Country Village

A tri-level condominium is an unusual combination

Tri-levels are common enough as detached houses in this region and uncommon as condominium units, which makes this worth setting out.

A tri-level, or split-level, arranges the home on three half-story levels connected by short flights: typically living space on the entry level, bedrooms up half a flight, and a family room and utilities down half a flight. Listings use split, tri-level and bi-level interchangeably even though the layouts differ.

The measurement consequence is the point, and it is sharper in a condominium than in a house. The lowest level is usually partly below grade, which means it may or may not count toward the official finished square footage depending on how far below grade it sits and how an appraiser treats it. Two units with identical usable space can therefore be listed at different square footages.

In a condominium there is a second layer: whether the below-grade walls and floor are unit or common element is set by the master deed, and it decides who pays if water gets in. On a form where a substantial part of the living space is below grade, that is not a technicality.

The form also has a distinct buyer pool. Some people find the constant half-flights awkward; others value the separation of living and sleeping space the layout produces naturally. That means a wider spread of outcomes than a townhome of the same area, and comparables should be drawn from the same form.

And critically, a tri-level cannot reach the single-level buyer pool at all — that pool is large, growing, and made up of people for whom no stairs is a requirement rather than a preference. In a community holding three forms, knowing which form reaches which pool is most of the pricing work.

Duplexes, and the smallest association arithmetic

Where a condominium building holds two units, the association for that building has two members, and every principle about small associations applies in its most extreme form.

An association's fixed costs do not scale down. Insurance, management, accounting and the reserve study cost broadly what they cost. Divided by two, each is a much larger line than it would be anywhere else. Where the association is responsible for the roof, the siding or the drive, the entire bill is split between two households with no cushion of numbers at all.

Governance is correspondingly fragile: two owners either agree or they do not, and there is no majority to break a deadlock. Where they disagree about whether to spend, nothing happens — and deferred maintenance in a two-unit building falls on whoever is still there, or on the next buyer.

But that arithmetic only applies if the community is organized as many two-unit associations. Where one association covers all the buildings — tri-levels, townhomes and duplexes together — costs spread across the whole community and governance is stable.

So the question to settle before anything else is whether this is one association or several. The master deed says, and the difference is enormous. A community described as a single condominium community with a single set of amenities is very likely the former, but it should be confirmed rather than assumed.

"Village" means something specific in Michigan, and this is not it

A great many developments in this county carry Village in their name, and in Michigan the word has an actual legal meaning that a development name borrows without carrying.

A Michigan village is an incorporated municipality. It has its own elected council and president, its own ordinances, and in most cases its own services — while remaining part of the surrounding township, so residents pay and vote in both. Dexter was a village until it became a city in 2014.

A development called Village is none of that. It is a marketing name attached to a recorded master deed, conferring no separate government, no separate services and no separate ordinances. Whoever governs the ground is the city or township the parcel sits in.

The word does usually signal something real about the design, which is why developers reach for it: a planned layout rather than units on a road, often with shared open space, and generally with an association holding and funding whatever is shared.

So the useful reading is that Village describes an intention about form, not a fact about jurisdiction. The practical questions that follow are which municipality actually governs the parcel, whether there is one association or several, and what the recorded documents say — all of which are free to answer and none of which the name settles.

The same logic applies to the other conventions: Estates signals larger lots with no definition behind the word, Commons signals shared ground that the owners fund, and Preserve claims permanence that needs testing.

A 1991 to 1992 build, and the ponds

A two-year build window means the units are genuinely one product in construction terms — one code cycle, one generation of materials — which makes an inspection finding on one informative about the others.

It also sits inside the polybutylene window. The only way to know is to have the piping identified by material during the inspection, and in a condominium the master deed decides whether it is unit or common element and therefore who pays for a replacement. Ask what the association has already done.

At around thirty-three years the first replacement cycle has passed and the second is beginning: roofs should have been done at least once, mechanicals replaced, and original windows are showing seal failure as fogging between the panes.

The ponds are the other shared asset and they are consistently underestimated. Most ponds inside developments of this period do stormwater duty alongside their amenity role, which means their level is designed to fluctuate and their condition is functional rather than cosmetic. They silt, weed and occasionally need dredging; any outlet structure carries its own inspection duties; edges erode; and a fountain or aerator is machinery with a service life measured in years.

So the test is whether the reserve study names the ponds, any outlet structure and any fountain as their own lines with dates and figures. The pond is the single item most often missing from a reserve study altogether, and dredging is exactly the large deferrable expense that becomes a special assessment.

Walk-out, daylight and standard are three different lower levels

A true walk-out has a door at grade on the downhill side, which makes the lower level a genuine story of the home with its own entrance and full-height glazing. A daylight lower level has above-grade windows but no door: better than a standard basement, and materially less than a walk-out. A standard lower level has neither.

Listings use the terms loosely, and because it depends on where a home sits on its site, some in a community will have a true walk-out and others will not whatever the general description says. It is settled by looking rather than by reading.

Below-grade finished space is generally not credited by appraisers in the same way as above-grade square footage, and how much credit it receives varies. Two homes with identical total finished area can appraise differently depending on how much sits below grade — a reason to expect the appraisal arithmetic to differ from the listing arithmetic, and for a seller to be precise about which part of a stated area is below grade rather than face a surprise.

A finished lower level also conceals what an inspector would otherwise see: foundation walls, framing, and any staining that would indicate past water. That makes the seller's written answer about water history more valuable, not less. Check grade falling away on all sides, downspouts discharging well clear, no staining at the base of finished walls, and whether the sump pump has a battery backup.

Ask whether the finishing was permitted, particularly where a bedroom is in it — egress is the item that matters, and the building department holds the record at no cost.

In a condominium there is a further question: whether the lower level walls and floor are unit or common element. The master deed says, 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. 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

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

Buying or selling here

The association structure and the form are the two things to establish, and both come before any discussion of price.

For a seller, being clear whether the community is one association or several, and which form a unit is, prevents it being compared against the wrong product — a real risk in a community holding three.