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If you’re in the market for lake front property, don’t miss out on this info. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the house itself, but there are a lot more considerations to be made with a waterfront lot, such as the swings in water level, who actually owns the shoreline, can improvements be made, who runs the lake, and whether you need flood insurance.
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Hey, this is Chris with Lake Hub. I just wanted to cover some questions that we receive all the
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time from our clients through our social media pages, through our lake online guides about
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purchasing property on lakes in Texas. There's so many things that you need to know if you're
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considering going out and purchasing property, lakefront property as a second home, maybe as
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your primary home with all this COVID, people having to being able to work from home, doing
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school from home. A lot of people are moving out to the lakes and wanting to be on the water
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are buying properties and living there full-time, telecommuting and doing school remotely
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So here's some things to consider when you're going out and buying your lakefront property
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The first thing you need to consider is what are the God-made things that you cannot change
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like the view, the water depth, the topography, and how much of that land do you actually own
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and can use? So many of the lakes in Texas, you might be able to own all the way under the water
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to where the next property line starts in the middle of the lake. Some lakes in Texas, there's
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a 30-foot from the shoreline all the way back, there's a 30-foot easement that the lake owns
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and you might be able to use that, but you never own that. If they wanted to cut it back, if they
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wanted to change it, you have no control over that. Also, the water depth is extremely important
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especially if they allow docks. You don't want to be on a part of a lake that drains
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like the water level gets real low, or you can't put your boat in because it's only a foot of water
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in the wintertime. So make sure you understand the view, the water depth, the topography
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make sure you understand that those things you cannot change. Now you go to the man-made things
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which is docks, right? So, and your house, of course. A lot of people spend most of their time
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on the type of house that they're going to get, and they don't spend a lot of time on like
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you know, the god-made thing. So when you finally get to your house and you, let's say you want to
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dock, some lakes don't allow docks in Texas. So make sure that if you want to dock, you want to
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put your boat, either a boathouse or a lift. You got to check with either Texas Parks and Wildlife
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or the Brazos River Authority, depending on who manages. There's about five different state
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city organizations that manage lakes here in Texas. You got to check with them to see if docks are
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allowed. Are you allowed to have a lift? Are you allowed to have electricity out there? Are you
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allowed to have a boathouse? Can it be a floating dock, or does it have to be a fixed dock? You know
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all those stuff come into play, especially depending on how the water of the lake is managed
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The last thing you need to really think about is what's the type of dam? Because there's only one
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natural lake in the whole state of Texas, and that's Lake Caddo. The rest of them are all man-made
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so every one of them has a dam. Does that dam have a spillway? And if that dam has a spillway
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then there's less likely for the lake properties to flood. So, you know, spillway basically is if
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the water gets to the top of the dam on a heavy flood year or a heavy rain year, the water is just
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going to flow off automatically. A lot of lakes are actively managed. Is your lake actively managed
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Is the dam, do the people operating the dam, do they turn it on to let out the extra water, or do
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they just let it fill up? You need to know that as well. That also comes to my next thing to think
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about is your flood insurance. When we're living on land and you're living in the city or urban area
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you don't have to worry about flood insurance most of the time. But when you're living out next to a
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lake, a big body of water, yes, you'll have to learn about that. When you're out on the more
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rural you are and you're buying property on the lake, a lot of times they don't have like the 3D
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topographical maps that they do in a more urban area. So if you are buying in a more rural lake
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just understand that a lot of times the insurance companies just make a guess. So if they guess
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I've had people at lakes buy lake property and they bought a house that was like two feet from
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the water line. And the insurance company saw that and they said, oh, we're going to tack on
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flood insurance for you. So they went out, they hired a surveyor, came out and did a full
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topographical study and sent it to them. And they had their flood insurance removed because
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the house was high enough that they didn't have to worry about it flooding. So that's something to
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consider when you're in a more urban setting where there's some lakes, you might not have a
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choice. They might already have all the 3D mapping and they're going to define right away whether
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that's going to be a flood zone or not a flood zone. And believe me, flood zone insurance is a
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lot more expensive than not having flood zone insurance. So again, just make sure you focus on
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the God made things first, focus on the man made things next, then understand what type of dams are
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there and whether it was a spillway or not. And then also consider whether you're going to have
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to get flood insurance or not. This is Chris. Again, I'm also a licensed realtor in the state
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of Texas. A lot of this information came from V, our fantastic real estate agent out at Possum
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Kingdom Lake. Her links for her website's going to be at the bottom. Also come to lakehub.com
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go visit our lakes. Every one of our lakes have real estate listings. So you can go find the right
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property that's for you and your family
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