The National Flood Insurance Program's authorization expires at 11:59 p.m. on September 30. Four of the counties we work in landed on the federal disaster list after April's flooding, and Leelanau didn't. What the flood map decides, what it stopped deciding a few years ago, and why roughly 770 Michigan communities don't have one at all.

A couple bought an old summer house in Leland in 2003. The seller's disclosure said no history of infestation. Two years later a contractor found termites had made the place structurally unsound, and the buyers still lost in the Michigan Supreme Court. What the Michigan seller's disclosure statement promises, why "unknown" shows up on so many cottage forms in Leelanau and Antrim, and the 72-hour clock most buyers never hear about.

Grant Township sits on four school district tax rolls and Fife Lake sits on three, which means two nearly identical houses a mile apart can be $1,500 a year apart on the winter bill. Here is where the district lines actually fall in Grand Traverse County, why the mailing address tells you nothing, and the one-page county PDF that settles it in about four minutes.

Traverse City Light & Power holds a rate hearing tonight, Cherryland raised rates again in February, and Consumers is back at the MPSC for more. Which of the four utilities serves a parcel is decided at the township line, and it changes the bill, the seasonal-rate options, and what it costs to bring power to a vacant lot.

M-22 ends in Northport, and so does the septic tank. What the village sewer, the May 2026 capacity study, and the REU schedule mean if you're buying in the last town on the peninsula.

Michigan signed its first federal broadband construction contracts in late August, and the same paperwork sorted every unserved address up here into two piles: the ones getting fiber and the ones getting a satellite dish through 2040. Here's where the fiber already runs in Leelanau, Benzie, and Antrim, and the ten-minute address check to run before you fall for a cottage.

Every county we work in is a 60-pound-per-square-foot snow-load county, and Traverse City just logged its second 145-inch-plus winter in a row. Here’s how Northern Michigan snow shows up in a roof, a driveway and an attic, and the three questions to ask before the first plow bill.

Michigan’s frost line is 42 inches, and a lot of cottages between Traverse City and Northport were plumbed by somebody’s grandfather who stopped digging at two feet. “Year-round” isn’t a defined term on any listing. Here’s the Four-Line Test that tells you whether it’s true, and what it costs when it isn’t.

Michigan uses more residential propane than any other state, and in some northern Lower Peninsula counties nearly a quarter of homes heat from a tank in the yard. The gas main quits right where the best listings begin, the price isn’t regulated, and the pre-buy window that decides your winter bill closes October 1. Here’s the Tank Test to run before you write the offer.

Michigan treats a land contract as a full transfer of ownership the day you sign it — the tax uncapping doesn’t wait for the deed. Add the 45-day affidavit clock, the memorandum nobody records, the seller’s own mortgage, and the 50% line in the forfeiture statute, and there’s a lot happening behind that handshake. Here’s the Day-One Test to run before you write the offer.

A bipartisan bill in Lansing would legalize accessory dwelling units by right in every residential zone in Michigan — 800 square feet, no public hearing, no parking mandate, no owner-occupancy rule. It has been sitting in committee since February. Meanwhile, “guest house potential” means something completely different depending on which side of a township line you’re standing on. Here’s the Second-Stove Test to run before you write the offer.

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.

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.