Lake Michigan

This page is the odd one out. Everything else here is an inland lake where acreage and depth tell you something; this is Great Lakes shoreline, where neither figure means anything and a different set of questions decides what a home is worth. It is also the most active market on this site by a wide margin, and the most expensive.

The one that matters most is erosion. Michigan designates stretches of Great Lakes shoreline as high risk erosion areas where the land has receded a foot or more a year for at least fifteen years — around 250 miles across Lakes Michigan, Superior and Huron. Inside a designated area, new construction has to sit back from the erosion hazard line, set by projecting the recession thirty years out for a building that can be moved and sixty for one that cannot. Whether a particular parcel falls inside one is a question for EGLE’s shoreland maps, not for a listing and not for me.

The second is that Great Lakes frontage does not work like inland frontage. Who owns what below the high water mark, what you may build, and who may walk the beach all follow different rules here. The shoreline post linked further down this page goes through it properly.

The homes themselves run from South Haven and Covert up through Glenn, Fennville, Douglas, Saugatuck and Macatawa to Holland, with Coloma to the south — nine towns and not one market. A dune lot north of Saugatuck and a cottage near Covert have almost nothing in common except the water they face.