Whitmore Lake

Whitmore Lake sits about ten miles north of Ann Arbor, and US-23 makes that a short drive rather than a country one. It is not a city: the community is unincorporated, most of it in Northfield Township in Washtenaw County, with the lake's north end reaching toward the Livingston County line. It has its own district, Whitmore Lake Public Schools, which is one of the first things that distinguishes it from Ann Arbor addresses a few minutes south.

The housing came in layers. The oldest streets ring the lake and began as summer places, later winterized in every degree of thoroughness — which makes the era questions here unusually worth asking. Around them sit platted subdivisions from the 1960s onward and a substantial number of condominium communities. Two things decide value more than anything else: whether a property has frontage, deeded access, or none at all, and which township and county the parcel actually sits in. Both are settled by the record rather than by a listing.