Lansdowne

Built across twenty-four years, and what that means

Nearly every neighborhood in this county was built in a window of a few years. Lansdowne was built across twenty-four, from 1963 to 1987, and that single fact reorganizes everything a buyer or seller should do here.

It means that two houses in this subdivision can differ by more than two decades of code, materials, mechanical systems and construction practice while looking, from the curb, like siblings.

It also means that Lansdowne is the rare neighborhood where every major era question in this region applies to some of the houses and none of the others. That is worth setting out precisely rather than gesturing at, because each has a different answer and a different cost.

A house from 1963 to the mid-1970s may have aluminum branch circuit wiring, which was used in that period and needs specific remediation at connections rather than wholesale rewiring. It may have galvanized steel supply piping, which corrodes internally over decades and reduces flow before it fails. Anything built before 1978 carries a lead-based paint disclosure requirement.

A house from the late 1970s to 1987 sits inside the polybutylene window instead. It is identified by looking during the inspection, never by inference.

So the inspection agenda here is genuinely different house by house. Nobody should apply a single mental model to Lansdowne, and an inspector should be told the year before they arrive.

A spring-fed pond that used to be a cow pond

This subdivision was built on cleared farmland, and one detail of that history is worth knowing because it explains something about the ground.

The pond here was spring-fed, and before the subdivision it was known as the old cow pond — a farm pond, groomed and incorporated when the land was developed.

Spring-fed is the operative part. A spring-fed pond is not filled by rainfall running in and evaporating out; it is fed by groundwater emerging at the surface, which means the water table reaches the surface at that point. That is a permanent hydrological feature of the site rather than a landscape decision, and it does not go away because houses were built around it.

Practically, that means the ground in the vicinity is likely to be wetter than the average for the area, and the water table locally is likely to be higher. For any house near it, the basement questions carry more weight than usual: grade falling away from the building on all sides, gutters and downspouts discharging well clear of the foundation, no staining at the base of finished walls, and a sump pump with a battery backup rather than without one.

This is not a warning. Spring-fed ponds are why a great many attractive places are attractive, and a subdivision that kept its pond rather than filling it did the right thing. It is a reason to ask about basement history with more attention on the streets nearest the water than on the ones furthest from it — and it is precisely the kind of thing a buyer never learns and a long-time neighbor knows immediately.

The Malletts Creek watershed

Malletts Creek is a tributary of the Huron River and the main outlet for stormwater runoff from the City of Ann Arbor. Its watershed is almost entirely urban and suburban, and much of the creek itself runs in underground piping beneath the built-up parts of the city rather than in an open channel.

The number that explains its behavior is impervious cover. Close to thirty-seven percent of the land surface draining to Malletts Creek is impervious — roofs, roads, driveways and parking lots — which means rain that would once have soaked into ground now arrives at the creek quickly and all at once. A watershed like that responds sharply to heavy rain rather than gradually.

This is public, documented ground. The Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner — the office formerly called the drain commissioner — is the authority for stormwater management, flood control and drainage across the county, and Malletts Creek has its own drainage district. Substantial public money has gone into the creek, including a restoration project along roughly a mile and a half that created a constructed wet meadow to hold and slow stormwater.

The practical consequence is that drainage is a specific question rather than a general one. The Water Resources Commissioner's office holds the drainage district records; and the city's stormwater staff can say what work has been done near a specific address and what is planned.

None of that is a reason to avoid the area — it is some of the most established residential ground in the city, and the public investment in the creek is a reason for confidence rather than concern. It is a reason to ask at the parcel level instead of assuming.

The 2012 flood, and what was built afterward

This neighborhood shares its western border with Churchill Drive, and the Lansdowne and Churchill neighborhoods are named together in the city's public record of a severe rain event in 2012 that caused flooding and overland water flow here.

The City of Ann Arbor responded with a study of stormwater management opportunities across the Upper Malletts Creek drainage area. Several of its recommendations went into the city's capital improvement plan, among them a large stormwater detention basin at Churchill Downs Park. Planning and design began in 2016, design work proceeded in 2017, and what was built is an eleven-foot-deep flood storage area holding 10.8 acre-feet — something above three and a half million gallons held back from the downstream system during a storm.

