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Dave and Chris met nearby, raised their two boys all over the US, and retired to St. Joseph in 2017. They bought this house in 2004 with the plan to retire to it and rented it as a vacation home for families to come to in the meantime. It’s been so much fun having families come that they retired into a much smaller house so they could keep this one as a vacation rental. (Since they are avid sailors, they aren’t home much during the summer anyway.) This neighborhood is a wonderful old historic neighborhood; it works great for summer vacations because it is between the town and the beach, and because it’s laid out nicely for family fun.

We love sharing St Jo and the Lake with other families. We’ve met so many great people. We especially love creating traditions for families, so if your family likes the tradition of coming every summer, we’ll be especially gratified.

We love hearing from other families that they love the house, the neighborhood, the town, the lake as much as we do. If we can do anything to make that your experience, we’re happy to hear about it and will do it if it’s possible.

Vacation rentals on the beach are very expensive, and the hike up the bluff to town (where everything except the beach is) can be tough. This cottage is ideally situated between the town and the beach so you have the best of both worlds. The City of St. Joseph hasn’t allowed any new short-term vacation rentals in this neighborhood for many years out of desire to preserve the historic charm of the city neighborhoods, so we feel privileged to be able to offer our home - in the old, quiet, historic neighborhood - for rental and we do our best to rent to those who want the same things. The house is furnished with our own much-loved family things. (We furnished it with the plan to retire here.)

Most of the homes in this neighborhood were built by the upstanding citizens of the last century: bankers, ship owners and captains, doctors, business owners. Some are spectacular, others are modest family homes. During the Great Depression, many of the homes were converted to multi-family dwellings: homeowners took in renters and borders. In recent years, most of those alterations were reversed to restore the homes to their original condition of single-family homes. A walk around the neighborhood will show you many of these old homes with placards out front telling the architectural history of the homes.

Our house was built just before or just after 1900. Like all old houses it has its quirks and its beauties. It still blows a circuit breaker occasionally (we upgraded from the original fuse board), and heating and cooling are a bit uneven (even though we added a high efficiency furnace and central air conditioning), but we kept as much of the turn-of-the-century personality as we could.

We hope you enjoy your stay.