A pirate-themed lakefront home in Salmon, Idaho, designed to look like a ship sitting above Williams Lake, is on sale for $799,000.Known as the Ship Wreck House, the 1,200-square-foot property earns about $80,000 a year in Airbnb rentals. The listing was reported in the Wall Street Journal Homes newsletter.Located near the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, this home features three decks and detailed ship design. Inside, the house features a captain’s quarters, a bunkroom with built-in beds, and a secret door that leads to a treasure room with a skeleton and a chest of gold coins.Boise-based builder and owner Christy Wolfe designed the home to be fun without going too far.“From a design standpoint, I was constantly trying to walk the line between immersive and cheesy,” says Christy Wolfe.Wolfe runs the property with the help of an Instagram account with 30,000 followers, which drives most of its bookings. He hopes the new buyer will continue renting it out to guests.“I like the idea of thousands of families making memories there instead of just one family,” Wolfe said.
Unique construction and high-end home
The listing is part of broader trends in the high-end property market covered by The Wall Street Journal.Near Salt Lake City, Utah, an architect built a 5,310-square-foot, four-bedroom house on a seven-acre lot he loved as a child. The Z-shaped house took three years to build and cost approximately $3.9 million.In London, the St John’s Wood area is seeing prices rise due to UK buyers helping to balance out lower interest from overseas buyers. Despite long being popular among Americans, local buyers are currently keeping the market strong. Elsewhere in London, an American couple spent $360,000 fixing up a 452-square-foot living room to combine modern and traditional British styles.
Major Sales and Historic Properties
In a major US property sale, businessman Bill Koch sold his 52-acre Aspen estate at auction for $33.515 million. The final price was a steep drop from its old high price tag of $125 million.In Connecticut, the late news commentator William F. Buckley Jr.’s childhood home. For sale in Sharon for $3.999 million. The property has been in the Buckley family for almost 100 years.In South Carolina, a family lodge, which once covered nearly 1,000 acres, was chosen as House of the Week. Built for large family gatherings, the land features an 11,000-square-foot main lodge, a teepee, a basketball court, several ponds and streams, and hunting stands.Macroeconomic factors are also influencing buyers. California’s coastal areas have more luxury homes for sale than buyers. At the same time, US mortgage rates rose to their highest point in almost a year due to Middle East conflicts and rising inflation. Meanwhile, wealthy baby boomers are buying larger homes for retirement, breaking the old habit of moving to smaller places.
Unique topic history is created
Ship Wreck House creator, Christy Wolfe, has spent more than a decade building one-of-a-kind vacation properties across America. His career as a builder began in 2011 when he built his first tiny house on a strict budget as a personal experiment in simple living.Since then, he has built several well-known theme rentals, including an off-grid tropical treehouse in Hawaii, an underground Lord of the Rings-inspired Hobbit home in Washington state, and a converted 1950s fire lookout tower in northern Idaho. She is also known for transforming a six-ton concrete and plaster potato replica into the Big Idaho Potato Hotel, located in South Boise.
Conversion of 1900s waterfront structure
Unlike some of his constructions, which started from scratch on vacant plots, the Ship Wreck House project involved taking an existing structure from the early 1900s and completely rebuilding it. Located right on the water of Williams Lake, the original building was redesigned to look like a grounded pirate ship built into the shoreline.To make the theme interactive for visiting families, Wolfe created a private floating dock connected directly to the lower deck, giving guests immediate access to the lake for boating and swimming. She arranged for an interactive treasure hunt throughout the three-story house, and left clues and a custom treasure map for guests to uncover secret rooms hidden behind the walls.