Home Builders Bypassing Individual Home Buyers for Deep-Pocketed Investors
wsj.com
wsj.com
This is a very rural area, tho; and there's plenty of better built houses (with insulation and such) already available to rent at less than the price these places are going to be asking. The construction of the ancillary stuff, "HOA responsibilities", looks to be as short term as possible. The roads are asphalt laid on undisturbed earth, no foundations, grading, gravel or even ditches.
This project looks like an investor fleecing scam to me; it looks like the whole development is going to be less homely, less enduring, and less appealing than another trailer park.
But in Texas roads between houses and apartments are “Private” if all routes to access it from public roads are gated. Being a private road means the government won’t pay for any of its construction of maintenance, but also means that you can construct it however you want (only caring about liability for negligence etc).
In Michigan, there’s not even a requirement for the road to be gated, you just declare the road “private” and usually that will be indicated on the street sign.
Personally I’d love to get land in an unincorporated area, but definitely not under an HOA. The point of unincorporated land for me is to be able to build a house that’s “too small” or “the wrong color” or install a bunch of large equipment and use it responsibly.