Catherine Place

Polybutylene, and why 1995 is the year it matters most

Polybutylene supply piping was used in American homes from roughly the late 1970s until the mid-1990s. It is gray, flexible, and usually marked PB followed by a number, and it is found at the water heater, at the main shut-off, and at fixture stubs where it comes through a wall.

It is the single most consequential era question in this region, because it affects insurability, financing and the cost of a foreseeable repair rather than being a matter of preference.

The mid-1990s is exactly where its use tapered off, which makes a home from that period the hardest case of all — it might have it and it might not, and the build year alone cannot tell you. That is not a reason for anxiety; it is a reason to look rather than to reason.

Looking takes about a minute and needs no expertise. Anyone can check the pipe at the water heater and at the shut-off, and an inspector will confirm it. What must never happen is an inference from the year, in either direction — assuming a mid-1990s home has it, or assuming it does not.

Where it is present, the questions are what has already been replaced, whether any fittings have been changed, and whether the insurer has been told. Where it has been replaced, the documentation of that work is worth real money at resale and a seller should keep it.

In a condominium there is a further layer: the master deed decides whether the piping inside a wall is unit or common element. That is the difference between an owner's bill and a special assessment across the whole community, and it is settled by the document rather than by custom.

What a 1995 build otherwise adds

Apart from the piping question above, 1995 is a comfortable year and it is worth saying so plainly rather than leaving the impression that an era question means a problem.

These are modern-code buildings with modern insulation, modern electrical service and modern egress, and that removes most of the inspection agenda older communities around here carry.

What thirty years brings is the second half of the first replacement cycle, and by now much of it will have happened. Original water heaters are long past normal expectancy and have been replaced at least once, probably twice. Original furnaces and air conditioning are past expectancy and have almost certainly been replaced. Original roofs are at or beyond the end of a typical asphalt shingle service life, so the useful question is not whether they are due but when they were done and how the work was funded.

Original glazing units are well into the period where seal failure shows as fogging between the panes, and in a condominium the windows are usually common or limited common element, so replacement is a building decision rather than an owner's.

Exterior cladding of this period performs according to how its ends, edges and penetrations were sealed and how the ground drains away. The bottom courses, and anywhere a deck or porch meets a wall, are where the original detailing shows after thirty years.

So the reserve study is the document that decides this community. In a community whose components all came due at once, the question is whether the money was there when they did — and thirty years in, that has an answer rather than a forecast. A board that can show what was replaced, when, and how it was paid for is showing you the most important thing about the place.

What to look up before a showing

Location is the consequential question, because a community with an Ann Arbor address could sit inside the city or in any of the surrounding townships, and the difference decides the tax rate, the school district, the utilities arrangement and which sales are comparable.

The name suggests a street, which is a reasonable place to start and not evidence. Names are chosen, and a development can take a name from a street it is not on. The recorded master deed settles it and nothing else does.

The Washtenaw County Register of Deeds holds that document: the project's legal name and number, its address, the unit count, and the definition of what a unit is and what limited common elements are assigned to it. The exhibit drawings show the assignments unit by unit.

For a seller, this matters more than it sounds. A community whose address and unit count are not properly recorded is one that automated property search cannot place or filter, so fewer buyers see it at all. Establishing the recorded name, address and unit count, and making sure a listing carries them, is worth doing before anything else — it is the cheapest work available and it changes how many people ever look.

A thirty-year-old association is a known quantity

There is a real advantage to a community of this age that gets overlooked in the focus on aging components: it has a track record, and a track record is evidence in a way that a projection is not.

A new association has documents and intentions. A thirty-year-old one has minutes, budgets, a history of assessments and a physical result you can walk through. Whether the roofs were done on time, whether the reserve was rebuilt afterward, whether the board handled a dispute well or badly — all of that is on paper and available to a buyer who asks.

That is why the minutes matter more here than the brochure. Two or three years of minutes will show what the board is currently arguing about, what it is deferring, and whether it is candid with owners. A board that records disagreement honestly is generally a board that manages money honestly.

The same goes for the assessment history. A community that has raised its assessment steadily over thirty years is usually one that has been funding its reserve. A community whose assessment has barely moved has either been unusually well run or has been deferring, and the physical condition of the buildings will say which.

So the questions to ask are historical rather than predictive: what has been replaced, when, how it was paid for, and what the reserve balance was before and after.

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.

The wall between two households

In any attached housing, the wall or floor between two households is the variable that most affects daily life and appears in no listing.

What matters is the assembly rather than the finish: a genuine double stud wall with an air gap performs far better than a single framed wall with insulation, because sound travels through structure as readily as through air. Where a floor separates two households, footfall carries downward and carpet helps without solving it.

An end unit has one shared wall instead of two, which is a real and priceable difference that square footage ignores entirely.

The reliable test is the simplest: visit at an hour when people are home — an evening or a weekend — rather than mid-morning when the building is empty.

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 occur around the city — 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.

Buying or selling here

One minute at the water heater and one call to the Register of Deeds answer most of the open questions here.

For a seller, two things carry disproportionate weight: documentation that the supply piping has been checked and, if it was polybutylene, replaced — which is worth real money and is routinely lost when it is not written down — and the recorded project name, address and unit count in the listing, because a search cannot surface what it cannot identify.