Both halves of this belong in any honest account. A neighborhood that flooded is a real fact a buyer should know. A neighborhood where the responsible public authority studied the cause and built a specific engineered remedy of that scale is a materially different proposition from one where nothing was done — and the second half is the part that rarely reaches a buyer, because bad news travels and public works do not.

What a buyer should do about it is specific rather than general. The flood plain maps answer it for a specific parcel. Call the city's stormwater staff and the Water Resources Commissioner's office about the specific address — that information is public and free. Check the grade, the downspouts and the basement, and ask the seller in writing whether there has ever been water. And talk to a neighbor, because people here remember 2012 and will say what their own street did and whether anything has changed since the basin went in.

Bi-levels and tri-levels, which need explaining

Along with ranches and colonials, this subdivision holds bi-level and tri-level houses, and those are forms that confuse people because the vocabulary is inconsistent and because they price differently from what their stated square footage suggests.

A tri-level, or split-level, arranges the house 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. A bi-level, sometimes called a raised ranch, puts the entry on a landing between two full levels, so you go up half a flight or down half a flight from the front door.

The measured area is where it gets interesting. The lower level of a bi-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 the appraiser treats it. Two houses with identical usable space can therefore be listed at different square footages, and comparing them on that number alone misleads in both directions.

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

For a 1960s-to-1980s subdivision, the practical upside is that these forms usually come with a lower level that is genuinely usable rather than a plain basement, which is space most buyers underprice.

Mature trees, and what they ask

A subdivision built from 1963 has trees planted sixty years ago, and mature canopy is one of the things that most distinguishes an established neighborhood from a new one. It is also a maintenance obligation that falls entirely on the owner.

A large tree close to a house is one to have an arborist look at rather than guess about. Removal of a mature tree is a four-figure expense, and periodic pruning is a recurring one. Roots interact with drains, driveways and foundations over decades, and older clay or cast-iron drain lines in houses of this age are exactly what roots find.

Canopy over a roof is the everyday version: leaf and needle drop in gutters and valleys, which is where roofs fail first, and shade that keeps surfaces damp and shortens the life of a covering.

The specific item for this era is the drain line from the house to the sewer. In houses of the 1960s and 1970s these are frequently clay or cast iron, and root intrusion is the ordinary failure. A camera inspection of the lateral is not a standard part of a home inspection, costs comparatively little, and on a mature-tree street of this age is among the better-value additional checks worth running.

None of that argues against the trees. They are much of the reason to want a house here, and they cannot be bought at any price in a new subdivision.

The position, and the stadium

Lansdowne sits in southwest Ann Arbor with Scio Church Road to the north and Ann Arbor-Saline Road to the east, which puts downtown, I-94 and the university's athletic campus all within a short run.

Michigan Stadium and the University of Michigan Golf Club are a short distance east, and that proximity has a particular character worth naming plainly. On roughly seven or eight Saturdays each fall, a home football weekend brings well over a hundred thousand people into this part of the city. Traffic, parking and noise on those days are unlike any other day of the year, and the effect varies sharply street by street with distance and route.

For some buyers that is the appeal — walking to the stadium is a genuine pleasure and it is one of the reasons this part of the city holds its value. For others it is seven or eight days to plan around. Neither reaction is wrong, and both are better formed before buying than after.

The reliable test is the obvious one: if you are looking in the fall, visit on a home Saturday. If you are looking at any other time of year, ask a neighbor what the street is like on one.

The neighborhood park of about 2.6 acres at the interior is the everyday amenity, and its ownership is worth confirming — city-owned parkland is the most durable tier of protected open space, while association-held common ground is real but revisitable and funded by the owners.

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

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

Assignment is set by address rather than by neighborhood name, and district boundaries in this county cross municipal and postal lines routinely. District is one of the larger drivers of price difference between otherwise comparable properties, so comparables should be matched on it as well as on municipality.

Buying or selling here

The year built is the master key here in a way it is almost nowhere else, because twenty-four years of building means the era questions are house-specific rather than neighborhood-specific.

For a seller, the assessor's year built, an inspection-grade answer on the supply piping and the wiring, a documented dry basement history and a dated roof answer nearly everything a buyer will worry about. On a house near the pond, the basement history is worth documenting rather than leaving to be asked about.

Not to be confused with

• Lawton · Ann Arbor
• Churchill Downs · Ann Arbor