Waterfront property can create an unusual problem for buyers.
Some of the most valuable characteristics of the property may also be some of the least obvious from simply standing there.
You can see the lake.
You can see the beach.
You can see a dock.
You may even see boats tied to that dock.
But none of those observations, by themselves, necessarily establish the legal rights that transfer with the property.
That is one of the lessons reinforced by a Michigan Realtors legal-education breakout session on riparian rights presented by attorneys Rick Linnell and Hunter Avis.
The disputes discussed involved docks, bottomland boundaries, old subdivision plats, shared waterfront areas, public access, changing shorelines, and arrangements that had existed for decades.
The details varied.
But the larger property lesson was remarkably consistent:
Do not confuse how waterfront property is currently being used with a verified understanding of the rights that make that use possible.
For someone buying Michigan waterfront—or buying property advertised with lake access—that distinction can be extremely important.
There is another distinction to establish at the beginning.
Michigan waterfront rights require different analysis depending on whether the property borders an inland lake, a Great Lake, or an artificial waterbody. A rule discussed for one setting should not automatically be applied to another.
The point of this article is therefore not to teach buyers to interpret Michigan waterfront law themselves.
It is to help them recognize when an important waterfront assumption still needs verification.
“Deeded Lake Access” Is a Starting Point, Not an Explanation
One of the phrases I see frequently in real estate is:
deeded lake access
That sounds specific.
It really isn’t.
The phrase may describe very different ownership arrangements.
One property might have rights to use a path leading to the water.
Another might have access to an association-owned waterfront park.
Another might have some form of shared ownership in waterfront property.
Another arrangement might include docking rights.
Another may provide access to the water without providing the right to keep a boat there at all.
Those are materially different property characteristics.
The problem is not necessarily that the phrase “deeded lake access” is false.
The problem is that it may be incomplete.
Within Property Decision Intelligence, this can become a question involving Legal Access and Interpretation Gap Risk.
The observation is:
The property is represented as having deeded lake access.
The interpretation might become:
Therefore I can keep my boat there.
That conclusion requires additional evidence.
The better question is:
What rights actually run with this property, where are those rights established, and what uses do those rights authorize?
Start With the Governing Documents and Applicable Law
For a buyer, that may mean looking beyond the listing description.
Depending on the property, relevant evidence could include:
- the deed;
- recorded easements;
- subdivision plats;
- condominium master deeds;
- association documents;
- restrictive covenants;
- title exceptions;
- surveys;
- recorded agreements;
- court orders;
- applicable statutes;
- governmental restrictions.
The appropriate sources depend on the ownership structure and the particular waterfront question.
This is also where professional boundaries matter.
A real estate broker can identify why the issue matters, help locate documents, explain the practical question that needs to be answered, and make sure an important issue is not overlooked.
But interpreting ambiguous deeds, easements, plats, competing ownership claims, or the legal effect of those documents can move into legal analysis.
That is when an attorney familiar with Michigan waterfront property may need to become involved.
The goal is not to turn every waterfront purchase into litigation.
It is to resolve important questions before they become disputes.
Pay Attention to the Exceptions in the Title Commitment
Waterfront subdivisions often have histories that extend back many decades.
Older developments may include parks, paths, common waterfront areas, shared access points, restrictions, and other arrangements created when the subdivision was originally established.
Those rights and restrictions may appear among the exceptions in a title commitment.
That makes the title commitment more than something to glance at immediately before closing.
An exception is not simply a reference to another document.
It also identifies a matter that the proposed title policy may exclude from coverage.
For a waterfront buyer, an exception may point toward an easement, declaration, plat restriction, covenant, or other recorded instrument that materially affects how the property can actually be used.
That creates two different questions:
What does the referenced instrument provide, restrict, or require?
And:
What is the title insurer agreeing to insure, and what is excluded?
A buyer might discover that the waterfront arrangement is broader than expected.
Or narrower.
