Laurel Gardens

Matthaei is the most durable kind of neighbor

The Matthaei Botanical Gardens is a University of Michigan property of several hundred acres, with conservatory glasshouses, display gardens, extensive natural areas and a public trail system, and Fleming Creek runs through it.

In the four tiers of protected open space, this is close to the top. It is not a business that can close and be sold; it is not association common ground that the owners fund and could revisit; and it is not merely unbuilt private land awaiting a planning application. It is a university's dedicated research, teaching and public garden property, which is about as durable as an institutional neighbor gets.

That is worth understanding as a value proposition rather than as scenery. A great many communities around here face open ground whose protection is an open question; this one faces open ground whose protection is close to settled. The difference should be reflected in how the location is priced, and it very often is not — an automated valuation reads a botanical garden and an unbuilt private field identically.

The practical amenity is real too: Matthaei's trails are open to the public, the natural areas run along the creek and the river system, and the gardens are a working botanical collection rather than a lawn.

For a buyer, the inquiry worth making is simply which parcels the university holds and where the boundary runs relative to this community, because a view across university land and a view across an intervening private parcel are different assurances.

This part of the city sits close to the Huron River corridor as well, with Gallup Park and the river system a short run and the Border to Border Trail — Washtenaw County's paved route across the county, part of Michigan's Iron Belle Trail — running through it. Connectivity to publicly held land is one of the more durable features a location can have.

A hundred and three homes is real comparable depth

Volume is the scarcest thing in a comparable-sales analysis, and most communities around here do not have it. A hundred and three homes does.

That size produces genuine turnover year after year, from inside the community, on similar product — which makes pricing tractable in a way it simply is not in a community of twenty. Where that volume exists, an automated estimate is likelier to be roughly right than in a small project.

But roughly right still needs checking, and here the checking is about form rather than size. Ranches, townhomes and attached units are three different products competing for three different buyer pools, and a 33 percent size range does far less work than the form does.

The ranch is the one to separate first. Single-level living with no internal stairs reaches a persistent and geographically wide buyer pool — people for whom it is a requirement rather than a preference — and there are always more of those buyers than there are single-level homes. That is why ranches routinely outperform what their measured area suggests, and why the gap widens rather than narrows over time. But it only holds if the unit is reached without stairs, which is the question people forget to ask.

Within the community, what a unit faces and whether it is an end unit are the remaining variables, and an end unit has one shared wall instead of two — a real and priceable difference that square footage ignores.

A 1980 build sits inside the polybutylene window

This is the single most consequential era question in this region's housing, and 1980 sits near the beginning of 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 forty-five-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 forty-five years the first replacement cycle is long past and the second is well under way. Roofs should have been done at least once and probably twice. Siding, drives, parking areas and any private roads are all within their replacement horizons. Furnaces, air conditioning and water heaters have been replaced more than once, and original windows have generally been changed.

So the most useful question to ask a board of a community this age is simply what has already been done and when. An association that has re-roofed, re-piped, resurfaced and rebuilt its reserve afterward is in a materially different position from one approaching all of that for the first time — and a well-run board will say so gladly and in detail.

The reserve study test for shared amenities

Where a community has a pool, a clubhouse, courts or a playground, those are real amenities with real costs, and they belong in the reserve study as named lines with their own dates and figures.

A pool is among the most expensive things a residential community can own. Resurfacing is periodic and substantial; the pumps, filters, heater and enclosure are separate replacements on their own cycles; and there is liability, insurance and either staffing or monitoring on top.

Tennis and other courts need resurfacing periodically, and eventually the base beneath needs reconstruction — much the larger expense of the two, and the one most often left out because it is invisible until it fails.

Playground equipment has a service life measured in years rather than decades, needs periodic inspection and a compliant surfacing depth that degrades and needs topping up, and carries liability and insurance implications. It is the item most often omitted from a study altogether, because it does not look like a building component.

So the test is specific: does the reserve study name the pool shell, the pool equipment, the court surface, the court base and the playground equipment and surfacing as separate lines? Where it does, the association is being run properly. Where it lumps them together, the shortfall arrives later as a special assessment.

It is also worth asking how much the amenities are used. Ones a community values are worth what they cost; ones that sit idle are a line on every owner's statement for something nobody uses. And the honest way to compare this community's assessment against another's is to ask what each one covers before comparing the numbers.

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

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

Buying or selling here

What the association has already replaced, and what the community actually faces, are the two things that decide this purchase.

For a seller, a record of what has been done — roofs, piping, drives, siding — with dates and how each was funded, together with a current reserve study, is worth more than anything inside a unit at this age. And stating that the community faces university botanical garden land rather than describing a view is a durable, checkable claim very few sellers in this county can make.