Jordan Lake is surrounded by land owned and operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. You can not build a house on the lake. There are a few houses with a lake view thanks to their elevation.
Interviewer: Can you live on Jordan Lake?
Eric: Like on the water?
Interviewer: Like on a boat or-
Eric: On a boat?
Interviewer: Or can you just have a house beside the lake?
Eric: Yeah. Jordan Lake is a water reservoir for Wake County and Chatham County to drink out of. Yeah. But it’s also the reserve reservoir for Harris, the reactor, in case they need extra water. I’ve known people that have had houseboats and they stay out there on the lake or whatever, but the lake itself is surrounded by US Army Corps of Engineer land. It doesn’t happen as much now. But my goodness, we’ve been in operation for 21 years, and for the first three years, I was getting two to three phone calls a week of people that had just crossed Jordan Lake on Highway 64, and they had discovered this lake that no one else had seen. They thought it would be a great idea to build a house on that lake, and they couldn’t understand why no one else had built a house on that lake. I was like, because you can’t. You can’t build a house on that lake. So, no.
I’ve been in it long enough that I’ve sold a few homes that have had lake views and are really close to the lake. They just had to walk a couple hundred feet to get to the lake, but that’s the money shot right now is if you have a house where you can look through the back window and see the lake. That’s pretty incredible. The real, real unicorn is there’s a couple houses where the elevation is high enough that you can look down and see the lake. Those are really rare.
But, no. Answer is no, you cannot live on Jordan Lake.
