Arbor Hills

A 1990s build sits inside the polybutylene window

This is the single most consequential era question in this region's housing, and a build of the 1990s sits inside it until the middle of the decade.

It was inexpensive and easy to install, and it developed a reputation for failing at fittings and joints. Some has performed for decades; some has not. The only way to know is to have the piping identified by material during the inspection rather than inferred.

In a condominium there is a wrinkle a house does not have: whether supply piping is unit or common element varies with the master deed, and that decides who pays for a replacement and who decides when it happens.

At around thirty years the first full replacement cycle has arrived. Original roofs are at or past the end of a typical asphalt shingle service life, so they should have been done at least once — ask when, by whom, and whether the work was funded from reserves or by special assessment. Furnaces, air conditioning and water heaters are beyond expectancy, and original double-glazed windows show seal failure as fogging between the panes.

The item specific to this period is exterior cladding and its edges. Hardboard and early composite products perform according to how their ends, edges and penetrations were sealed and how the ground drains away, and thirty years is long enough for careless detailing to have declared itself.

The acreage figure is the site, not the lot

A community's total extent bears directly on the association's obligations: how much road there is, how much drainage infrastructure and common ground it maintains, and therefore what the reserve has to carry per household. The ratio between acres and homes is a better predictor of long-run assessment pressure than the current assessment level is.

So the questions become how many homes across those acres, and whether the roads were dedicated to the public — because on any site of scale, road reconstruction is by a wide margin the largest expense an association can face. The recorded plat or master deed answers both.

But it is not a lot size, and it must never be used as one. Lot size is one of the larger adjustments in any comparable-sales analysis, and an automated valuation that has ingested a total-acreage figure as a per-lot figure produces an adjustment wrong by orders of magnitude — with nothing in the output to say so.

The recorded documents give the site's extent alongside the unit count.

Nature areas on the northeast side, and what protects them

Oakwoods Nature Area and Kilburn Park are city holdings, and publicly held land is the most durable tier of protected open space: not a business that can close and be sold, and not dependent on anyone continuing to fund it out of an assessment.

Ann Arbor's natural area system is also actively stewarded — invasive species removal, prescribed management in some areas, and volunteer workdays — which means the character of the land is maintained deliberately rather than allowed to drift. For a neighboring property that is a better assurance than an unmanaged parcel, because managed woodland stays woodland.

For a comparable analysis the difference is real and almost never priced: a home adjoining permanent public open space has something a home adjoining unbuilt private ground does not, and an automated valuation reads both identically.

The phrase adjoining nature areas in a listing, though, covers more than one thing, and it is worth establishing which applies to a specific home. It may be the city holding. It may be association common area under a nicer name — real while the association holds it, revisitable, and funded by the owners. Or it may be unbuilt private ground protected only by whatever zoning and wetland rules apply, which on this side of the city is more common than people assume.

One inquiry to the city, plus a title company report, settles it. Where the answer is the city holding, that is a durable claim worth stating prominently rather than describing as an outlook.

Where the adjoining ground is association-held woodland, there is an obligation people underestimate: trees near homes and paths need inspection, pruning and eventual removal, and on mature woodland that is a real recurring cost belonging in the reserve study as a named line.

Ranches and two-story homes across an 88 percent range

From about 1,146 to 2,156 square feet is a spread of roughly 88 percent, so the community holds at least two products at two price points and a community average describes no actual home.

More importantly, the two forms reach different buyer pools and should be matched before area is considered. A ranch puts everything on one level with no internal stairs, which reaches a persistent and geographically wide pool — people for whom it is a requirement rather than a preference. There are always more of those buyers than there are single-level homes, which is why ranches routinely outperform what their measured area suggests, and why the gap tends to widen rather than narrow.

A two-story home of the same measured area gets more of it upstairs, sits on a smaller footprint and leaves more yard, and competes against a different set of alternatives entirely.

A ranch also has more roof per square foot of living space than a two-story home, which makes the roof a proportionally larger replacement expense — relevant at thirty-five years, when the roof is the live question.

So the discipline is: match on form first, then on area within a band, then adjust for lot position and condition. In that order the analysis is tight; in any other order it is approximate.

There is a further Michigan question worth settling: a detached home here may be a platted lot or a site condominium, which is invisible from the curb and material for pricing, since a subdivision sale needs adjustment before it can stand as a comparable for a site condominium or the reverse. The recorded instrument settles it.

The northeast side, between Green and Nixon

This part of the city sits north of the Huron River and within reach of the University of Michigan's north campus and the North Campus Research Complex — the former Pfizer research campus the university acquired, which is a more durable kind of institutional neighbor than a corporate site.

US-23 lies east and M-14 runs west from the northern side of the city, which puts a good deal within reasonable reach in several directions without crossing the center.

Green Road and Nixon Road are both through routes, so the ordinary corridor trade-off applies: convenience and traffic in the same package, varying with how far in from the road a home sits, which way it faces and what stands between. A weekday rush hour visit with the windows open settles it, and it is worth doing rather than assuming.

The northeast side also holds a substantial part of the city's natural area system, which is much of its character. Where any of it adjoins a specific lot, the ownership question above decides its durability.

An Ann Arbor address is not necessarily the City of Ann Arbor

The City of Ann Arbor is ringed by townships — Scio, Pittsfield, Ann Arbor, Superior and Lodi among them — whose mailing addresses read Ann Arbor. A mailing address is a delivery route rather than a jurisdiction.

Each township is a separate government with its own board, tax rate, services, zoning and assessor. The rate difference between a city parcel and a township one is real and recurring, which is why comparable sales must be matched on municipality. Rates and taxable values both change, so compare the current millage and the parcel's own taxable value rather than a remembered difference; a tax bill arrives on the local schedule, and a lender collects an estimated share of it monthly.

School assignment follows a third line again. Three distinct versions of the split exist around here — Ann Arbor addresses with Pittsfield taxes and Saline schools; Pittsfield taxes with Ann Arbor schools; and a Ypsilanti address with Pittsfield taxes and Ann Arbor schools — which together show that no direction of inference works.

Four tiers of protected open space

Where open ground adjoins a property, ownership is the first thing that decides whether it stays open — but not the only one.

Land held by a public body is generally the most durable, though a public body can still sell or repurpose land. Land under a recorded conservation easement is next — an easement runs with the land, surviving a change of owner and of local board. Association common area is real protection that the owners themselves pay for. Unbuilt private land carries the least protection of the four, but that is not the same as none: zoning, recorded deed restrictions and state wetland regulation can each constrain what may be built, filled or cleared, and EGLE requires authorization for specified activities affecting regulated wetland.

From a window all four look identical, which is why it is worth checking the record rather than the view: ownership, any recorded easement or restriction, the zoning, whether wetland is mapped, and whether a development application has already been approved.

Schools

Arbor Hills is served by Ann Arbor Public Schools. District boundaries are redrawn from time to time.

Buying or selling here

The supply piping and what the home actually adjoins are the two things to establish, and both are inexpensive.

For a seller, documentation that the supply piping has been replaced answers the largest question a 1990 build raises, and a written answer on what protects the adjoining nature area — city holding, association common area, or private ground — converts the location's best feature from a description into a fact.

Not to be confused with

• Arbor Hills II Superior Township · Ann Arbor
• Ann Arbor Hills · Ann Arbor