Steve,

Like many other lakefront markets up north, prices have come down, but not at the same rate as regular residential housing. The lake market has lagged behind the regular housing market with price reductions, but many homes went unsold. Because of that, you should see some better pricing as people begin puting their homes on the market this year. 2009 should be a great year to be a buyer on any of the major lakes up north. If you'd like, I can send you a summary of properties that sold on Black lake in the past 12 months. I can also set up an automated search through the mls system that will notify you when new properties hit the market. My firm, Homewaters Recreational Real Estate focuses solely on the sale of lakefront and riverfront properties up north. A new broker joined our firm who will be servicing Black Lake and the other lakes in the Inland Waterway. Later this week, we'll be standing up that new service are on our website, http://www.homewaters.net. You'll be able to just click on Black Lake on the map and receive data on all properties from not only our firm, but all participating brokers in the mls system. Lance Weyeneth is our new broker over there and he'd do a great job helping in your search. He can be reached at lance@homewaters.net. You can search Black Lake on our site by selecting the lake from a drop down menu on our lakefront search, but check in soon for the map search. It's incredibly easy to use and you'll get very detailed results information. Please let me know if I may be of any further help.

Chad