Outdoor Tahoe House Tour

As you would expect, Tahoe has a whole lotta spectacular houses. People of means from all over the world often choose Tahoe for their nice second (or third or fourth) homes. Of course, the rest of us are curious about these abodes that belong to people with everything. As long as we don't cause a problem, and as long as we stay on public property, there's nothing wrong with looking from the public street.

For the big picture, take a drive around the lake. Clockwise is best because then you aren't looking across traffic to see the lakeshore homes. Going during the shoulder season (October, November, April, May) will give you the least traffic to deal with.

Many of the nicest homes are on the lake and out of view from the road. But it is still fun to see the area and peek through the gates. If you have access to a boat, you can see these houses that are out of view to everyone else.

People often wonder where is the greatest concentration of spectacular houses. That would be Lakeshore Blvd. in Incline Village. You can find it on Google Maps. 

This is Incline Village from above (The overlook on the Mt. Rose Highway).
Lakeshore Blvd. runs along the lake on the lower right side of the picture.

This is a 3-mile piece of road, sometimes referred to as Billionaire's Row. The houses on the "mountain side" of the road are generally very nice. The ones on the lake side of the road are mostly out of view. They are mostly owned by business and tech titans. You would recognize many the names. Some are Wall Street fund types, and a few own big companies in several areas of business. Perhaps the most common category are the software moguls, from the companies whose products and services you use.

Some people imagine that this is where the movie stars have houses, but these out-of-view houses are mostly too expensive for movie stars.

The Eastern end of Lakeshore Blvd. starts near this sign on Hwy 28 

I made a quick check of Lakeshore Blvd. on Zillow.com (zoom in until the map turns to satellite photo, and each lot shows a price) and saw the following prices: $17.8M, 20.9M, 23.2M, 16.6M, 32.6M, 10.5M, 10.4M, 21.4M, 32.9M. Yes, the M stands for millions. And those prices are for individual properties. Some owners have two or three or even four contiguous properties. Not long ago, I saw a sales listing for 65M. For perspective, Zillow estimates that the mortgage payment on a 32M property would be $123,000 a month. That would give a $65M two-lot property a mortgage payment of a quarter million dollars. A month. (I wonder what brand of Scotch the owner drinks.)

There is a nice sidewalk path that runs most of the 3-mile stretch.
You can park at one end and have a beautiful 6-mile round trip hike.

There are many nice houses you can see...

And there are many more hidden behind gated drives...

Lakeshore Blvd. makes a nice hike or drive. Enjoy.

Just after this blog posted, the Wall Street Journal ran a story on a property that is just a bit west of Lakeshore Blvd., one that used to be owned by the Hills Brothers Coffee people. Here's the link: http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-lake-tahoe-beachfront-home-for-34-5-million-1415905150

Here's the pic by Jarvis Photography: