The Finger Lakes area boasts a wide variety of beautiful landscapes — Cayuga Lake, Buttermilk Falls, Taughannock park, and nearby wineries are all popular tourist attractions. It is those same destinations that New York Land & Lakes company is drawing on to promote their upcoming discount sale of properties — reduced by over 50 percent the original market price — in and around the Ithaca area.
On Sept. 21 and 22, New York Land & Lakes is selling property that includes a total of 900 acres are for sale at Mill Creek Preserve, an area 6 miles from Ithaca. Robert Lesperence, a managing partner of the company, expects a busy weekend and plans to sell the land on a first-come-first-serve basis.
NY Land & Lakes doesn’t just cater to Tompkins County, many clientele come from the downstate metropolitan area; from Manhattan to Long Island to Jersey. As Lesperence puts it, “when you advertise like we do, clients can be from anywhere in the world.”
And these prospective buyers aren’t just looking to invest in land — people purchase them to farm, to hunt, or even to “get away from the congestion and the hustle and bustle of the city,” said Lesperence. “They want to get away to reset and to enjoy all that the country has to offer.”
The land offerings include a variety of amenities — including ponds, streams, gorges, waterfalls and soil tests — and are located close to world-class wineries. NY Land & Lakes plans to host the sale as an open house event, and are also open to student purchases, citing its proximity to Cornell University and Ithaca College as “unique benefits” of the targeted 900 acres.
Comparing the area’s affordability to a selection of prices on the Multiple Listing Service, NY Land & Lakes stand at around 30 to 40 percent lower than their competitors, Lesperence told The Sun.
For this weekend’s sale, NY Land & Lakes will divide the original 900-acre area into 40 parcels that are more manageable in size as well as price. As the average person cannot afford to purchase 900 acres, NY Land & Lakes provides a way for people to purchase a reasonable amount of land for a variety of reasons.
Unlike other developers in the area, NY Land & Lakes does not technically develop the land they sell. “I don’t like to use that word because we don’t really develop or build homes. All we do are the subdivisions of the land, and sometimes we put in infrastructure or build a road,” Lesperence said.
Lesperence also said that NY Land & Lakes works differently compared to other businesses — they do not list a property or hold it for several years. Instead, they liquidate their specific, targeted land as soon as it’s ready, and as soon as it has been through the approval process.
“It’s a nice time of year, fall colors, the weather’s nice, you don’t have to worry about snowstorms and that sort of thing,” Lesperence said.