North Oaks of Ann Arbor

The lot-size field in public data is not a lot size

The recorded plat or master deed gives every lot's dimensions alongside the count and the site's extent. Both are free and take an afternoon.

A hundred and nine acres, read correctly, tells you something

A development's total extent is genuinely informative in its own right — and it is the sort of thing a buyer is rarely told.

Site extent bears directly on the association's obligations. A larger site means more road, more drainage infrastructure, more common landscaping and more edge to maintain, all funded by whatever number of households the site holds. The ratio between the two is what determines the burden per owner, and it is a better predictor of long-run assessment pressure than the assessment's current level.

So the question worth asking is not just how many acres but how many homes across them. A hundred and nine acres with four hundred homes is comfortable arithmetic; the same acreage with eighty homes is not.

Roads are the largest single component of that. Where roads within a development are private rather than dedicated to the public, the owners fund plowing, resurfacing and eventual reconstruction rather than the city or the county road commission — and across a large site, road reconstruction is by a wide margin the biggest expense an association can face. The recorded plat or master deed says whether the roads were dedicated, and it is the first document to obtain.

Drainage is the second. A site of this extent has stormwater infrastructure — basins, swales, culverts, outfalls — and where the association owns it, maintenance and eventual replacement fall to the same households.

Both are free.

A national production builder, in both directions

Toll Brothers is a large national homebuilder, and a community built by one behaves differently from a locally built or custom one. Both directions matter.

The advantages are real. A national builder works from a defined catalog of plans repeated across many communities, so same-plan comparable sales exist — not only inside this community but potentially elsewhere. Identifying which plan a home is turns an approximate analysis into a tight one, and at production-builder scale the plan is usually a documented thing rather than a guess. Asking which plan is worth the question.

Construction is also consistent by design: the same details, the same suppliers, the same sequence across every home. That means an inspection finding on one is genuinely informative about its neighbors, which is not true on a custom street where each house has to be assessed from first principles.

The caution is the mirror image. Where a production builder used a detail that did not perform, it used it across every home — so a defect is systemic rather than isolated. On any production community it is worth asking whether the neighborhood has had a common problem, and the people to ask are the neighbors and the association's meeting minutes. That is a specific question with a specific answer, not a general worry.

Specification is the other thing to check rather than assume. Production builders offered a base home and a long list of options, so two homes of the same plan and year can differ substantially in windows, insulation, cabinetry, flooring and mechanical equipment. That difference is invisible in the square footage and material in the price — and it is one of the things a well-prepared seller can document and a hurried buyer will miss.

Three forms, including lofts

Two-story homes, townhomes and lofts in one community means three products competing for three different buyer pools, and matching on form matters before matching on area.

A two-story detached home is the reference product with the deepest comparable data. A townhome stacks its own space vertically with party walls on one or both sides. A loft is the outlier here and worth separating: in a new-build context it generally means an open, volumetric plan with a mezzanine or double-height space rather than a converted industrial building, which is a different thing entirely from the conversions elsewhere in the area.

That distinction is worth stating because buyers searching for lofts are frequently looking for the converted kind — century-old timber, load-bearing masonry, genuine industrial windows — and a purpose-built loft is a different product. It performs considerably better, being modern-code construction with modern insulation, glazing and designed acoustic separation, and it lacks the fabric. Related products, not interchangeable ones.

Volume has practical consequences in any loft. Heating and cooling a double-height space costs more than heating the same floor area under a normal ceiling, because there is more air and heat rises out of the occupied zone. Where there is a mezzanine, the upper level runs warm and the lower cool. Ask how many heating and cooling zones serve the unit.

Cathedral ceilings elsewhere in the community raise the same question, plus the insulation one: a cathedral ceiling puts the insulation in the rafter depth with a narrow ventilation channel above it that is easy to block, which shows as ice damming at the eaves in winter. Both are visible to an inspector who is told to look.

And a detached home here may be a platted lot or a Michigan site condominium — invisible from the curb and material for pricing.

A site condominium is not a subdivision

Michigan uses the condominium form for detached houses far more than most states, and the result is the site condominium: a house that looks in every way like a house on a subdivision lot, but is legally a condominium unit.

In a platted subdivision the owner holds a lot described by metes and bounds. In a site condominium the owner holds a unit whose boundaries are defined by the master deed and shown on the exhibit drawings, and the ground around the house is frequently limited common element assigned to that unit rather than owned outright.

That governs what may be built, planted or fenced, who maintains what, and how the association is funded.

The consequence for pricing is real: a subdivision sale needs adjustment before it can stand as a comparable for a site condominium, or the reverse, however similar the two houses look. The recorded instrument settles which is which.

The reserve study test for shared amenities

Where a community has a pool, a clubhouse, courts, trails or ponds, 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.

A clubhouse is a building in its own right, with a roof, mechanicals and bathrooms or a kitchen, all on ordinary building cycles.

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.

Ponds silt, weed and occasionally need dredging; any outlet structure carries its own inspection duties; and a fountain or aerator is machinery with a service life measured in years.

So the test is specific: does the reserve study name each of those as a separate line? Where it does, the association is being run properly. Where it lumps them together or omits the equipment, 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 and tracks neither the municipal nor the postal boundary. There are examples running in both directions: a subdivision with Ann Arbor addresses, Pittsfield Township taxes and Saline schools; and, elsewhere in Pittsfield Township, a community assigned to Ann Arbor Public Schools. Neither is derivable from the address.

Match comparable sales on district as well as on municipality — district is one of the larger drivers of price difference between otherwise comparable properties.

Buying or selling here

The plan and the association's road position are the two things that decide an analysis here.

For a seller, naming which Toll Brothers plan a home is, and which options it was built with, gives an appraiser directly comparable sales and explains any difference from them. That is a stronger position than a listing describing the home in general terms.