Milford

Milford is a village rather than a city, incorporated in 1869 and covering about two and a half square miles of southwest Oakland County, with 6,520 residents at the 2020 census. Michigan law does not separate a village from its township: a village parcel sits inside Milford Charter Township and is billed by both, so an owner inside the village handles three tax bills a year where a township owner handles two. Downtown runs along Main Street at Commerce Street, where Pettibone Creek comes down through the Upper and Lower Mill Ponds into the Huron River.

The village holds the walkable core and the older plats, on water the village has supplied since 1895; nearly all the subdivision building since the 1980s went up in the township, largely on well and septic. Lakes of Milford is 161 houses on roughly acre-and-a-half lots in the township's northwest corner, The Bluffs at Lakes of Milford 53 homesites around private Hunters Lake, and Montclaire Estates three to six acres south of downtown with no association. Two things catch buyers out: many of these detached neighborhoods are recorded as Oakland County condominium plans, so what is bought is a condominium interest rather than a platted lot, and Milford High School stands in Highland Township.