By Cecilie Rohwedder

In 2021, Nevada residents John and Courtney Dunlap took a trip to Michigan, visiting the shores of both Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. They were impressed by the state's natural beauty and friendly residents, John said, but found the bustling Lake Michigan shore a little too busy.

So the next year, the Dunlaps spent the summer in Lexington, a small village on Lake Huron. They liked it so much that they extended their stay, enrolling their four children in local schools. Eventually they bought an 1890 Victorian home on the waterfront in Lexington for $808,000. After the purchase, there were no keys to exchange because the previous owners never locked the doors.

"There was just a sense of safety and security," says John, 43, founder of the marketing company D4 Media. The Dunlaps now live full time in the five-bedroom, 3,600-square-foot house, which sits on a bluff above a sandy beach.

Home buyers like the Dunlaps are transforming the Sunrise Coast, as Michiganders call their east-facing shoreline. Across the state from the wineries, microbreweries, galleries and boutiques of the bustling western shore, buyers are exploring the quaint downtowns and quiet waterfronts of Huron coast communities like Lexington, Port Sanilac and Alpena. Combining multiple lots and replacing cottages with million-dollar homes, they are pushing up home prices and drawing investment to the area

Nowadays on the Huron coast, "things are drastically different" than they once were, says local real-estate agent Jeff Wine of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. "The houses are bigger, newer and always changing."

Popular with wealthy vacationers from Chicago, Lake Michigan is known for its sandy beaches and dunes, while Lake Huron is closer to Detroit and has both sandy and rocky beaches. Homes on the Sunrise Coast are often smaller than those on Lake Michigan, and there are virtually no luxury gated communities, says Dmitriy Selektor, an agent with EXP Realty. In many areas, the eastern side of the state is more rural and sparsely populated, with lakefront towns lacking much of the urbane sophistication of the western side.

In Sanilac County on the Sunrise Coast, the median listing price of luxury homes jumped 25% to $524,200 between January 2023 and January 2026, according to data compiled by real-estate site Realtor.com. ( News Corp, parent of The Wall Street Journal, operates Realtor.com.) Homes on Lake Huron cost around a third of comparable houses on Lake Michigan, estimates Donna Barlow, a real-estate agent at Sotheby's International Realty. For luxury homes, the price difference between the shores can be even greater. In Lexington, the median listing price for a home in the top 10% of the market was $767,000 in January, according to Realtor.com, compared with $2 million in Saugatuck, $3.5 million in Petoskey and $3.8 million in Harbor Springs, all picturesque cities in western Michigan.

Lake Huron is attracting buyers priced out of the western shore, says Kyle Taylor, an agent at Lakeshore Realty in Presque Isle.

"We have a lot of buyers coming from that side of the state," he says. "Everyone wants their money stretching further."

Developers are taking notice. In 2016 the Roxbury Group, a Detroit-based real-estate development and investment firm, bought the Cadillac House, a circa-1860 hotel in Lexington. It reopened in 2018 after a $3.5 million renovation. In 2019, Roxbury bought a marina and earlier this year, a historic liquor and general store, which will reopen as a deli, distillery and liquor store this spring. Meanwhile, Emilio's Prime Steakhouse opened in 2023 as a fine-dining destination. Local builder Greg Brown is developing a new subdivision that will eventually have 40 new homes. Just outside of the village, he is also building an 8,000-square-foot lakefront custom home for a client that will cost as much as $1.7 million, Brown estimates.

Detroit-area residents John and Kristan Hale bought a four-bedroom, 3,300-square-foot home in Port Huron, steps from the water, for $825,000 in 2025. John grew up in Port Huron, and the couple had previously owned a cottage in Lexington that they loved but outgrew and sold in 2020. When the family started house-hunting again three years later, they looked at the Lake Michigan coast, but decided to stick with Huron side. "It was good value," says John, 56, president of Corporate Travel Service, a travel and event company. "This area is one of the most undervalued and best-kept secrets."

Detroiters Paddy Lynch and Nhu Truong bought a farmhouse in Lexington for $600,000 in 2022. Lynch, 42, and Truong, 40, use the four-bedroom house for weekends away with their two young daughters. Lynch initially looked on the western shore, but preferred Lexington's proximity to Detroit. On Lake Michigan, he estimates, his house would have cost $2 million.

The home, built in 1930, has private beach access, and large windows frame a view of the water. Arriving at the house, Lynch and Truong, a consultant at Ernst & Young, like to pour a glass of wine and heat the sauna they installed in a separate spa building on the path to the lake. They have named it "Schvitz North" in a reference to a historic bathhouse Lynch owns in Detroit.

Lexington is planning improvements to the village's downtown and waterfront areas, with more shopping and dining, and new amenities for its boardwalk and public beach. The town has also received state funding for the redevelopment of its harbor and the expansion of its public library.

While some locals worry about growing traffic and home prices, Dunlap largely welcomes the change.

"Growing up a little bit is not a bad thing," he says. But, he adds, "hopefully it's a slow burn."

The most expensive home currently for sale on Lake Huron is a hunting lodge on a private peninsula near Alpena asking $9.9 million. The five-bedroom house has a view of the water and comes with 710 acres of land. The seller is Stephen Fletcher, chairman of Alpena Power Company. At 81, he now lives in Florida and comes to Alpena only for part of the summer and fall.

Fletcher hopes tourists and home buyers will help to offset the loss of lumber and cement-production jobs in Alpena. "We're kicking ideas around, " he says. "How do we set this thing on fire and get it going again?"

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 18, 2026 12:00 ET (17:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.