On the morning of June 18, 2026, close to 100 people stood on 73½ Street in South Haven Township, across from Autumn Design, watching a groundbreaking ceremony for something the local market hasn't tried before. Mayor Annie Brown was there. So was City Manager Kate Hosier, Township Supervisor Ross Stein, and Alex Grumbine from Honor Credit Union. Developers Tim Dockerty and Dan Crist turned the first shovels of dirt on a 45-unit project called The Drifts of SoHa, with Jaqua REALTORS agents Cindi Compton and Mike Dubbink handling sales.
What got built that day matters less than what it's built for. This is a housing development designed around the assumption that its buyers already own a boat, an RV, or a car worth protecting from the elements, and that finding somewhere to put it has become its own kind of transaction friction in this market.
What Actually Broke Ground on 73½ Street
The base floor plan pairs 1,500 square feet of living space with a matching 1,500-square-foot garage underneath. Larger configurations push the living space up to 2,250 square feet while the garage footprint can run as compact as 750 square feet, depending on layout. Buyers choose from two- to five-bedroom units, some with private elevators. The gated community sits minutes from downtown South Haven, the beaches, the marinas, and Gingerman Raceway, with shared amenities that include a pool, pickleball and basketball courts, walking trails, preserved conservation land, and a private dog park.
The developers describe the concept as living above your lifestyle. The garage isn't an afterthought bolted onto a house plan. It's the reason the house exists in its current form.
In most South Haven listings, the garage is where the house ends. Here, it's where the house starts.
The Problem Nobody Puts in the Listing Description
South Haven markets itself, accurately, as a boating and lake-life town. Its buyers skew toward people who already own the equipment that goes with that life. But most of the existing housing stock wasn't built with that equipment in mind. In-town cottages and many condo developments cap out at a standard two-car garage. Some communities carry HOA covenants that restrict parking recreational vehicles or trailers on the property at all. One cleared corner lot listing near South Haven advertised "no HOA restrictions" as a headline feature, which only makes sense as a selling point in a market where plenty of other communities do restrict exactly that.
Marina slips carry their own scarcity. A recently completed condominium development on the Black River markets itself in part on the fact that ownership includes a marina slip with direct Lake Michigan access, treating that access as a premium amenity rather than something buyers can simply arrange on their own once they close.
Put those two things together and you get a real gap. A second-home buyer or investor who owns a 28-foot boat, a travel trailer, or a classic car has had to solve that storage problem piecemeal in South Haven, either by overpaying for a home with a rare oversized garage, renting off-site storage, or hoping for an open marina slip. The Drifts of SoHa is the first project to build the solution into the unit itself.
What the Price Numbers Actually Hide
If you've been comparing South Haven to other lakeshore towns using the median price you saw on a portal, it's worth knowing that the number moves depending on which slice of the market you're looking at. Citywide sale-price tracking put South Haven's median around $587,000 as of July 2026. Narrow that down to the 49090 zip code specifically, and the median sale price for May 2026 was $393,714, down 10.5 percent year over year. List prices for August 2026 have clustered closer to $549,000.
None of those figures are wrong. They're measuring different markets stacked on top of each other and reported as one town. South Haven's inventory right now includes:
- Small in-town cottages and starter condos near downtown, often the least expensive segment and the most likely to pull the median down
- Multi-million-dollar lakefront estates and new construction on acreage, which pull the average up even when they represent a small share of total sales
- Raw land and lot listings, some already improved with wells and electric, priced for buyers planning a custom build
The Drifts of SoHa doesn't fit cleanly into any of those three buckets, which is exactly the point. It's a fourth category built for a buyer whose main constraint isn't bedroom count or lake frontage, it's what they can fit in the garage. That's a segment the median price was never built to capture.
What This Means If You're Comparing Homes, Not Just Prices
If you're evaluating existing South Haven inventory against something like the Drifts, garage size and lot depth deserve more weight in the comparison than they usually get. A home listed at a lower price per square foot than a comparable Drifts unit might still cost you more once you account for renting off-site boat storage every season, or it might come with an HOA that won't let you park an RV in the driveway at all. Ask about recreational vehicle covenants specifically. Some associations allow seasonal parking, others don't allow it at any time of year.
For investors, the calculus runs the other direction too. Older homes with a detached pole barn, an oversized attached garage, or acreage that could accommodate a shop building are solving the same problem the Drifts is solving, just less formally. That kind of outbuilding is easy to undervalue on a spec sheet and hard to replicate on a tight in-town lot. As storage-forward buyers become a more visible segment of this market, homes that already have that flexibility built in may hold appeal that a simple price-per-square-foot comparison won't show.
What to Watch Next
Construction on the Drifts began this summer following the June groundbreaking. No completion timeline has been made public yet, and pricing for individual units is being handled directly through Jaqua's South Haven office. What's worth watching is whether this model gets copied. If storage-first housing performs the way its developers are betting it will, South Haven likely won't remain a one-project market for long, and buyers who wait to see how absorption goes may find themselves with more comparable inventory to choose from a year or two out. Buyers who move now are betting on being early into a genuinely new product type in a market that hasn't offered one before.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Compare
Is the Drifts of SoHa on Lake Michigan? No. It's located in South Haven Township on 73½ Street, described as minutes from downtown, the beaches, and the marinas rather than directly on the water. Buyers who want lake frontage itself are still looking at a different segment of inventory entirely.
Does a development like this affect resale value for older homes with detached garages or barns? It's too early to say with certainty, since the project just broke ground. What it does confirm is that garage and storage capacity is a real purchasing factor for South Haven's buyer pool, which is useful information whether you're pricing a listing or evaluating one.
Will South Haven see more projects like this? Nothing has been announced publicly. Given the specificity of the buyer problem this project addresses, and the visibility of its groundbreaking, it would be reasonable to expect other developers to watch how quickly units move before deciding whether to build something similar.
If you're weighing a purchase in South Haven and trying to figure out what your money actually buys once you look past the median, or you own a home here with the kind of garage or acreage this market is starting to reward, Amy O'Sullivan can walk you through what your specific property is worth as buyer priorities shift. Get your home valuation and find out where you actually stand.