Or simply different.
The important PDI distinction is:
title to the property
is not necessarily the same question as:
the practical waterfront rights associated with owning it.
Both matter.
And not every waterfront right necessarily appears as a simple express grant in one document. Governing documents, common law, statutes, physical facts, surveys, and prior court decisions may all become relevant depending on the issue.
A Dock Does Not Necessarily Establish the Boundary
One of the more interesting lessons from the session involved disputes over where one waterfront owner’s rights end and the neighbor’s begin once those rights extend into the water.
On dry land, we are accustomed to thinking about a conventional boundary survey.
A licensed surveyor can locate upland property boundaries using the legal description, monuments, recorded plats, and established surveying methods.
The allocation of inland-lake bottomlands can present a different problem.
Michigan’s published Heeringa v. Petroelje decision illustrates the difficulty. That dispute involved neighboring waterfront owners on Pine Creek Bay, part of Lake Macatawa, and competing opinions about the allocation of their riparian bottomlands.
The Court of Appeals rejected a purely mechanical approach. It explained that the general method of drawing boundaries from the thread of the waterbody must be applied in a way that serves the underlying purpose of equitably apportioning useful riparian rights.
The important buyer lesson is not how to perform that allocation yourself.
It is exactly the opposite:
Do not assume that extending the side lot lines straight into the water tells you where the waterfront ownership area lies.
Irregular shorelines, coves, bays, the configuration of neighboring parcels, the location of the thread, and other facts can make the analysis more complicated.
A dock that has occupied the same location for years also does not necessarily answer the legal boundary question.
If dock placement, boat mooring, or bottomland ownership is material to the purchase, that may require specialized surveying and, in some circumstances, legal review.
Inland Lakes and the Great Lakes Are Not the Same Legal Setting
This distinction deserves emphasis.
The bottomland-allocation discussion above should not simply be carried over to Great Lakes waterfront.
Michigan’s Great Lakes shorelines involve the Public Trust Doctrine and a separate statutory and regulatory structure governing Great Lakes bottomlands.
The State of Michigan manages Great Lakes bottomlands below the ordinary high-water mark as a public-trust resource, and activities involving those areas may implicate Part 325 of Michigan’s Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act.
The Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in Glass v. Goeckel also recognized public pedestrian use of the Great Lakes shoreline lakeward of the natural ordinary high-water mark under the public trust doctrine.
Even the phrase ordinary high-water mark requires care.
Michigan law and regulatory practice can involve both a statutory or elevation-based ordinary high-water mark and a natural ordinary high-water mark, depending on the question being asked.
The practical lesson is straightforward:
Do not take a rule about an inland lake, a Great Lake, or a particular ordinary high-water-mark question and assume it answers a different waterfront issue.
The waterbody and the legal question both matter.
The Shoreline Can Move Without Making the Ownership Question Simple
Waterfront property also changes physically.
Water levels rise and fall.
Shorelines accrete and erode.
Areas that were underwater may become exposed.
Areas that were dry may become submerged.
For inland waters, MCL 324.30111 provides that a riparian owner controls temporarily or periodically exposed bottomland to the water’s edge, subject to the public trust to the ordinary high-water mark.
The Great Lakes require the separate analysis discussed above.
The practical lesson is that the line you see at the water’s edge today should not automatically be treated as the complete answer to a waterfront ownership, regulatory, or public-access question.
This becomes especially important when someone is evaluating:
- dock placement;
- beach area;
- changing water depth;
- navigability;
- shoreline improvements;
- erosion;
- accretion;
- a disagreement with an adjoining owner.
The physical shoreline is an observation.
Understanding the legal and practical consequence requires interpretation.
Shared Waterfront Can Create a Different Ownership Pattern
The legal-education session also discussed a dispute involving a comparatively small waterfront area serving numerous off-water properties.
Rather than treating the particular dispute as precedent here, consider the broader ownership problem it illustrates.
