Buying on Old Hickory Lake does not come with a dock

This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Hendersonville, Gallatin and Old Hickory, and it costs people real money every year.

Old Hickory Lake is an Army Corps of Engineers lake. Buying the land next to the water does not give you the right to build on the water. The Corps allocates the shoreline into classes, and its 2020 Shoreline Management Plan is explicit about what each one allows.

The numbers, from that plan: the lake has 440 miles of shoreline at normal pool. About half is Limited Development Area, and only part of that, roughly a third of the total, is allocated for private docks. About 36 percent is Protected Shoreline Area where private docks are prohibited. About 14 percent is Public Recreation Area where permits cannot be issued at all.

Even inside the right class you are not guaranteed anything. The plan says the designation does not guarantee that a dock permit will be issued at a specific location within that area. It also describes these uses as privileges, not rights. An individual dock needs at least 65 feet of allocated shoreline, and where existing docks sit closer than fifty feet apart, no new docks or expansions are permitted.

Now the part that catches buyers even when the dock already exists. Shoreline use permits are nontransferable. When the property sells, the permit does not come along. A new permit may be issued to the new owner after they apply and pay the fees, but that is an application, not an inheritance.

So what do you do about it? Before you write an offer on anything you think of as waterfront, find out three things: which shoreline class your frontage sits in, whether the existing dock is permitted, and whether the Corps will issue you a permit at that location. That is a phone call to the Corps and a look at the shoreline allocation map, and it takes a day.

I have had clients walk away from a house they loved because the answer came back wrong, and I have had clients buy with confidence because it came back right. Either outcome beats finding out in the spring after closing.