How Buying a Home Works in Michigan

Two pieces of paper come before the fun part, and one of them is required by law before we have a real conversation.

The Agency Disclosure comes first. Michigan requires it before any confidential information is disclosed, which in plain terms means before you tell me what you can actually afford or what you are really trying to do. It is not a contract and it does not tie you to me. It exists so you know who I work for before you say something you would not want repeated.

Then a Buyer Agency Agreement, which is the one that actually sets up the relationship. It has a term, a scope, and the fee arrangement written into it. Read it. Ask about anything in it. Everything in that agreement is negotiable and it is agreed in writing between us rather than being set by anybody else.

And get pre-approved, properly. Not pre-qualified over the phone. The house a buyer loses is almost always the one they were not ready to write on, and on good water around here that happens in days rather than weeks.

I push harder on this than most, and here is why. The client I think about when a lakefront lot comes up had been searching for months and could not drive up to look. When the right one finally appeared I rang her from the car and told her to come now. Under contract in twenty-four hours. That only worked because she was ready before the phone rang.

This is the part that saves people months, and it is uncomfortable for about ten minutes.

Before we look at anything, I will tell you what your number actually buys in the market you are aiming at. Not what you wish it bought. If the budget and the expectation are in different places, better to find that out now than after four weekends of driving up and being quietly disappointed.

Sometimes the answer is that the same money buys much more a little inland. Sometimes it means a smaller place on better water, or a parcel and a build rather than a finished house. Those are real options and they are worth considering deliberately rather than drifting into.

Out here it also means being specific about which water. Great Lakes frontage, inland lake, river and channel are different markets with different prices, and a budget that is thin on one can be comfortable on another.

I would rather have this conversation and lose you to a different agent than take you out for six weekends knowing the whole time that the number does not work. That is not generosity. It is that I would rather be the person you call in two years when it does.

Offers here go on the Michigan Regional Purchase Agreement. Most of it is standard. Three blanks on that form set your entire clock, and all three are negotiable:

The inspection period. It could be three days, it could be ten, and you can waive it altogether. I very rarely recommend waiving it. The only times it makes sense are if you genuinely have the money to absorb an expensive problem found later, or the timing is so tight that you have no other route to closing. If you do decline inspections, that gets signed on a waiver, because I am going to have advised you to do them.

The mortgage application window. How many days you have to actually file the application and pay lender fees.

The closing date. Negotiable like everything else, and worth thinking about against your own move rather than picking a round number.

Alongside those, the things that change an offer's strength: earnest money, the appraisal position, what stays with the house, and possession. In competition you may also see an escalation clause, and if one is invoked the seller has to show the competing offer.

Nothing is set in stone until it is on the contract and the offer has been accepted. Before that everything is a proposal. After that, anything can still be changed by addendum, as long as both sides sign.

The clock starts on the Effective Date, which is the day acceptance is actually delivered. Two things people get wrong about it: days means calendar days, not business days, and day one starts the day after the Effective Date.

From there, roughly: earnest money within 72 hours. Title work ordered within 5 days. Well and septic inspection arranged within 10 days, including water testing, which matters a great deal out here where most properties are not on municipal services. Survey in the same window if you are having one. Then your inspection period and your mortgage application window, running to whatever you negotiated.

Near the end, a final walk-through within three days of closing unless you waive it. And closing itself happens by the date on the form, with an automatic extension of up to fifteen days if something correctable needs fixing first.

My job through all of this is that none of those dates surprise you. You should never be finding out about a deadline on the day it expires.

And one thing I have never seen written down anywhere else: on a back parcel with shared access, I go and walk the route to the water before you offer, and I time it. The last one was twenty-three minutes and nine tenths of a mile. That number is not on the plat map, and it is the difference between a place you use and a place you visit twice.

If something comes back badly, the same three-day pattern applies in five separate places: a low appraisal, an unsatisfactory well or septic report, unsatisfactory inspection results, title objections, and survey objections.

You get three days from the report to either terminate in writing and get your earnest money back, or put a written proposal on an addendum, signed.

If you do nothing in those three days, you are treated as having accepted it. Not as still thinking. Accepted, as-is. That is the single most expensive thing a buyer can fail to know, and it is why I track these dates rather than trusting anybody to remember them.

Then the seller has three days to respond, and their silence counts as a rejection. After which you get three more days to walk with your deposit back, or you proceed on the original terms.

Three days, three days, three days. Written, signed, and inside the window, or it did not happen.

I keep those dates myself rather than trusting them to anybody, and you will hear from me before each one rather than on it. If that sounds like an obvious thing for an agent to do, ask the next three agents you speak to what happens on day four.