On Conesus Lake, Frontage Numbers Explain Less About Price Than Buyers Assume

Written by:

Heather Hook

Date:

31 Aug 2026

KeyCrew Studio

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Waterfront property is usually priced off a single number. Linear feet of frontage appears in the listing, gets divided into the asking price, and becomes the shorthand comparison buyers and agents carry between showings. On the smaller lakes of western New York, that number is doing less work than the market assumes.

The gap between what frontage measures and what it delivers is widest on lakes where the shoreline is finite and already built out. Conesus Lake, in Livingston County, is a case in point: the buildable perimeter has been fixed for decades, lots are narrow, and neighboring properties sit close enough that the shape of a parcel’s waterline determines how much of it is usable. Two properties can carry identical frontage figures and behave differently in negotiation.

A metric with limits

Matthew Sharman, team leader of The Sharman Team at Real Broker NY LLC, who works the Conesus Lake market, describes a recent listing with just over 60 feet of frontage – plentiful by local standards. The footage ran along a curve in the shoreline rather than a straight line, which allowed neighboring dock placements to encroach on the usable water. The same 60 feet running flat, with neighbors squarely to either side, would have supported a materially higher price.

“All frontage is not the same,” Sharman says.

Across 39 Conesus Lake waterfront closings over the past twelve months, the median sale price worked out to $13,000 per foot of frontage – but individual sales ranged from under $700 to more than $44,000 per foot, underscoring that frontage length alone does not set the number.

Sharman runs waterfront valuations through a process he calls a Property Value Review (PVR™), which weighs condition, competing inventory, buyer behavior and property-specific features alongside the comparable set rather than relying on comps or an automated estimate. On the water, frontage quality and usability enter that review as inputs separate from frontage length.

The distinction matters most in negotiation, where the raw figure is the number both sides have anchored to. A buyer working from footage alone has no way to price the difference between clear frontage and compromised frontage, and neither does an agent who arrives at the lake occasionally. Sharman argues that the useful analysis is not what the number says but how the water in front of the parcel actually functions: “They’re going to tell you exactly how the frontage is.”

Water depth compounds the problem. Shallow water constrains dock placement, raises the cost of installing a hoist, and in some locations limits what can be moored at all. None of that appears in a listing, and it varies point to point around a single lake.

Access structures

The second variable that resists a simple metric is the legal shape of lake access itself. Properties across the road from the water may hold deeded access ranging from sole use of a narrow strip to shared rights among several households – and the number of households sharing is often the single largest determinant of what that access is worth. Access split two ways and access split six ways are not comparable assets, though both are described the same way on paper.

Some of these arrangements have been formalized into LLCs with maintenance funds and written procedures for repairs and cost-sharing. Many have not. “There’s still a lot of handshake agreements on a lake,” Sharman says. Neither structure is inherently a defect, but they carry different risk profiles and different friction costs, and a buyer pricing one as though it were the other is mispricing the purchase.

This is also why the lakefront premium is less reliable than it appears. Across-the-road properties typically sit on larger lots, often at elevation, with better sight lines over the water and more room to expand. A substantial home with generous parking and access shared with one neighbor can compete on value with a small waterfront cottage on a narrow, tight lot. The premium attaches to specific conditions, not to the category.

Features that carry weight

Beyond access, a set of physical characteristics moves value in ways that aggregate quickly.

Build history is one. Most housing stock around the lake dates from the 1920s through the 1950s and has been extended repeatedly, with inconsistent quality and, in some cases, without permits. Homes taken down and rebuilt from roughly the mid-1980s onward tend to command a premium – not because they are new in absolute terms, but because they were designed as complete structures rather than accumulated in stages.

Parking is systematically underestimated. One or two spaces reads as adequate until guests arrive, and road parking around most of these lakes is limited or prohibited. Garage space functions similarly: lake ownership generates equipment, and there has to be somewhere to put it.

Kitchen orientation is a preference buyers express consistently and listings rarely capture. Older cottages were built with galley kitchens facing the road, which puts whoever is cooking out of the room and away from the water. “You’d be amazed at the amount of buyers that have been not happy with the idea that they’re closed off in this kitchen while everyone else is enjoying the meal,” Sharman says. He attributes part of the shift to vacation rental standards, where a water-facing kitchen has become an expectation rather than a feature.

Bedroom usability follows the same logic. Cottage second stories were often subdivided into rooms too small and too steeply pitched to function; properties where a dormer or a raised roofline created genuinely usable space separate themselves from those that did not.

Road position rounds out the list. The main arteries circling these lakes carry traffic at speed, and the small off-road pockets that exist in places trade at a premium for the noise reduction and safety they provide.

What a selective market rewards

These variables mattered less in 2020 and 2021, when scarcity compressed the analysis and buyers absorbed compromises to transact at all. The current market has restored the distinctions. Properties are surviving longer negotiations and taking price reductions; buyers are declining to concede on features they would previously have overlooked.

The practical consequence is that properties performing well across several dimensions at once – clear frontage, workable access terms, intentional build, parking, orientation – are the ones holding price, while properties strong on one metric and weak on the rest are absorbing the correction. A price-per-foot calculation cannot distinguish between the two.

For a market where inventory is fixed, and comparables are thin, that suggests valuation is moving away from single-metric shorthand and toward assessment of how a specific parcel functions. It is a slower analysis, and it depends on knowledge of a particular shoreline rather than a regional average.

About the Expert: Matthew Sharman is a lakefront and lifestyle real estate authority with The Sharman Team at Real Broker NY LLC, and a top agent serving Greater Rochester, the GLOW region, and the western Finger Lakes, with particular expertise in Conesus Lake, Honeoye Lake, & Silver Lake.

This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.

Disclosure: Individuals or companies mentioned may have a commercial relationship with KeyCrew.