Before you get attached to a Lake Michigan lot with a view over the dune, find out whether the state of Michigan gets a vote on what you build there. For a lot of the shoreline it does, and the vote comes in the form of a permit most buyers have never heard of.
The program is called Critical Dune Areas, and it comes from Part 353 of Michigan's environmental code (the Sand Dune Protection and Management Act). EGLE, the state environmental agency, administers it. The designated areas total roughly 74,000 acres along 265 miles of coastline across 19 lakeshore counties, and they were mapped in 1989. That date matters more than it sounds like it should, and I'll get to why.
What the permit covers
If you do something that significantly alters a critical dune area, you need a permit from the state before you do it. EGLE's own examples are building a house or garage, putting in a road or driveway, installing a septic system, building a retaining wall, and removing sand. Taking out trees counts too. Their fee schedule has a separate line for removing 2 to 9 trees and another for 10 or more.
The fees I found on EGLE's schedule (it shows an effective date of October 3, 2016, so check the current page before you quote anyone a number): $1,300 for a single family home and its associated infrastructure, $600 for an addition, a garage, a gazebo, a septic system for a single home, or demolishing a building, $250 for the larger decks and for retaining walls up to 100 feet, and $150 for a deck of 225 square feet or less. Those are application fees, not construction costs, and the real expense is usually the time and the redesign.
Review runs on a clock. EGLE has 30 days to decide whether your application is complete, 60 days for a standard review, and 90 days if the project needs a public hearing. If you're closing in November and hoping to break ground in spring, that timeline is worth putting on a calendar.
Some small things are exempt. A stairway down the dune is fine without a permit if it's elevated above grade, no wider than five feet including the platforms, has no roof or walls, and goes in without heavy machinery and with minimal vegetation damage. A boardwalk-style set of stairs is one thing. A switchback path with a skid steer is another.
The 1989 map is the whole question
A critical dune area is, by statute, a place designated in the atlas of critical dune areas dated February 1989 and prepared by the old Department of Natural Resources. It isn't defined by how the lot looks today. So a parcel that looks like ordinary wooded hillside can be inside the boundary, and a sandy lot with big hills can be outside it. You can't eyeball this one.
EGLE has an online map for checking a parcel, and that is the only place I'd trust for the answer. I haven't pulled the atlas for every parcel I've ever looked at, and I haven't checked how the lines fall along the Grand Traverse Bay or Antrim shoreline, so don't take a silence from me as a green light. The Lake Michigan side of Benzie and Leelanau counties is the obvious place to start looking. Frankfort, Elberta and the stretch up toward Glen Arbor are where I'd expect buyers to run into this first, and Frankfort is a good example of a town where the water is the whole appeal.
Local governments can take over the program in theory, but only three communities have: Pere Marquette Township in Mason County, and Peaine and St. James Townships on Beaver Island. Nobody in our five-county area has, so a permit up here goes to the state, not to your township zoning office. Getting a township zoning permit doesn't tell you anything about whether you also need EGLE's sign-off. (It's the same kind of split we see with driveway permits on Old Mission, which I wrote about in this post.)
Where it bites in a purchase
Vacant land is where this gets expensive. A buyer who pays for a lot assuming a standard house plan will fit has paid for an assumption. If the parcel is in the critical dune area, the state can condition or deny the permit, and the footprint you drew on a napkin is no longer the footprint you get.
Existing houses are less dramatic but not risk-free. An older cottage with an addition, a new retaining wall or a cleared view corridor may have been built without a permit it needed. I wouldn't assume a seller knows. Ask directly whether any work on the property was done under an EGLE permit, and ask to see it. If the answer is a shrug, put the dune question in your inspection period and have your attorney or title company look at it.
It also changes what you should ask for in a purchase agreement on land. A contingency for permits is reasonable on a dune lot, and 60 to 90 days of agency review is longer than most sellers want to wait. Expect a conversation about that. I don't know how a given seller will react, and a lot of it comes down to how motivated they are.
None of this means a dune-area lot is a bad buy. Plenty of owners have gone through the process and built beautiful places. It just means the permit is part of the price, and you want to find out before closing, not after. If you're looking at a Lake Michigan lot and want a second set of eyes on whether it falls in the mapped area, text or email me and we'll pull it up together. Our current listings page is a decent place to see what's out there if you want to browse first.
Have you dealt with a dune permit on a build or a purchase up here? I'd like to hear how long it took.
Taylor Brown, Realtor
Taylor@taylorbrownrealtor.com
