Fischers Landing

River access is not one thing

This is the most important distinction on a page like this, and it is regularly collapsed in conversation. Frontage, deeded access and a shared access easement are three different rights, they are created by three different documents, and they carry three different values.

Frontage means the lot line meets the water, and in Michigan that brings riparian rights with it — the bundle attaching to waterfront ownership. Deeded access means a specific right written into the deed to reach and use the water at a defined place, without the lot itself touching it. A common access easement means a shared right held with the other owners, usually over a designated parcel, and typically with rules about what may be kept there.

Establish which one a specific lot has and which recorded document creates it, because the difference is worth real money and the words are used loosely in listings. What may be built or kept at the water's edge — a dock, a stairway, a boat — is governed by the association's restrictions and by state regulation, and both are worth reading before an offer rather than discovering afterward.

Living beside a river

Floodplain status is parcel-specific and it is the question a lender cares about. Whether a particular property sits in a mapped special flood hazard area determines whether flood insurance is required.

The house's own relationship to the water is a separate matter from the map. How the ground drains in a wet spring, where the previous owner chose not to finish a basement, and whether mechanicals sit on platforms all tell you things a flood map will not. Houses record their water history in what their owners decided not to put on the floor.

Where a property runs on a private septic system, river proximity raises specific questions: where the drain field sits relative to the water and the water table, when it was last inspected and pumped, and what the county requires at the point of transfer. On a large riverside lot those are the difference between a routine purchase and an expensive surprise.

The houses and the lots

Thirty-seven acres divided into lots of one to two and a half acres produces a small subdivision with a lot of ground per house, and the houses themselves were built in an assortment of styles rather than from a builder's plan book. That combination has a specific consequence for pricing.

Comparable sales here have to match on lot as much as on house. A parcel with actual frontage, a parcel with a river view but no frontage, and an interior parcel with easement access are three different products, and a price per square foot averaged across them will mislead in every direction. The house matters; the position matters more.

On acreage of this size the practical questions are the ones large lots always raise: the condition of the driveway and any culvert, tree work and what it costs, and what the association's restrictions say about outbuildings and clearing.

The corridor this sits in

The Huron between Ann Arbor and Dexter is one of the better-protected river corridors in southeast Michigan. Three metroparks sit along it — Delhi on the rapids about five miles west of Ann Arbor, Dexter-Huron upstream, and Hudson Mills at 8801 North Territorial Road — and the Border-to-Border Trail connects downtown Dexter to Dexter-Huron and Delhi through riverfront, woodland and prairie.

The Huron River Water Trail runs the same stretch for paddlers, with the run from Hudson Mills down to Dexter-Huron a standard trip. Houses appear along the river here and there, particularly nearer Dexter, but the corridor is quiet and comparatively remote and carries a good deal of wildlife.

For a riverside subdivision that public land is worth more than scenery. It means the character of the river frontage upstream and down is largely determined by park and trail ownership rather than by whatever the next owner decides to build.

Webster Township, and a township that decided not to grow

Webster Township sits in northeastern Washtenaw County and was established in 1833, among the earlier rural townships in the area. Thomas Alexander settled here in May 1826, with others following the same year.

Its oldest institution is still standing and still in use. Itinerant preachers were holding services in local homes by 1826, and in 1832 the first Congregational Society began planning a building. Moses and Hannah Kingsley donated land at the southeast corner of Webster Church and Farrell roads, and in the spring of 1834 whitewood logs were hauled from Plymouth, taken to Foster's Mill at Scio to be sawn into lumber, and raised — a hundred-dollar contribution from Daniel Webster covering what was needed to finish the work. Webster Church has been in continuous use ever since and is the oldest continuously occupied church in Washtenaw County.

The more consequential fact for anyone buying here is recent. Webster has deliberately limited development, holding to low-density agricultural and residential zoning, and in 2005 sixty-nine percent of its voters authorized a Purchase of Development Rights program. A five-member Farmland and Open Space Preservation Board, appointed by the township board, buys development rights from willing farmland owners, permanently removing that ground from future building.

That is the difference between a rural setting and a rural setting likely to stay rural. Zoning can be amended by a future board; a purchased and recorded development right cannot. A subdivision surrounded by land under that program is in a materially different position from one surrounded by farmland that merely has not been sold yet.

It is worth knowing that the township is also one of the two that jointly operate the Loch Alpine Sanitary Authority, a public water and sewer utility — but that authority serves only Loch Alpine, Glen Devon and North Delhi Hills, over on the Scio side. Being in Webster Township does not put a property on it.

Dexter is several different places

Samuel William Dexter arrived in 1824, thirteen years before Michigan became a state, and bought a large parcel. The settlement was established as a village in 1830 and remained one until November 20, 2014, when — after a process spanning eight years — the Village of Dexter became the City of Dexter, its voter-approved charter filed with the state.

Those inside the new city are no longer residents or taxpayers of the townships the village had straddled, so a property in the city and one a mile outside now answer to different taxing authorities. Meanwhile a Dexter mailing address reaches across Scio, Webster, Dexter and Lima townships, and Dexter Community Schools crosses all of them without matching any.

Two listings both saying Dexter can therefore sit in different municipalities at different tax rates. Fischers Landing is in Webster Township, outside the city.

Schools

Fischers Landing is served by Dexter Community Schools. The district crosses several townships and does not follow municipal boundaries, and assignment is set by address.

Buying or selling here

A small subdivision on a river produces few sales, and the ones that occur vary by position more than by house. That makes pricing here a matter of establishing exactly what a particular parcel carries — frontage or access, what the recorded documents say, and what the flood map shows — before any comparison is worth anything.

For a seller, the documentation is the argument: the recorded access right, septic inspection and pumping records, and a clear statement of what the association permits at the water. Each answers a question a serious buyer will ask, and answering them in advance is the difference between a clean transaction and a renegotiated one.

For a buyer, the order is the water rights first, the flood and drainage picture second, the private systems third, and the house fourth. On a river lot the house is rarely the variable that decides the price.