownership, lake property shopping is anything but relaxing.

Thumbing through the classified ads and driving for hours in unfamiliar terrain is no linger the only option for locating property, 90 percent of seekers would rather search for property online. Yet, the vast amount of regional agency listings can frustrate Internet-savvy shoppers.

"Finding the perfect lake cottage can be a lengthy process that involves hours of phone queries and browsing multiple real estate Web sites that are frequently vague or outdated," says Dane Charles, a Menasha entrepreneur who joined with a breakthrough online venture that puts thousands of potentially perfect little lake places at the fingertips of buyers.

One-stop shopping

LakePlace.com is a relatively new tool for anyone seeking to own waterfront property or rent family vacation getaways in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and soon Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The one-stop shop lets browsers view 1,500 properties ranging from $30,000 to $7 million. With more than 60 brokers and 550 agents, developers and property owners posting their listings, LakePlace.com has become the largest database of lakeshore properties in the Midwest.

LakePlace.com was started two years ago by a pair of Internet entrepreneurs from Minnesota. Dave Gooden and Cameron Henkel created LakePlace.com as a tool for Wisconsin and Minnesota real estate professionals who specialize in lake property and are looking for a way to expand their influence while targeting a specific audience.

"LakePlace.com has really streamlined the search from hours down to minutes, and is revolutionizing the way vacation property is bought and sold in Wisconsin and Minnesota," says Charles, who first sponsored the fledgling site with ads linking to his own niche business, Heartwood Topography, a custom designer of wooden furniture and murals inlayed with topographical maps. Last year, Charles became a principal partner, consulting with Gooden and Henkel and promoting the site to investors and the media.

How not to surf

The founders say their site was born from agitation. While searching for their own perfect family cottages, Gooden and Henkel quickly learned first-hand the difference between what makes a user-friendly Web site and what doesn't.

"The poorly designed MLS search engines we tried to navigate were anything but accurate, and the agency sites were limited to a small geographic area – forcing us on a time consuming journey searching hundreds of user un-friendly Web sites," says Gooden.

A few frustrating months later, the two took a stab at designing their own easy-to-use cutting-edge navigational database, and LakePlace.com was conceived.

"Our goal was to make it a little easier for people to get started in their search for the ‘up North' lifestyle," Gooden says. "We wanted to create one single, easy-to-use Web site, which neatly organizes lake properties for sale, private cabin rentals, and family resorts throughout all regions of Minnesota and Wisconsin."

A captive audience

Real estate professionals pay a monthly or yearly membership fee to capitalize on a very targeted audience – the thousands of weekly potential buyers visiting LakePlace.com. Major markets include the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, Des Moines and Chicago, and visitors come from all 50 states and from as far as Germany to locate a Northland getaway.

By exclusively promoting the Minnesota and Wisconsin experience to the rest of the world, LakePlace.com has quickly become one of the largest and most visited regional Web sites on the Internet, with 6 million hits and 40,000 visitors per month, and averaging 800,000 page views. That's more traffic than both states' government tourism sites, ExploreMinnesota.com and TravelWisconsin.com.

"Our relationship with LakePlace.com over the past six months has yielded many inquiries from qualified buyers who see our listings," says Patrick O'Hearn, managing broker of Loon Lake Realty in Little Suamico. "Their Web site is very nicely done, and I felt it was well worth the money we've invested in their program."

O'Hearn's Loon Lake business is one of the more well-known brokers of Northern Wisconsin lake properties, and he says 50 percent of his business comes from the Internet. Loon Lake Realty has been listings properties on its corporate site for the past eight years, and he sees LakePlace.com as a good match to bring in even more potential buyers.

"The staff at LakePlace.com is excellent to work with and responsive to our needs, which is a plus for our customers," O'Hearn says. "There is just something about having a place up North. For those of us who live in Wisconsin, it's a dream ingrained in our consciences."