Creekwood

When the units are effectively identical, area stops being a variable

From 930 to 970 square feet is a spread of about four percent. For practical purposes these units are the same size as each other.

That is genuinely unusual. Most communities around here run considerably wider — several past a hundred and eighty percent — and here the variable that dominates almost every comparable analysis has been removed.

What that means is that everything else does the pricing, and those things are precisely what an automated valuation handles worst. Form — whether a home is a detached or single-level ranch unit or an attached one. Position — what it faces, whether it backs onto woods or another building, whether it is an end unit. Condition and updating — the kitchen, the bathroom, the mechanicals. Any of those can move a figure further than the entire forty-square-foot range between the largest and smallest unit.

A model given a community name, a square footage and a year will produce nearly the same number for every unit here, because on its inputs they are nearly the same unit. The spread of actual sale prices will be considerably wider than that, and the difference is entirely the things the model cannot see.

So this is one of the clearest cases in the directory for a constructed analysis over a looked-up one, and it works in both directions. A seller of a well-positioned, well-updated unit should expect and argue for a figure above what a model will produce. A buyer should not assume that two units at the same stated area are the same value.

The compensating advantage is that the comparable set is unusually clean once position and condition are accounted for. There is no adjustment for size to argue about, which removes the most contested variable in most negotiations.

One further point at this size: the bathroom count and whether a unit is reached without stairs will each move a price more than the size range does. A single-level unit up a flight of stairs excludes exactly the buyer pool the form is otherwise made for.

A 1989 build sits inside the polybutylene window

This is the single most consequential era question in this region's housing, and 1989 sits inside it.

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 from the year.

In a condominium there is a wrinkle a house does not have, and it is a large one. 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. In a thirty-six-year-old community, an association that has already re-piped has removed the single largest question about the buildings — and it will appear in the minutes and the reserve history. Ask directly, and ask whether the work was funded from reserves or by special assessment, because the answer says how the association has been run.

At thirty-six years the first full replacement cycle has passed and the second is beginning. Original roofs are well past a typical asphalt shingle service life, so they should have been done at least once — ask when and by whom. Furnaces, air conditioning and water heaters are long 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-six years is long enough for careless detailing to have declared itself.

Wooded lots, and who pays for the trees

Wooded lots are the described feature, and where trees are genuinely present they are both an asset and an obligation.

Mature canopy cannot be bought at any price in a new development, and on a community of this age the trees have had thirty-six years or more to establish. It is much of why a compact unit here feels the way it does.

Where the trees stand on association common ground — which in a condominium is most of them — 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 a roof is the everyday version: leaf drop into gutters and valleys, which is 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. On a community where the roofs are due or recently done, that matters to the reserve as well as to the maintenance budget.

Where woodland adjoins rather than sits within the community, the ownership question decides its durability, and the four possible answers look identical from a window.

For a unit, backing onto woods rather than onto another building is a real and priceable difference — and in a community where square footage barely varies, that is one of the few variables that genuinely separates two sales.

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

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

Buying or selling here

Position and condition are the whole of the pricing here, because size is not a variable.

For a seller, that is an argument to make rather than assume. A model will produce nearly the same figure for every unit in the community; a well-positioned, well-updated unit is worth more than that, and the case has to be built from what the unit actually faces, whether it is an end unit, how it is reached, and dated records for whatever has been replaced.