I’m Joe.
I’ve spent the majority of my life on these lakes.
Grew up on Lake Link.
Spent time living on Lake Summit.
Even spent a year living on Lake Hatchineha.
Now we’re living on Lake Eloise.
Same chain of lakes in Winter Haven, Florida. Four completely different lakes and four completely different places to live.
That’s not a marketing line—that’s what took me thirty years to understand (and what most buyers don’t learn until after they’ve closed).
Why this site exists
When we bought our house on Lake Eloise, we stretched to do it financially.
We weren’t buying an investment. We were buying time with our kids before they left — and a reason for them to keep coming back after they did.
That’s the honest version. I’d rather lead with it than pretend I did something smarter.
But the one smart thing we did was that we picked our lake FIRST and the house SECOND.
You can update, add on, delete, or even tear down a house… you can’t change a lake.
And here’s what I’ve watched happen since: people falling in love with the house and landing on the wrong lake.
Then they spend years (or decades) wishing they could be on a different lake.
I’ve stood on a lot of new docks and answered questions that should have been asked six months earlier. The information those folks needed existed — scattered across county records, state databases, boat ramps, and the heads of people who’ve been here forty years.
Nobody had put it together. So I did.
What MyLake.com is not
It isn’t a listing site. Zillow and Realtor.com exist, they’re good at it, and I’m not going to pretend I can out-app them.
I’m also not going to be your agent. I don’t show houses.
When you’re ready, I hand you to somebody who knows the specific lake you’re looking at — and my one rule is that they either have to live on a lake themselves or have decades of experience selling lake homes. If they don’t, they’re not on my list. You shouldn’t take lake advice from somebody who’s only ever visited.
What I want for you
The same thing we were after when we stretched to buy this place.
A Saturday morning years from now where the house is full, nobody’s checking a phone, and nobody’s counting the hours until they can leave.
That’s not a fantasy. It’s a decision. It just has to be the right lake.
P.S. — Got a question about a specific lake around here? Ask me. I answer every one. Hit me up here: hello@mylake.com