A pirate-themed lakeside home in Salmon, Idaho, built to look like a ship sitting over Williams Lake, is on sale for $799,000.Known as the Ship Wreck House, the 1,200-square-foot property earns about $80,000 a year as an Airbnb rental. The listing was reported in the Wall Street Journal Homes newsletter.Located near the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the house has three decks and detailed ship design features. Inside, the home has a captain’s quarters, a bunkroom with built-in beds, and a secret door leading to a treasure room with a skeleton and a chest of gold coins.Boise-based builder and owner Kristie Wolfe designed the home to be fun without going too far.“From a design standpoint, I was constantly trying to walk the line between immersive and cheesy,” says Kristie Wolfe.Wolfe runs the property with help from an Instagram account with 30,000 followers, which brings in most of its bookings. She hopes the new buyer keeps renting it out to guests.“I love the idea of thousands of families making memories there instead of just one,” Wolfe said.
Unique builds and high-end homes
The listing is part of broader trends in the high-end property market covered by the Wall Street Journal.Near Salt Lake City, Utah, an architect built a 5,310-square-foot, four-bedroom home on a seven-acre ridge he loved as a child. The Z-shaped house took three years to build and cost almost $3.9 million.In London, the St. John’s Wood area is seeing price rises driven by UK buyers, helping balance out lower interest from foreign buyers. While long popular with Americans, local buyers are currently keeping the market strong. Elsewhere in London, an American couple spent $360,000 fixing up a 452-square-foot living room to combine modern and traditional British styles.
Big sales and historic properties
In major US property sales, businessman Bill Koch sold his 52-acre Aspen estate at auction for $33.515 million. The final price was a huge drop from its old peak price tag of $125 million.In Connecticut, the childhood home of the late news commentator William F. Buckley Jr. in Sharon is going on sale for $3.999 million. The property has stayed in the Buckley family for nearly 100 years.In South Carolina, a family lodge on a property that once covered nearly 1,000 acres was picked as House of the Week. Built for large family gatherings, the land has an 11,000-square-foot main lodge, a teepee, a basketball court, several ponds and streams, and hunting stands.Broader economic factors are also affecting buyers. Coastal areas in California have more luxury homes for sale than buyers. At the same time, US mortgage rates hit their highest point in almost a year due to Middle East conflicts and rising inflation. Meanwhile, rich baby boomers are buying bigger homes for retirement, breaking the old habit of moving into smaller places.
A History of unique theme builds
The builder behind the Ship Wreck House, Kristie Wolfe, has spent over a decade constructing one-of-a-kind holiday properties across the US. Her career as a builder began in 2011 when she constructed her first tiny home on a strict budget as a personal experiment in simple living.Since then, she has built several famous theme rentals, including an off-grid tropical treehouse in Hawaii, an underground Lord of the Rings-inspired hobbit home in Washington state, and a converted 1950s fire lookout tower in northern Idaho. She is also well known for transforming a six-ton concrete and plaster potato replica into the Big Idaho Potato Hotel, located in South Boise.
Transforming a 1900s waterfront structure
Unlike some of her builds that started from scratch on empty plots, the Ship Wreck House project involved taking an existing structure from the early 1900s and completely rebuilding it. Located right on the water at Williams Lake, the original building was redesigned to look like a grounded pirate vessel built into the shoreline.To make the theme interactive for visiting families, Wolfe built a private floating dock directly connected to the lower deck, giving guests immediate access to the lake for boating and swimming. She also set up an interactive treasure hunt throughout the three-story home, leaving clues and a custom treasure map for guests to follow to unlock the secret room hidden behind the walls.
