Public Act 58 of 2025 rewrote how many lots you can carve off a Northern Michigan parcel, but the increase doesn’t land until March 24, 2027, and your township has been free to move early since March. Meanwhile the statute has a default almost nobody reads: if the deed doesn’t print a number, the division rights stayed with the seller. Here’s the Parent Parcel Test to run before you write the offer on acreage.

Michigan lenders quietly stopped requiring surveys at closing about twenty years ago, and the standard title policy doesn’t cover what a survey would have found. Meanwhile, a fence in the wrong place for 15 years becomes the legal line. Here’s the Four-Corners Test to run before you write the offer on an old cottage lot.

Cherry Home is 531 lots in Leelanau County, and a declaration of covenants recorded there in 1965 shut down short-term rentals in circuit court. The township ordinance never came up. Michigan’s Marketable Record Title Act decides whether an old restriction like that is still enforceable, and the legislature just pushed the deadline to September 29, 2027. Here is the 1950 Test to run before you write the offer.

Michigan has roughly 250 miles of Great Lakes shoreline where you need a state permit before you build — and most buyers assume that means somewhere out past Empire. Acme Township, Peninsula Township, and the City of Traverse City are all on EGLE’s list. Charlevoix County isn’t on it at all. Here’s the Bluff Line Test to run before you write the offer.

Hundreds of people packed Garfield Township Hall this summer over data centers, and the zoning explains the crowd: under the ordinance as written, a data center is a use by right in both industrial districts. No special use permit, no public hearing, no vote. Here’s the application already sitting on 3.45 acres off Sybrandt Road, what the new moratorium tool actually does, and the Industrial Edge Test to run before you write the offer.

Michigan’s PA 116 farmland agreements are recorded against a lot of the orchard ground between Suttons Bay and Northport — and the state’s own rule is that all the land in the agreement must stay under one ownership. Here’s why you can’t peel off the farmhouse, what the two-acre escape hatch costs, the lien that attaches even at natural expiration, and the Split Test to run before you write the offer.

A 45-mile trailway is being built from Traverse City to Charlevoix right now, and Elk Rapids just landed $2 million for its first phase. Most Northern Michigan rail-trails sit on 19th-century railroad corridors, and whether the ground under one belongs to the trail or to the adjoining owner was decided by deed language written in the 1800s. Here’s what railbanking does to that, and the Corridor Test to run before you write the offer.

A huge share of the newer single-family housing around Traverse City isn’t a platted subdivision at all. It’s a site condominium, created under a 1978 statute that calls your lot a “unit” and your side yard a common element. Here’s the five-day letter that decides whether you inherit the seller’s unpaid assessments, the ten-year clock that can quietly erase the empty lots next door, and the Master Deed Test to run before you write the offer.

Michigan zoned sixteen river systems back in the 1970s and never really told the buyers. Four of them run through Northern Michigan, the district reaches 400 feet back from creeks you can step across, and the government that issues your permit changes at the township line. Here’s the Blue Line Test to run before you write the offer.

A 2005 Michigan Supreme Court decision gave the public the right to walk any Great Lakes beach in the state, private title or not. Grand Traverse Bay counts. Torch Lake, Glen Lake and Lake Leelanau do not. The listing calls both “private frontage.” Here’s the natural high water mark that actually decides it, the 2027 datum change nobody is tracking, and the Driftwood Test to run before you write the offer.

Michigan is one of only two states in the country that issues its own federal wetland permits — and its jurisdiction reaches 500 feet inland from any lake or stream, 1,000 feet from a Great Lake, with no minimum size. Here’s why EGLE’s own map won’t protect you, what getting it wrong costs, and the 500-Foot Test to run before you write the offer.

Antrim County gave its name to a rock formation that has produced more than 2.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Michigan’s seller’s disclosure asks about mineral rights exactly once, and “unknown” is a legal answer. Here’s who actually owns what’s under Northern Michigan acreage, the 20-year escape hatch that doesn’t work against the state, and the Severance Check to run before you write the offer.

Michigan’s Right to Farm Act shields a Northern Michigan orchard from nuisance claims for a full mile past its own property line, and the disclosure that would have warned you is optional. Here’s what the law actually covers, why your township can’t override it, and the Downwind Test to run before you write the offer.

The tax number printed on a Northern Michigan listing is the seller’s bill: a taxable value capped for decades, at the homestead rate. Yours is a different calculation with different inputs. Here’s Michigan’s 18-mill principal residence exemption, why that gap isn’t 18 mills in every township, the November 1 deadline that decides your winter bill, and the three questions to run before you write the offer.

Two Michigan forest tax programs ride along with Northern Michigan acreage, and they are near-opposites. One drops the tax bill to $1.35 an acre and legally lets strangers hunt the land, bans a cabin, and starts a 90-day clock the day you sign. The other is the rarest exception to Michigan’s property tax uncapping rule and almost nobody uses it. Here’s the Forty-Acre Test to run before you write the offer, and why September 1 matters.

Michigan’s critical dune boundaries were drawn on paper maps in 1989 and have governed Lake Michigan shoreline construction ever since. EGLE just finished redrawing all of them with 1-meter LiDAR. Here’s what a critical dune area actually costs you, and the three questions to run before you write the offer on Great Lakes frontage.

Michigan lake boards can attach a permanent line item to your winter tax bill — and the district covers back lots with deeded access, not just frontage. Grand Traverse County has assessment districts dating to 1960 and 1986, and this March the county formally handed their oversight to the drain commissioner. Here’s the Lake Ledger to run before you write the offer.

A National Register plaque restricts almost nothing. A 1981 city ordinance restricts almost everything — and its boundary runs down alleys, not streets. Here’s what the Traverse City Historic Districts Commission actually controls, the demolition-by-neglect clause nobody mentions at the showing, and the three questions to ask before you write the offer.

A Northern Michigan cottage can appraise at full contract price and still be ineligible for a conforming loan. Year-round access, a permanent heat source, and where the water comes from decide whether the place is financeable at all — and part of why 45% of Leelanau sales went cash last year has nothing to do with wealth. Here’s the Financeability Test to run before you write the offer.