Concord Pines

The newest housing here, and what that changes

A house completed in 2023 or 2024 is a different proposition from anything else around here, and the diligence list is almost entirely different.

The house was built to current code, with current insulation, current electrical service and current egress.

What is on the list instead is the builder relationship and the association's beginning.

The warranty is the first item. A production builder's warranty typically runs in tiers — a short period covering workmanship and materials, a longer one covering major systems, and a longer one still covering structure. Establish what remains, what has been claimed, and whether the warranty transfers to a subsequent owner. On a resale within the first few years, a transferable structural warranty is a genuine asset.

Then the punch list. New houses are handed over with a list of items to be completed or corrected, and whether that list was closed out is worth asking about — it is the kind of thing that is easy to let lapse and hard to revive once a builder has left the site.

And the envelope, which is where modern buildings fail. They do not fail through their materials; they fail at their joints. Flashing, sealants and the detailing around windows, doors and roof penetrations are what a first inspection of a new house should concentrate on.

Sold out, which means no resale history

A community that has sold out has an unusual comparable-sales position, and it is worth understanding before either buying or selling here.

Every unit's first transaction was a purchase from the builder, at builder pricing, frequently agreed before completion and often before construction. Those are not clean comparables for a resale, because a builder's price includes what a builder's price includes — options selected at contract, incentives, and a market at the moment of signing rather than the moment of delivery.

Until a meaningful number of open-market resales have occurred, the comparable set is thin and the analysis has to widen into other recent Ann Arbor construction of similar specification and adjust. An automated valuation, which widens for data and does not adjust, will be working from builder transactions and will not know it.

The options question is the sharpest version of this. Production builders sell options — finishes, structural additions, elevations — and two houses of the same model can differ substantially in what was chosen and what was paid. A seller who has the original selection sheet has something genuinely useful; a buyer without it is guessing at what distinguishes one house from its neighbor.

Ask for it. On a house two years old the paperwork usually still exists, and it is the single most useful document a seller of new-build housing can produce.

Modern farmhouse, and how a current style ages

Modern farmhouse is the dominant residential idiom of the last decade — board-and-batten or lap cladding, a mostly white or dark palette, black window frames, gabled forms, and simplified traditional detailing.

Two things are worth saying about buying into a style at the height of its currency, and both are honest rather than discouraging.

The first is that a house built in the prevailing idiom of its moment is legible and easy to sell while that idiom holds, and dates identifiably when it passes. Every era's houses do this — the 1970s did it, the 1990s did it — and it is not a defect. It simply means that in fifteen years the style will read as of its time, which is how buyers will locate it.

The second is that the underlying form matters more than the finish. A well-proportioned house with good light, sensible circulation and a workable plan survives a change of fashion; a house whose appeal is entirely in its palette does not. Ten-foot ceilings and large windows are structural qualities rather than decorative ones, and they will still be worth something when the black window frames are not.

The practical point for a buyer: look past the finishes to the plan, the light and the lot, because the finishes are the part that will be reconsidered.

A new community's first association

A community completed in 2024 has an association at its very beginning, and that position has specific questions.

The developer control period comes first. In a new development the developer typically controls the association until a set proportion has been sold, and only then does control pass to the owners. In a sold-out community that transition may have occurred recently or may be imminent. Ask where it stands and what obligations remain with the builder.

Reserves come second and are the least visible item. The association has no history of expense and may have set an assessment reflecting a new community rather than the eventual cycle. A comfortable assessment in year two is not evidence about year fifteen. Ask whether a reserve study exists and what it schedules — roofs, drives, any common landscaping or stormwater infrastructure.

Then what the association actually owns. In a subdivision of this type it is usually the common open space, entrance planting and often a stormwater detention basin — that last being a piece of infrastructure with a real maintenance obligation that is easy to overlook while it is new.

And the recorded restrictions, which on a new development are generally comprehensive and worth reading before planning anything.

A new development on a wooded site

New residential development on wooded ground in Ann Arbor generally goes through public review, and the record of that process is held by the city.

That record is worth requesting for a specific site rather than reasoning from a name. City planning files typically show what was proposed, what conditions were attached to an approval, what land was required to be preserved and under what instrument, and what any surrounding parcels are zoned for.

The last of those is the one that most affects a buyer, because it answers the question that keeps returning: what could be built on the ground next door. Zoning is a better predictor of that than a current view, and it is public.

Where woodland was preserved as a condition of approval, the instrument matters — conservation easement, dedicated land, or association common area are three different durabilities. Ask which applies.

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

Ann Arbor Public Schools serves Concord Pines. Specific school assignments are set by address.

Buying or selling here

New construction inverts the usual list: the building is the easy part and the paperwork is where the work is.

For a seller, the original selection sheet, the warranty documentation and its transferability, and the closed-out punch list are three documents that most buyers of two-year-old houses never think to ask for and that materially help a sale.