Briarcrest

Sixteen years, and the boundary runs through the middle

A community built from 1982 to 1998 spans sixteen years, and the polybutylene window closed in the mid-1990s — which means the boundary runs directly through this build.

Polybutylene supply piping was in wide residential use from the late 1970s until it stopped. Every unit built in the first two-thirds of this community's construction sits inside that window; units from the last few years sit outside it. The piping should be identified by material during the inspection rather than inferred.

In a condominium the master deed decides whether supply piping is unit or common element, and therefore who pays for a replacement and who decides when it happens. In a community built across the boundary, an association's re-piping history is very likely partial — some buildings affected, others not, and possibly done at different times. Ask what has been done, to which buildings, and how it was funded.

That last question matters, because a re-piping program funded by special assessment rather than from reserves tells you something about how the association has been run.

The replacement cycle also arrives unevenly across sixteen years. The earliest units are over forty and well into their second cycle — roofs done once or twice, mechanicals replaced more than once. The latest are under thirty. A buyer can find units at very different points in their lives inside one association, and the reserve study should account for that separately rather than treating the community as one age.

Near Briarwood, which is a specific kind of neighbor

Briarwood is the region's principal enclosed shopping center and it sits at the junction of I-94 and State Street on the south side of the city. Being near it is a genuine convenience and a specific set of trade-offs worth naming.

The convenience is real: a full range of everyday and occasional shopping within a very short drive, the highway network immediately available, and the south-side commercial corridor with it.

The trade-offs are traffic and seasonality. A regional shopping center generates substantial traffic on the surrounding roads, and it peaks — evenings, weekends, and the weeks before Christmas most of all. How much reaches a particular unit depends on distance, orientation and what stands between, and within one community those differences are large. Standing on the site at a Saturday afternoon in December tells you more than a Tuesday morning in June.

The durability question is worth asking too, and it is one people rarely think of. A regional shopping center is privately held commercial land, and retail of that kind has changed considerably over the last two decades. Whatever happens to such a site over the long run — continued retail, redevelopment, a mix — it is a private decision subject to planning rather than a fixed feature. That is not a prediction; it is a reason to treat proximity to it as a convenience rather than as a permanent characteristic of the location.

By contrast, Ward Park and Cranbrook Park nearby are publicly held, which 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 them out of an assessment.

Three forms and mature trees

Ranches, townhomes and attached units in one community means three products competing for three different buyer pools, and matching on form matters before matching on area.

The ranch is the form to separate first. Single-level living with no internal stairs reaches a persistent and geographically wide buyer pool — people for whom it is a requirement rather than a preference — and there are always more of those buyers than there are single-level homes. That is why ranches routinely outperform what their measured area suggests.

A townhome stacks its own space vertically with party walls on one or both sides. An attached unit is the broadest category and the one most in need of specifics: how many walls are shared, and whether anything sits above or below.

In any attached housing, the wall or floor between two households is the variable that most affects daily life and appears in no listing. Sound travels through structure as readily as through air, so footfall from above is not solved by carpet. Visit at an hour when people are home rather than mid-morning.

Mature trees are named here, and on a community whose earliest buildings are over forty years old, canopy of that age is both an asset and a budget line. Where trees stand on association common ground, inspection, pruning and eventual removal are the association's cost and belong in the reserve study as a named line rather than folded into general grounds maintenance. A large tree near a building is one to have an arborist look at, and removal of a mature tree is a four-figure expense.

Canopy over roofs means leaf drop into gutters and valleys — exactly where roofs fail first — several times a year rather than annually, and shade that keeps surfaces damp and shortens the life of a covering.

A clubhouse, a playground and walk-out lower levels

A clubhouse is a building in its own right, with a roof, mechanicals and bathrooms or a kitchen, all on ordinary building cycles — and where the earliest buildings are over forty years old, the clubhouse is likely of the same vintage.

Playground equipment has a service life measured in years rather than decades, needs periodic inspection and a compliant surfacing depth that degrades and needs topping up, and carries liability and insurance implications. It is the item most often left out of a reserve study altogether, because it does not look like a building component.

So the test is whether the reserve study names the clubhouse roof, the clubhouse mechanicals, the playground equipment and its surfacing, and tree work as separate lines with dates and figures. Where it does, the association is being run properly.

Walk-out lower levels need the three-way distinction insisted on. A true walk-out has a door at grade on the downhill side and is a genuine story with its own entrance; a daylight lower level has above-grade windows but no door; a standard basement has neither. Because it depends on where a unit sits on the site, some here will have one and others another, whatever the general description says.

Below-grade finished space is generally not credited by appraisers in the same way as above-grade area, so a seller should be precise about which part of a stated area sits below grade. And a finished lower level conceals what an inspector would otherwise see, which makes the seller's written answer about water history more valuable, not less.

In a condominium, whether the lower level walls and floor are unit or common element is set by the master deed, and it decides who pays if water gets in.

What the association documents decide

Buying a condominium unit means buying into a corporation as well as a home, and the corporation's condition is not visible at a showing. Four documents settle it: the master deed and its exhibits, the bylaws, the current budget and the reserve study.

The master deed defines what the unit actually is — where the boundary runs between unit and common elements, and what limited common elements are assigned to its sole use. That is the most misunderstood part of condominium ownership, and it decides who pays for a great many things.

The bylaws set the rules that govern daily life: what may be altered, what may be parked, whether units may be leased and how many at once, and how the board is elected.

The budget and the reserve study together answer whether the association is solvent. An association with thin reserves and a large component near the end of its life is not cheaper — it is a deferred bill with an unknown date, and it arrives as a special assessment.

Board minutes are where a coming expense, a dispute or a construction defect claim surfaces first, and they are the most informative document nobody reads. I go through the recent ones as a matter of course.

One Michigan detail worth knowing: condominium documents are amended by recorded instrument, so what is recorded governs regardless of what any summary says.

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 and tracks neither the municipal nor the postal boundary. Match comparable sales on district as well as on municipality — district is one of the larger drivers of price difference between otherwise comparable properties.

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

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

Buying or selling here

The specific year and the association's re-piping history are the two things that decide this purchase.

For a seller, the assessor's year built resolves which side of the era boundary a unit sits on, and documentation that the supply piping has been replaced — with the date and how it was funded — answers the largest question the build span raises.