On Conesus Lake, the number of linear feet of frontage is often the first metric buyers use to compare waterfront properties, but according to Matthew Sharman, team leader of The Sharman Team at Real Broker NY LLC, that number is doing less work than the market assumes.
Sharman, who specializes in lakefront properties in the western Finger Lakes, says the gap between what frontage measures and what it delivers is widest on lakes where the shoreline is finite and already built out. The buildable perimeter of Conesus Lake has been fixed for decades, and lots are narrow, making the shape of a parcel’s waterline critical. Two properties can have identical frontage figures but behave very differently in negotiation.
For example, Sharman describes a recent listing with just over 60 feet of frontage, which is plentiful by local standards. However, the footage ran along a curve in the shoreline, allowing neighboring dock placements to encroach on usable water. The same 60 feet running straight, with neighbors squarely to either side, would have supported a materially higher price. “All frontage is not the same,” he says.
Across 39 Conesus Lake waterfront closings over the past twelve months, the median sale price was $13,000 per foot of frontage, but individual sales ranged from under $700 to more than $44,000 per foot. This wide range underscores that frontage length alone does not set the price.
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 solely on comps or automated estimates. On the water, frontage quality and usability are separate inputs from frontage length.
The distinction matters most in negotiation, where the raw figure is what both sides anchor 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 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 the lake.
The second variable that resists a simple metric is the legal shape of lake access. 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. 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, but 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 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.
Beyond access, several physical characteristics move value. Build history is one: most housing stock around the lake dates from the 1920s to the 1950s and has been extended repeatedly, sometimes without permits. Homes rebuilt from the mid-1980s onward tend to command a premium because they were designed as complete structures. Parking is also systematically underestimated, as is kitchen orientation. Older cottages often have galley kitchens facing the road, which puts the cook 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. Bedroom usability and road position also matter, with properties on quiet off-road pockets trading at a premium.
These variables mattered less in 2020 and 2021, when scarcity compressed analysis and buyers absorbed compromises. The current market has restored distinctions. Properties strong on several dimensions—clear frontage, workable access, intentional build, parking, orientation—are holding price, while those strong on one metric but weak on others are absorbing corrections. A price-per-foot calculation cannot distinguish between the two.
For a market where inventory is fixed and comparables are thin, valuation is moving away from single-metric shorthand and toward an assessment of how a specific parcel functions. It is a slower analysis that depends on knowledge of a particular shoreline rather than a regional average.