Imagine a shared waterfront parcel serving many properties and containing numerous boat slips.
The existence of the shared waterfront right is only the beginning of the analysis.
The number of users and the intensity of use can affect the practical ownership experience.
Using those slips may require substantial boat traffic and maneuvering near neighboring waterfront.
That circumstance, by itself, does not establish a violation of a neighboring owner’s rights.
The particular docking arrangement, intensity of use, actual interference, governing documents, and applicable law still need to be evaluated.
But the example exposes a useful question.
The issue is no longer simply:
Does the association have waterfront rights?
It may also become:
How do those rights function when many owners exercise them, and what practical or legal consequences does that create for neighboring waterfront?
That distinction matters because property rights do not always operate independently.
One ownership arrangement can affect another.
This is why shared waterfront can raise questions involving Ownership Patterns as well as Legal Access.
The buyer needs to understand not only what rights exist, but how those rights function when multiple owners exercise them.
Public Access Does Not Automatically Mean Docking Rights
Another important distinction involves public road ends at inland lakes and streams.
Michigan law places specific limits on their use.
Under MCL 324.30111b, unless a recorded deed, recorded easement, or other recorded dedication expressly provides otherwise, a public road end cannot be used for boat hoists or boat anchorage devices or for mooring or docking a vessel between midnight and sunrise.
The statute also addresses docks more specifically.
It provides for a single seasonal public dock or wharf authorized by the local government, subject to applicable permitting. The statute also preserves the effect of controlling recorded deeds, easements, dedications, and court orders.
That creates another important distinction:
the right to reach the water
is not automatically:
the right to install a private dock, keep a boat there, or use the waterfront as though it were privately owned.
Old plats can make these questions even more complicated.
A path shown on a nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century plat may use language that does not neatly answer a modern question about docks, boats, parking, or shared waterfront use.
Historical use may be relevant.
Recorded documents may be relevant.
Prior court decisions may be relevant.
But none should be casually interpreted from the MLS description alone.
Longstanding Use Is Evidence—but It May Not Be the Entire Answer
This may be one of the most important lessons for buyers.
Suppose you visit a property and see:
- a dock;
- a boat;
- a shared path;
- a private-road arrangement;
- neighboring sheds;
- a waterfront park;
- an established pattern of access.
It is natural to assume:
It has been this way for years, so this must be the legal arrangement.
Sometimes that may prove correct.
But longstanding physical use and legally established rights are not necessarily the same thing.
The session included examples where historical photographs, old plats, prior use, and recorded language all became relevant to determining what rights actually existed.
This is another place where Interpretation Gap Risk matters: observed use can be evidence without establishing, by itself, the legal conclusion a buyer may be tempted to draw from it.
That is exactly why I would not tell a buyer:
Don’t worry. Everyone has always used it this way.
I would instead ask:
What evidence establishes the right that makes this use durable?
That question becomes particularly important when the buyer is paying a premium because of the waterfront use.
Waterfront Rights Can Materially Change the Property Decision
This is where the issue becomes more than an abstract legal question.
Imagine two otherwise similar homes.
One includes a durable right to keep a boat at a highly desirable lake.
The other provides only pedestrian access to the water.
Those properties may support very different buyer purposes.
That does not, by itself, establish a particular market-value difference or waterfront premium. Market value requires appropriate market evidence.
But the difference in capability can be extremely important to the buyer’s decision.
Likewise, a property advertised as waterfront may be physically beautiful but less useful to a particular buyer if:
- water depth limits boating;
- dock placement is disputed;
- access depends on another parcel;
- association rules limit use;
- the waterfront is shared more intensively than expected;
- the buyer’s intended use is inconsistent with the actual rights.
This is where Waterfront Usability becomes important.
The useful question is not simply:
Is it waterfront?
It is:
What water-related functions can this particular property actually support under its physical, legal, access, ownership, and control conditions?
