Not necessarily. Lake levels rise and fall a lot.

The record high for Lake Michigan was in 1986, a couple of years before we bought our property. As I recall it stayed pretty high for several years.

After they poured our foundation (late '89) but before the house was built, the crawl kept filling up with water. We had the sump installed; it tended to pump out a lot during the years when lake levels were high. I'm sure that caused the water table to be high.

In 2013, lake levels dropped to record lows; they were 6' below the high level mark and we had several hundred additional feet of property going out into the lake.

Now it's back up to near record levels and our sump pump is pumping madly. Figures it's when the house is up for sale and people are like "why does it go on so much?".

Welcome to Door County geology.

But erosion can be a problem for properties that are close to the water. That's why I would be wary of anything that's right next to one of the Great Lakes. We could have built closer, but went 75' back from the high water mark. We figured it wouldn't get to our house in our lifetime.

Fall 2017:



Summer 2019:



You shoulda seen it in 2013. That rock was high and dry, and you had to walk hundreds of feet to get to the water. It's very shallow there, and then there's a heck of a drop where it gets really deep.