Simple, rustic cabins becoming more rare as amenities added

Dave Olson, The Forum
Published Monday, September 03, 2007

In days of old, people went to a Minnesota lake to get away from it all.

At the most, a trip might involve dusting cobwebs off the cottage and setting up the lawn chair to soak up a little Mother Nature before rejoining the rat race.

Landscaping and upkeep, even TV, took a back seat to simple relaxation.

Rustic cottages can still be found, but you have to look harder to find them, said John Erickson, a Brainerd, Minn., attorney who specializes in representing individuals concerned about lakeshore development of one kind or another.

“I was in a place this past week where a very sophisticated client and his family did not have a television,” Erickson said, adding that low-amenity lake property becomes easier to find the farther north you go.

But in many cases, he said, “getaway places aren’t necessarily different in appearance than a Twin Cities suburb.”

Lakes country is undergoing a transformation, much of it driven by the meteoric rise in the value of lakeshore property, Erickson said.

The change can be seen in the size of lake homes, but also in the extensive landscaping and other amenities that come with development, he said.

The latter are often accompanied by impervious surfaces that hasten pollution runoff and threaten lake water quality regardless of the size home involved, Erickson said.

Counties don’t track how quickly low-amenity cabins are disappearing, but assessors say rising land prices create a strong incentive for owners to make changes they feel will boost value even more.

“To do that, they’ll put a lot more improvements on the property,” said Becker County Assessor Steve Skoog.

He said a rule of thumb in appraising holds that improvements to a property tend to be four times the value of the land they sit on.

“For example, if you bought a $50,000 lot, you might put a $200,000 house on it,” he said.

Because lakeshore has become so expansive, people are increasingly buying rural land, Skoog said.

“They might look at 40 acres and say, that’s my next alternative,” Skoog said. “They’ll put a little cabin on there, or put an RV on there, do some hunting,” he said.

Holding onto an asset

Pelican Lake in Otter Tail County still has a surprising number of rustic-type cabins, said County Assessor Bob Moe.

“The family may have owned them for a hundred years and they really haven’t changed significantly,” he said.

Still, he said the pressures are great for owners to go with a bigger home, or sell out to someone who will tear down the old structure and build something new.

“It seems like there’s fewer and fewer because the piece of land they sit on usually is far more valuable than the cabin would be,” Moe said.

The changes make it harder for families to pass lake property from one generation to the next, Erickson said.

“I think there’s a tremendous drive to realize the capital gain that is present in lakeshore,” he said.

He also said the scattered nature of many families makes it difficult for land to be passed down from one generation to the next.

A cataclysmic health problem in a family can also put a lake home at risk, he said.

“It’s very difficult, no matter what the estate planning vehicle is, to maintain a lakeshore asset indefinitely in a family,” Erickson said.

“Shelters from medical assistance liens are extremely few and far between, and for practical purposes it’s not realistic to think you can shelter an asset like that,” he said.

A living trust will not protect a lake home, but something like a life estate deed might, Erickson said, though he stressed that given the complex nature of such arrangements, it would be wise for any property owner considering such a move to consult an attorney.

Readers can reach Forum reporter Dave Olson at (701) 241-5555