Lake Michigan Sits About 3 Feet Below Its 2020 Record. For Northern Michigan Waterfront Buyers, That’s the Sweet Spot — For Now.
Walk a Lake Michigan beach in Frankfort or out toward Empire this month and you’ll notice there’s actually beach to walk on. Dry sand, room for a chair, a few feet of margin between the water and the dune grass. Six years ago, a lot of that sand was underwater.
That’s not weather. That’s the lake doing what the lake always does — moving. And the number almost no listing will ever put in front of you is the one that decides whether the shoreline you’re touring is the shoreline you’re actually buying.
The Number That Isn’t on the Listing
As of June 2026, Lakes Michigan and Huron (hydrologically they’re one connected lake) are sitting right around their long-term June average — about an inch under it — and roughly five inches above where they were a year ago.
Sounds boring. It isn’t. Back up to July 2020 and this same lake hit an all-time record monthly high near 582.2 feet, the top of a multi-year run that chewed up bluffs, swallowed beaches, and triggered a stampede of emergency seawall permits up and down the coast.
Today the system sits roughly three feet below that 2020 peak. Three feet of vertical drop on a Great Lakes shoreline is an enormous amount of horizontal beach — sometimes dozens of feet of sand reappearing on a gently sloped lot. That’s the whole story of why the waterfront looks so good right now.
Why This Summer Looks Generous
The lake came up this spring, not down. A monster March blizzard buried the western U.P. under four-plus feet of snow, and the melt plus April rain pushed Michigan-Huron up about ten inches between March and April alone.
The Army Corps of Engineers expects levels to keep their normal seasonal rise into August before easing off in the fall, running six to ten inches above last year through the summer.
So we’re in a genuinely pleasant middle: enough water that the bays look full and boats float off the dock, but well below the punishing highs of 2020. For someone shopping Northern Michigan waterfront this season, that’s close to ideal conditions to see a property at its best. Which is exactly when you should be most careful.
The Distinction Every Buyer Up Here Gets Wrong
Here’s the local knowledge that doesn’t make it into the national headlines: the water-level swing only matters on the big water.
Grand Traverse Bay frontage, the Lake Michigan coast from Leelanau down through Benzie, Old Mission’s bayfront — those rise and fall with the whole Great Lakes system. That’s the shoreline that gained beach since 2020 and the shoreline that will lose it again when the cycle turns.
Most of our famous inland lakes don’t work that way. Torch, Elk, Lake Leelanau, Glen Lake, Crystal — these are largely held within a court-set legal lake level, managed by control structures and a county-appointed lake level. They wobble a few inches seasonally, not a few feet across a decade. Buy on Torch and the beach you see is basically the beach you keep. Buy on the open bay and you’re buying a snapshot of a moving system.
If you only take one thing from this post, take that one. It changes how you read every “100 feet of frontage” line in a listing depending on which kind of water it’s on.
What Three Feet Actually Did to Real Shorelines
We don’t have to guess what the high end of the cycle looks like — we lived it. During the 2019–2020 peak, low-bank Great Lakes lots lost beach entirely, water reached foundations and boathouses that had been dry for thirty years, and the permit offices filled up with riprap and seawall applications.
The properties that handled it best shared a few traits: enough elevation above the water (bluff height or a high bank), existing shore protection that was actually engineered rather than a homeowner’s pile of fieldstone, and a survey that honestly reflected the ordinary high-water mark. The ones that suffered were the low, flat, “step right onto the sand” lots that show the most beautifully in a low-water June.
This is the part the listing photos can’t tell you, and it’s the kind of thing you pick up only by working a coast through a full cycle.
The Four Questions Before You Write an Offer on Big Water
When you fall for a Lake Michigan or Grand Traverse Bay listing this summer, run it through these before the emotions take over:
How high is the lot above the water? Elevation is your single best insurance against the next high-water cycle. A few feet of bank is worth more than any amount of June sand.
Is the shore protection engineered or improvised? A permitted, properly built seawall or revetment is an asset. A DIY rock pile is a future expense and possibly a violation.
Where’s the ordinary high-water mark, and what does the survey show? That line, not today’s waterline, is the legal and practical edge of your usable land. Beach you’re standing on in June can be lake bottom in 2030.
What does the deed actually grant? If it’s not direct frontage, “water access” can mean almost anything — and that’s a whole separate rabbit hole we wrote about in what “deeded water access” really means up here.
What It Means If You’re Buying — or Selling — This Year
For buyers: this is a strong season to tour Northern Michigan waterfront because the lake is flattering it, but price your offer to the long cycle, not the June snapshot. The right low-water beach plus real elevation is a genuinely great buy. A gorgeous low beach with two feet of bank is a gamble dressed up as a bargain.
For sellers: your shoreline may never look better than it does right now, so this is a smart window to bring big-water frontage to market — clean photos, document your shore protection and permits, and let the conditions do some of the selling. You can see what’s currently on the market across the region on our current listings page.
And if you’re weighing the open coast against an inland lake — say, a quieter buy in Frankfort versus a marquee address near Glen Arbor — the water-level question should be part of that math, not an afterthought.
The Short Version
The lake is about three feet below its 2020 record, sitting near its long-term June average, and it makes Northern Michigan waterfront look about as good as it gets. Enjoy that — just remember the lake isn’t done moving, and the smart money buys elevation and honest shore protection, not a beach that happens to be wide this particular summer.
If you want a straight read on a specific waterfront property — whether that beach is staying, whether that seawall is real, and what the lot looks like at the top of the cycle — that’s exactly the kind of thing we dig into before advising. No sugarcoating, just what the water and the documents actually tell us.
Reach out anytime.
Taylor Brown, Realtor
(231) 360-1510
