If you have already pulled up Commerce Township's market numbers, you have probably seen a version of this stat: homes are going to pending in about 29 days. That number is real. It has held steady for two months running as of a market update in late July 2026. It is also the wrong number to build a plan around, because in this township, the fast part of a transaction and the slow part of a transaction are almost never the same part.
Commerce Township is not one market wearing one zip code. It is a patchwork of lakes, sewered pockets, and unsewered subdivisions, and each piece moves at its own pace for reasons that have nothing to do with how a listing is priced. Understanding those reasons matters more than memorizing the average, whether you are timing a sale or trying to figure out why the house you love has been sitting for months while three others on the same road sold in weeks.
The Number That Contradicts Itself
Look at three separate readings of this same market and they do not agree with each other.
| Data window | What it measured | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Two months through late July 2026 | Township-wide time to pending | About 29 days, with median list price near $565,000, pulled upward by a heavier share of lakefront and larger homes currently on market |
| Three months ending March 2026 | The historic downtown pocket specifically | An average of 110 days to sell, up from 34 days the year before, even as median sale price rose 5.3 percent year over year to $435,000 |
| Trailing 12 months | A broader tally across 588 sales townshipwide | A 58-day average, with about 3.3 months of supply and 163 active listings |
That same July report pegs average home value around $386,637, up roughly 3.5 percent over the prior year. None of these numbers are wrong. They are measuring different slices of the same township, and the slice you land in depends on whether your home sits on a lake, sits in the older downtown core, or sits somewhere in between.
Two Different Markets Share One Zip Code
Commerce Township holds roughly 28 lakes covering about 1,704 acres, which works out to close to 7.6 percent of the township's total land area being water. That is the headline most buyers already know. What fewer buyers realize is that only two of those lakes, Union Lake and Middle Straits Lake, have any public access point at all, and both of those lakes sit mostly across the line in West Bloomfield Township, with only a small corner reaching into Commerce.
Everything else is functionally private. Commerce Lake, split into a North and South basin. Lower Straits Lake. Lake Sherwood. Lake Chemung along the Richardson Road corridor. Proud Lake, which borders the Proud Lake State Recreation Area. Strawberry Lake and Bass Lake, both smaller and quieter. Carroll Lake. The incorporated Village of Wolverine Lake sits within the township's boundaries and is built around its own 265 acre all sports lake, with its own village government and police service shared with the City of Walled Lake.
None of that access is guaranteed just because a house sits near water. It is guaranteed by paperwork, and that paperwork is where the real timeline lives.
What Actually Moves a Lakefront Deal
On a private lake, a dock is not automatically yours to use just because your lot touches the shoreline. Riparian rights and any existing dock permit have to be documented before a lakefront listing goes live, because buyers' attorneys routinely ask for that documentation as one of the first things they check once an offer is accepted. A home where that paperwork is already assembled moves through the period between accepted offer and closing noticeably faster than one where the seller has to track it down after the fact.
This is a big part of why the 29-day pending number and the 110-day selling number can both be true in the same township. Pending measures how fast a buyer says yes. It does not measure how fast a title company, an attorney, and a lender can confirm that the dock the buyer walked out on during their tour is legally theirs to use. On Commerce Lake, Lake Chemung, or Proud Lake, that confirmation step is not optional, and it is not fast if nobody started it early.
The Other Friction: What's Under the Yard
The second hidden cost of time shows up underground. The Commerce Township wastewater treatment plant processes up to 8.5 million gallons of sanitary sewage per day for the township and several adjacent communities, and it has earned the National Association of Clean Water Agencies' Peak Performance Platinum Award for meeting 100 percent of its permit requirements every year since 2004. That plant serves the sewered core of the township. It does not serve everyone.
A large share of homes here still rely on private well and septic rather than municipal service, and since October 1, 2023, township ordinance has required something specific of every one of them at the point of sale. Under Section 40 of the Charter Township of Commerce's code of ordinances, any property with an existing septic system must have that system evaluated by a certified evaluator registered with the township, and the resulting form has to be submitted with the Property Transfer Affidavit within 15 days of the evaluation being performed.
That is not a formality you can skip past. It is a scheduling problem. A registered evaluator has to be booked, the inspection has to happen, and the paperwork has to move through the township within a fixed window, all after an offer is already accepted. If a seller waits until an offer lands to think about scheduling that evaluation, the closing date slips. If it happens before the home ever lists, it disappears as a source of delay entirely.
The 29-day number tells you how fast Commerce Township says yes. It does not tell you how fast the paperwork behind that yes gets finished.
Why the Corridor Feels Different Right Now
Two projects moving through the township right now are worth knowing about if you are watching this market closely. At the corner of Wise and Union Lake roads, an old golf course and a shuttered bar are slated for a 15-acre redevelopment, and the property owner has agreed to gift 50 of the surrounding 65 acres to the township to extend Victory Park, according to reporting from WXYZ Channel 7 Detroit. Residents along Golf Lane have raised concerns about traffic on an already busy stretch of Union Lake Road, and about the loss of what many assumed would remain green space indefinitely.
Meanwhile, the Five & Main mixed-use development is in an active construction phase, with Building G targeted for completion by the end of 2026 and a planned extension of Main Street connecting to Martin Parkway, according to an early 2026 update from the township planning department's monthly report. Neither project changes what your specific street is worth today. Both are useful signals that the township is not standing still, and that the version of Commerce Township a buyer researches this fall may look different from the one they see in listing photos taken eight months ago.
Questions to Ask Before You Trust the Average
- If you are buying lakefront, ask the seller directly whether riparian rights and dock permits are already documented, not just implied by the listing photos.
- If the home relies on well and septic, ask when the septic evaluation was last performed and whether the evaluator is registered with the township, since an outdated or missing evaluation becomes a closing-timeline problem the moment an offer is accepted.
- If you are comparing days-on-market figures across sources, ask which slice of the township each number actually describes before assuming it applies to the specific street you are considering.
A Few Questions We Hear Often
Does every home in Commerce Township need a septic evaluation before it can sell? Only homes with an existing septic system. Homes connected to the township's municipal sewer service, which handles up to 8.5 million gallons of wastewater a day, are not subject to the Section 40 requirement. If you are not sure which side of that line your home sits on, that is a question worth answering before you list.
My lake doesn't have a formal homeowners association. Does that mean there's nothing to document? No. The absence of a lake association just means there is no single body managing shared paperwork for the whole lake. Riparian rights and dock permits are still tied to your specific deed and your specific parcel, association or not.
How early should I start pulling together dock and riparian documentation if I'm planning to sell? Before the home lists, not after an offer arrives. Gathering it in advance is the single biggest lever a lakefront seller has over how long their transaction takes between acceptance and closing.
Commerce Township rewards buyers and sellers who understand which market they are actually in, lakefront or inland, sewered or septic, and who do the paperwork early instead of after an offer is already on the table. If you want a straight read on where your specific street or your specific lake stands right now, Sheryl Kersten has spent nearly three decades working exactly this kind of local detail across Oakland County. Let's Connect.
