Georgetown Condos

Three Georgetowns, and telling them apart

This community appears as Georgetown Condos in some places and Georgetown Village in others, which is the first thing to establish when reading a listing or drawing a comparable.

It is also one of three separate Georgetown developments here. Georgetown is the single-family subdivision. Georgetown Commons is a condominium community of 116 units built between 1972 and 1977. This is the third, of roughly 96 units from the early 1970s.

They are neighbors built in overlapping years, not sections of one community, and they carry different ownership structures, different associations and different price behavior. Establish which development — and under which of its two names — an address belongs to, and get the governing documents for that one.

For a seller, using one name consistently and stating the unit count alongside it is a small thing that keeps the wrong comparables out of an appraisal. For a buyer, asking which Georgetown a listing refers to is a reasonable opening question rather than a pedantic one.

The club it sits beside

The Georgetown Country Club is a semi-private club with a nine-hole executive course, and this community sits on its south side.

Proximity to a private or semi-private club is worth being precise about, because it confers no access. Membership is a separate question with separate costs, and a listing implying otherwise is implying something untrue. What proximity does buy is the open ground and the outlook, which are real.

The durability question is the one worth asking. A privately held course is a business, and businesses can close and land can be sold — there is a community nearby where exactly that happened and ended in a decade of litigation over what could be built on the ground afterward. That is not a prediction about this club; it is a reason to understand that a private course is a different kind of neighbor from a public park or a recorded conservation easement, and to price the outlook accordingly.

Early-1970s attached housing

Construction in the early 1970s puts this stock past fifty years, and in attached housing the age lands substantially on the association.

Roofs span multiple units, facade work affects a run of them, and a water escape in one unit can reach several — which makes the association's insurance and the master deed's allocation of responsibility more consequential here than in detached housing. Across roughly 96 units a major program divides into a per-unit figure that is manageable but not trivial.

The reserve study is therefore the document that matters most, and the assessment history over five years matters more than the figure today. Inside the unit, the era's agenda applies: original electrical service capacity, supply piping identified by material rather than assumed from the decade, and original glazing where it survives.

Sound transmission is the attached-housing question buyers most often skip. It varies enormously with party wall construction — whether the wall runs to the roof deck or stops at a ceiling, and how the floors are built — and the only way to know is to stand in a unit at an hour when neighbors are home.

Bert L. Smokler, whose name is on plats in two counties

The developer behind a good deal of this part of Ann Arbor is worth knowing, because his name turns up repeatedly across the area once you notice it.

The Bert L. Smokler Company began building Georgetown Commons in 1972 and finished in 1977. The adjoining single-family Georgetown neighborhood is sometimes called the Smokler Hutzel neighborhood locally, after its developers. And over in Ypsilanti Township, the Smokler Textile subdivision — built 1973 to 1979 and recorded in more than one plat — carries the same name.

That matters practically rather than merely as trivia. A developer working at scale across a region builds to a consistent standard and a consistent vocabulary, so the construction questions that apply in one of his subdivisions frequently apply in the others. If you have looked at one Smokler development and know what its houses do well and badly, that knowledge travels further than it usually would.

The southeast side around it

This part of Ann Arbor sits between the city's south and east edges, and its character comes from what is nearby rather than from a downtown at its center.

Briarwood Mall and the retail along South State and Eisenhower are minutes away, as is I-94. The University of Michigan's south campus, the medical campus and the stadium are a short run north, and St Joseph Mercy's hospital campus is east on Washtenaw. Between them those are the largest employment concentrations in the county.

The trade being made here is straightforward and worth stating as a trade: excellent access in several directions, and a downtown that is a drive rather than a stroll. For a household with two commutes in different directions, that position is much of the appeal, and it is worth measuring in a real weekday journey rather than in map miles.

Schools

These communities are served by Ann Arbor Public Schools. Assignment is set by address rather than by neighborhood name, and district boundaries in this county follow neither municipal nor postal lines.

Buying or selling here

Ninety-six units of consistent type price legibly, provided the comparable set stays inside this association rather than drifting across the Georgetown names.

For a seller, the document package is part of the product and the naming is part of the presentation: pick one name, state the unit count, and be explicit that the club next door is not an included amenity.