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What You Need to Know About Buying Lake Front Property in Texas
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May 22, 2024
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. Shop lakefront property: https://lakehub.com/ Special thanks to: https://www.possumkingdom.com/
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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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