How much housing does Leelanau County have? And how much does it need? Those are two of the questions answered by a new 2023 Housing Needs Assessment (HNA), released last week by Housing North. For the assessment, Housing North hired Bowen National Research to perform an in-depth evaluation of housing affordability, availability, and quality in the 10-county northwest Lower Michigan region. Regionwide, the report identified the need for at least 8,831 more rental units and at least 22,455 more for-sale units. But what’s the current situation in Leelanau County specifically? Below, the Leelanau Ticker sorts through seven major county-specific takeaways from the HNA.

1. Leelanau has a big housing gap

The HNA identifies “an overall housing gap of 2,335 units” within Leelanau County, including a need for 382 rental units and 1,953 for-sale units. For rentals, the biggest need (212 units) is for housing that would be affordable to households earning 50 percent or less of area median income (AMI), which would equate to $46,700 or less in annual household income and $1,167 or less in monthly rent.

In regards to for-sale housing, needs are more evenly spread across income brackets, but Bowen still calls for 881 new units priced under $249,000 – way below the typical housing price in the county.

The lack of housing in these price brackets, Bowen mentions, has contributed to a situation where 443 renter households (43.3 percent) and 1,848 owner households (22.6 percent) are currently “housing cost burdened.” Failure to pursue housing development for lower-income or cost-burdened households, the report warns, will “expose the county to losing residents to surrounding areas, making the community vulnerable to the existing housing stock becoming neglected, discouraging potential employers coming to the area, and creating challenges for local employers to retain and attract workers.”

2. Rental availability is virtually nonexistent

While compiling the HNA, Bowen National Research did a survey of rental units up for grabs on the market. The firm found just two rentals available in the entire county, translating to a 99.8 percent occupancy rate of Leelanau’s rental stock. “This is an extremely high occupancy rate,” the report notes. “The identified non-conventional rentals in Leelanau County consist of a two-bedroom unit renting for $2,300 and a three-bedroom unit renting for $2,600. These are very high rents that are unlikely to be affordable to most households in the county.”

Leelanau County also simply has higher rent rates than other parts of the state. Just 48.7 percent of rental units in the county “have gross rents that are $1,000 or less, which is a significantly lower share of these units compared to the region (61.9%) and state (59.0%).”

3. For-sale homes are (slightly) more readily available, but are extremely expensive

Bowen identified 33 homes available on the market while it was compiling the HNA, along with 103 homes that had been sold “recently,” between September 2022 and March 2023. But while the count of available homes was higher than the number of available rentals, Bowen notes that the availability still means that “only 0.4 percent of the estimated 8,615 owner-occupied units in Leelanau County” are available for purchase, and that “typically, in healthy, well-balanced markets, approximately 2-3 percent of the for-sale housing stock should be available for purchase to allow for inner-market mobility and to enable the market to attract households.”

Bowen also concludes that, because of high prices for available and recently-sold homes, “first-time homebuyers and middle-class households are largely shut out of the for-sale housing market in Leelanau County.” For the 33 homes on the market, $975,000 was the median asking price and 14 of the homes were priced above $1 million. The median price for recently sold homes was slightly lower, at $520,000.

4. Leelanau has an unusually small number of multi-family developments

One of the reasons for Leelanau’s housing woes, Bowen rules, is the county’s curious lack of apartment complexes or other traditional multi-family developments. Specifically, the report comments on the county’s reliance on “non-conventional” multi-family rental units – or rentals “typically consisting of single-family homes, duplexes, units over storefronts, mobile homes, etc.” – rather than on larger multi-family developments that boast more units. Indeed, non-conventional units account for 86.8 percent of the total rental stock in Leelanau. That means just 13.2 percent of Leelanau’s rentals are in true multi-family developments (defined as “five or more units within a structure”), whereas 33.8 percent of the region’s rental units and 43.5 percent of the state’s rentals exist in multi-family configurations.

5. The people who work here don’t live here (and the people who live here don’t work here)

Per Bowen, there are currently 7,713 “employed residents” in Leelanau County. More than two-thirds of those residents (5,208) are employed outside of the county, leaving just 2,505 that both live and work here (graphic pictured). Meanwhile, there are 4,028 people who “commute into Leelanau County from surrounding areas for employment,” holding down 61.7 percent of the jobs that exist in the county. The Bowen report identifies these commuters as “a notable base of potential support for future residential development” for Leelanau, but notes that income levels and housing prices are a barrier for that kind of in-migration. Statistically, the people commuting into the county for work are younger and make less money than the people who live in Leelanau but commute elsewhere for their jobs. “A variety of housing product types could be developed to potentially attract these commuters to live in Leelanau County,” Bowen recommends.

6. Leelanau County’s overall vacancy rate for housing is higher than you think

Perhaps the most surprising revelation in Bowen’s Leelanau County report is that, of the county’s 15,572 total housing units, only 9,740 are actually occupied. That leaves 5,832 units that are vacant, or 37.5 percent of the county housing stock. Comparatively, the 10-county region has a 28.3 percent vacancy rate, while the state as a whole is at just 11.6 percent.

Where are these units and how come they aren’t occupied even amidst a local housing crisis? Per Bowen, vacant units can be “comprised of a variety of units including abandoned properties, unoccupied rentals, for-sale homes, and seasonal housing units.” The report doesn’t go into much more detail about these 5,832 units, but it does point out that a small number of housing units in the county (42 total) have “incomplete plumbing or kitchens” – a higher rate than across the region or throughout the state.

7. Leelanau County has nearly 50 parcels “that could potentially support residential development”

In each county, Bowen surveyed vacant parcels that could potentially be used to support future residential projects. In Leelanau, the firm identified 49 properties as development opportunities, including several larger parcels (three that exceed 100 acres in size, six that measure 50-99 acres, etc.) that could become sizable housing developments.