184 Marten Lake Rd

Fifty-five wooded acres in Bates Township with a log camp built in 1930, listed at $159,900. The camp has a fieldstone fireplace, a traditional sauna, a point well and a generator, and it has no bathroom at all. What it has instead is an outhouse, which is the fact that decides whether this property is for you.

The land and setting

The 55 acres sit in northern Iron County, in the Ottawa National Forest region of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The listing describes the forest on the parcel as a mixture of oak, pine, maple and aspen with some hemlock pockets, and the photos bear that out: mature hardwoods with open understory in places, thicker young growth in others, and grassy openings running back from the clearing.

The listing puts a nature trail just west of the parcel and a snowmobile trail just to the south, and calls the location good for ice fishing and snowmobiling. Access is from Marten Lake Road, which the listing states is technically seasonal but privately plowed much of the time, with the parcel just over half a mile from the county plowed road. That is a real distinction in this part of Michigan, where plenty of camps are simply unreachable by car between December and April. It is not the same as a maintained year-round road, and the plowing is described as private rather than guaranteed.

The aerials show the camp sitting in a mowed clearing with unbroken timber in every direction and no neighboring structure in frame. Zoning is listed as Residential and Recreational.

The house

The camp is a single-story log building of 928 square feet, built in 1930, with weathered log walls and a rust-red metal roof. The listing counts one bedroom and records no main floor full bath.

Inside is one long room under a pitched ceiling, with knotty pine walls, exposed log posts and beams, and a fieldstone fireplace at the center of the living end. A kitchen with a refrigerator and a range occupies the far end, and a long table sits between the two. The walls carry mounts and antlers, which is the room’s honest character rather than staging.

The bedroom is a bunk room, fitted with bunks along the pine walls rather than a single bed, so the one-bedroom count understates how many people the camp sleeps. A propane wall furnace handles heat alongside the fireplace, and a generator supplies power. Water comes from a point well, which is a driven shallow well and a different thing from a drilled well in both yield and expected life.

Outside the camp there is a traditional sauna building with its own stovepipe, a shed, and the outhouse. The listing states the camp’s origins date back to the early logging days and that notes and artifacts remain in the walls.

The facts

What to know before you call

This is a camp, not a house, and the listing does not pretend otherwise. There is no bathroom and no septic system mentioned anywhere in the listing. Sanitation is the outhouse. Water is a point well, power is a generator, and heat is a fireplace and a propane wall furnace. A buyer who wants a plumbed bathroom is looking at a well and septic project on a 1930 log building, and in this county that means a permit and a perc test before anything else.

The financing follows from that. A structure with no bathroom and no permanent power service is difficult to mortgage through a conventional lender, and appraisers treat it as a recreational camp rather than a residence. The listing does not state its accepted terms, so ask Rob Sullivan directly what the seller will take before you plan around a loan.

Two other numbers are worth confirming rather than assuming. The listing does not print an annual property tax figure, and Michigan taxes uncap on transfer, so the next owner’s bill will be set on the new taxable value rather than the seller’s. It also does not state road frontage, and Marten Lake Road being seasonal is a question to put to Bates Township about winter obligations before you count on the private plowing continuing.

What you get for $159,900 is 55 acres of mixed Upper Peninsula timber with a trail on two sides, a sound-looking log camp with a working fireplace and a sauna, and a road that reaches it most of the year. For a deer camp or a basecamp, that is a coherent package. For year-round living it is a long list of systems to build. Anyone weighing it against other Iron County land can compare a 35-acre off-grid cabin with a similar list of missing utilities or look at everything currently listed.

Rob Sullivan at Northern Michigan Land Brokers is the listing agent and handles showings, at 906-362-3337 or robsullivan39@hotmail.com. More Upper Peninsula land and camps land in the Monday email.