That is also a Property Usability question: the relevant issue is not merely the property’s label, but the practical and sustainable function the property can support under the conditions governing its use and ownership.
A Permit or Agency Proceeding May Answer One Question Without Answering Every Question
Michigan EGLE regulates many activities involving inland lakes, streams, wetlands, and Great Lakes bottomlands.
Depending on the project, permits or other governmental approvals may be required for activities involving docks, dredging, filling, marinas, shoreline work, and other alterations.
But governmental permitting and private property rights are not necessarily the same question.
The Heeringa decision illustrates why the distinction needs to be made carefully.
In that dispute, the DEQ emphasized that it was not determining the parties’ complete property boundary and lacked authority to draw property lines per se.
But that was not the end of the legal effect of the agency proceeding.
The DEQ did determine which of the competing riparian surveys best depicted the correct thread line in Pine Creek Bay. The Michigan Court of Appeals later held that this critical factual determination had preclusive effect in the subsequent lawsuit.
That makes the lesson more precise.
A buyer should not assume:
Permit or agency approval issued, therefore every private ownership and boundary question has been resolved.
But the buyer also should not assume that an agency determination has no effect outside the permit itself.
The better questions are:
What exactly did this approval or proceeding determine?
What did it not determine?
And what legal effect does the determination carry?
Those questions may require legal advice when the answer is material to the purchase.
Artificial Waterbodies Require Their Own Analysis
One point deserves particular caution.
It can be tempting to assume that property touching any body of water automatically carries the same common-law riparian rights as property bordering a natural watercourse.
Michigan’s published Court of Appeals decision in Holton v. Ward illustrates why that assumption can fail.
That case involved an artificial pond created when a common owner dredged part of a wetland and constructed an earthen dam. The plaintiffs’ property did not abut a natural watercourse.
The Court of Appeals held that the plaintiffs did not acquire common-law riparian rights to use the portion of the artificial pond on the neighboring property merely because their parcel touched that man-made body of water.
Other recorded rights, ownership arrangements, easements, or different facts may produce different questions.
And buyers should not attempt to classify a waterbody legally merely by looking at it. A dam, dredged area, canal-like feature, or altered shoreline does not by itself tell you the complete legal history of the waterbody.
The practical lesson is narrower:
Do not assume that touching water automatically establishes the same waterfront rights in every setting.
When that distinction matters to the purchase, property-specific verification may be necessary.
Better Questions for Michigan Waterfront Buyers
Before relying on a waterfront or lake-access representation, I would want to understand:
- Does the property actually touch the water?
- What kind of waterbody is involved?
- What does the deed say?
- What does the recorded plat show?
- Are there easements?
- Are there association or condominium documents?
- What appears in the title exceptions?
- What does the proposed title policy exclude from coverage?
- Is the waterfront individually owned or shared?
- If access is shared, who has the right to use it?
- Does access include docking or boat mooring?
- Are slips assigned, transferable, first-come-first-served, or otherwise controlled?
- Are there restrictions on the number or type of boats?
- Is there an existing survey?
- If an inland-waterfront boundary matters, is specialized riparian allocation needed?
- Are neighboring docks, shared facilities, or patterns of use affecting the practical waterfront experience?
- Are there municipal restrictions?
- Are EGLE permits or approvals relevant?
- If an approval exists, what exactly did it determine?
- Is there a lake board or another governmental structure affecting the lake?
- Does the intended use depend on an assumption that has not yet been verified?
Not every property requires every investigation on that list.
The point is proportionality.
The more important a waterfront characteristic is to the buyer’s decision, the stronger the evidence supporting it should be.
This is where Decision Readiness becomes useful. The goal is not to eliminate every possible uncertainty before proceeding. It is to determine whether the material waterfront questions are sufficiently resolved for the decision the buyer is actually being asked to make.
The Better Waterfront Decision
Waterfront property invites us to rely on what we can see.
The lake is there.
The dock is there.