Private Roads in Northern Michigan: The 4-Page Document That Quietly Decides Whether You Can Reach Your House in February
It’s 6:47 a.m. on a Thursday in February. You’ve got a 9 a.m. Zoom and your driveway has 14 inches of fresh lake effect on it. The county plow already cleared the main road. Your driveway is fine — you have a guy. The half-mile of unpaved private road between you and the main road, though? Still pristine, untouched white. Nobody’s coming.
Welcome to one of the quietest dealbreakers in Northern Michigan real estate, and it’s almost never on anyone’s radar until after they close.
If you’re buying up here, there’s a very good chance the property you’re falling in love with is on a private road. Drive around Leelanau County, the back side of Old Mission, anywhere on the lakes in Antrim, half of the parcels in the woods around Williamsburg — most of them are accessed by roads the county has zero interest in maintaining. The document that decides how those roads stay drivable is something most buyers don’t see until their attorney mentions it the day before closing.
That document is the Private Road Maintenance Agreement, or PRMA. It’s usually four to six pages long, often written in 1987, signed by people who may have died or sold to someone else, and it is one of the most consequential pieces of paper attached to your future title. Let’s talk about what it actually does — and what to look for before you write an offer.
“It’s Just a Two-Track” Are Famous Last Words
Up here, road status falls into roughly four buckets. Public, county-maintained: plowed, graded, salted, you don’t think about it. M-22, US-31, county roads with a number you can find on a map. Public, seasonal: the county owns it but doesn’t maintain it from November through April. Leelanau County alone has about 50 miles of these. The road is technically public, but in winter you’re on your own — and there’s a Pure Michigan-grade brown sign at the turnoff that says “Seasonal Road — Not Maintained.”
Private, with a recorded PRMA: a handshake-turned-legal-document among the property owners on the road. Everyone shares the cost, the agreement is recorded with the county, and your lender can verify it before they fund the loan.
Private, no agreement: you and the neighbors on a two-track. There’s a deeded easement, probably. There’s no maintenance agreement, usually. Anything that happens to that road — grading, plowing, gravel, trees down across it — happens because someone steps up.
The fourth category is where most of the pain lives. It’s also where a surprising number of beautiful Northern Michigan parcels sit, especially on the lakes. We see this a lot in our market: the property is gorgeous, the price reflects the location, and the road is a question mark.
What a Road Maintenance Agreement Actually Does
A good PRMA does five things. It defines who pays for what. It defines who decides. It provides a remedy when somebody refuses to pay. It binds future owners. And it stays in place when the property sells.
The “future owners” piece is critical. When you close on a house, you’re not signing into the agreement that exists today — you’re inheriting it. If the document says each parcel pays an equal share regardless of how far down the road they sit, that’s now your bill. If the document is silent on snow plowing, snow plowing is a discussion you’ll be having every November in someone’s pole barn.
We’ve seen agreements that are thoughtful, modern, and well-written. We’ve also seen agreements that read like somebody typed them on a Smith Corona, signed three names, and never updated the document when six new houses got built off the same road. The second kind is the one that haunts buyers.
The Lender Will Care, and Conventional Loans Are the Reason
Here’s a wrinkle that catches out-of-state buyers all the time. If you’re getting a conventional Fannie Mae loan on a property accessed by a private road, your lender is going to ask for a recorded PRMA before they fund. The agreement needs to spell out cost-sharing, default remedies, and ideally state that it runs with the land in perpetuity.
FHA, USDA, and VA loans are slightly more forgiving — they want a recorded easement for ingress and egress but don’t always require a full maintenance agreement. Freddie Mac sits in the middle. The point is this: if there’s no agreement and you’re trying to use conventional financing, the loan can fall apart in underwriting two days before closing. This is not theoretical. This happens.
When we list a property on a private road, getting that PRMA pulled and reviewed early is one of the first things we do. When we represent a buyer, it’s something we ask for the second we know there’s a private road in play.
The Seasonal Road Question
Leelanau County has more “seasonal road” mileage than almost anywhere else in Northern Michigan — about 50 of the county’s roughly 600 miles. Some of it is gorgeous, winding through the woods near Lake Leelanau, off the back roads in Cedar, or up around the orchards in Suttons Bay Township. And some of those parcels are listed at prices that reflect lake views and acreage but quietly assume you’ve solved the “how do I get out of here in January” problem.
Solving it usually means one of three things: a four-wheel-drive vehicle and a private plow contract, a neighbor with a tractor and an arrangement, or the willingness to be a year-round seasonal-road person and accept that you’ll be the only car going in or out for weeks at a time. None of those are bad. But none of them are free, and none of them show up on the listing.
The Five-Question Checklist Before You Write an Offer
When we walk a buyer through a private road property, here’s what we ask. One: is there a recorded maintenance agreement? If yes, pull it. Read it. Highlight the cost-sharing clause and the snow plowing clause. If no, ask why — and what the workaround has been.
Two: how many parcels share the road? Three is manageable. Twelve is a homeowner’s association without the paperwork.
Three: what does maintenance actually cost per year? Real numbers — grading, gravel, plowing, the occasional culvert. We’ve seen everything from $200 a year per parcel to $2,400.
Four: who’s the de facto leader on the road? There’s almost always one. They’re either lovely or they’re the reason the agreement exists. Find out which.
Five: what’s the easement language for utilities and emergencies? If a fire truck needs to come down the road, can it? If you need to run a utility line, do you have the right? These questions take a half-hour. They save closings.
The Quiet Magic of a Well-Run Private Road
Now, not all of this is doom. Some of the best neighborhoods in Northern Michigan are clustered around well-run private roads — the kind where everyone chips in $600 a year, hires the same grader, hires the same plow guy, and has a once-a-summer chicken dinner at someone’s place to talk about culverts. Those communities are tight, the road is always passable, and the agreement is a non-issue. Many waterfront associations work this way and have for decades.
The point isn’t that private roads are a problem. The point is that they’re a question worth answering before you fall in love with the back deck. We’ve spent the last several years walking buyers through this on places ranging from quiet Williamsburg wooded lots to more remote stretches of Lake Leelanau waterfront, and the buyers who ask the question early are the ones who close calmly. The ones who don’t are the ones who call us in February.
If you’re under contract or thinking about a Northern Michigan property right now, and you don’t know whether your road is public, private, or seasonal — that’s the question for tomorrow. It’s a 30-minute phone call and it changes everything you’ll think about that property.
We’re happy to look at any PRMA you’ve got. We’ve read more of them than is healthy.
Taylor Brown, Realtor
Real Estate One — Traverse City
(231) 360-1510
