Northbury

A 1970 condominium is among the first generation of the form here

Michigan first allowed condominiums under the Horizontal Real Property Act of 1963, and the current Condominium Act replaced it in 1978, so a community of this vintage was created under the earlier statute and is among the earliest condominium housing in this region. That has practical consequences worth knowing.

The documents are old. A master deed of around 1970 was drafted before decades of practice refined how these things are written, and it may be less clear than a modern one about what is unit and what is common element — which is exactly the question that decides who pays for things. It may also have been amended repeatedly since, and amendments are recorded instruments: what is recorded governs, regardless of what any summary or older copy says. A title company can produce the full chain, and on a community this age that is worth doing rather than accepting a single document.

Reserve practice of the period was different too. Reserve studies as a discipline came later, and a community of this age may have adopted one recently, long ago, or never. Asking when the first reserve study was done is a surprisingly informative question about how the association has been run.

The physical fabric is fifty-five years old, which means the second replacement cycle is well under way: roofs done once or twice, siding, drives, parking areas and any private roads all within their horizons, mechanicals replaced more than once, and original windows generally changed.

So the single most useful question to ask a board here is 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 answer gladly and in detail.

The era questions apply as they would to any 1970 building. Aluminum branch circuit wiring was in use from roughly the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, and the concern is the connections rather than the wire — the remedy is proper connectors at every device rather than wholesale rewiring, which makes it a manageable, priceable item when identified and a genuine hazard when ignored. Galvanized steel supply piping loses flow before it fails. The pre-1978 lead-based paint disclosure requirement applies.

In a condominium, the master deed decides whether piping and wiring are unit or common element — which is the difference between an owner's bill and a special assessment.

Thirteen hundred to three thousand square feet is not one market

A 131 percent spread means the largest units are more than twice the smallest, and they compete for different buyers at different price points. A community average describes no actual unit, and any figure derived from it — including an automated valuation leaning on community-level data — inherits the error and applies it to every unit in the place.

The upper end is the part most likely to be mispriced. A 3,000 square foot condominium unit is a scarce product: most attached housing is compact, because the form exists largely to deliver lower maintenance and lower cost. A unit that size serves a household needing genuine space that still wants the exterior, the grounds and the snow handled by somebody else — a real and under-served pool.

Its comparable set is other large attached homes rather than detached houses of similar size, which are a different product with a different cost structure and a different buyer. An automated valuation makes exactly that substitution, and it misprices in both directions: it ignores what the buyer is paying a premium for and it ignores the assessment they are taking on.

Assessments in condominium communities are also frequently allocated by percentage of value or by area rather than equally, so a larger unit typically carries a proportionally larger share of everything the association spends. On a fifty-five-year-old community facing a second replacement cycle, that is not a small consideration. The master deed sets the allocation.

So comparables must be built within the range: match on size band first, then on form, then adjust for position and condition. A sale at one end is not evidence for a unit at the other, however close the two stand.

A range this wide in a single-year build usually means the community was designed with several distinct plans rather than one repeated, which is useful: identifying which plan a unit is turns an approximate analysis into a tight one, and same-plan comparables recur.

Walk-out, daylight and standard are three different lower levels

A true walk-out has a door at grade on the downhill side, which makes the lower level a genuine story of the home with its own entrance and full-height glazing. A daylight lower level has above-grade windows but no door: better than a standard basement, and materially less than a walk-out. A standard lower level has neither.

Listings use the terms loosely, and because it depends on where a home sits on its site, some in a community will have a true walk-out and others will not whatever the general description says. It is settled by looking rather than by reading.

Below-grade finished space is generally not credited by appraisers in the same way as above-grade square footage, and how much credit it receives varies. Two homes with identical total finished area can appraise differently depending on how much sits below grade — a reason to expect the appraisal arithmetic to differ from the listing arithmetic, and for a seller to be precise about which part of a stated area is below grade rather than face a surprise.

A finished lower level also conceals what an inspector would otherwise see: foundation walls, framing, and any staining that would indicate past water. That makes the seller's written answer about water history more valuable, not less. Check grade falling away on all sides, downspouts discharging well clear, no staining at the base of finished walls, and whether the sump pump has a battery backup.

Ask whether the finishing was permitted, particularly where a bedroom is in it — egress is the item that matters, and the building department holds the record at no cost.

In a condominium there is a further question: whether the lower level walls and floor are unit or common element. The master deed says, and it decides who pays if water gets in.

Fifty-five years of trees

Mature trees are named here, and on a community whose buildings are fifty-five years old the canopy is of the same age. That is one of the things that most distinguishes an established community from a new one, and it cannot be bought at any price in a new development.

It is also a budget line rather than scenery. Where 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 they 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, removal of a mature tree is a four-figure expense, and at fifty-five years structural assessment matters more than it does on a younger tree.

Roots interact with drains, drives and foundations over decades. On a community of this age the drain laterals are likely clay or cast iron, and root intrusion is the ordinary failure — which in a condominium is usually a common element question, and therefore an association expense rather than an owner's.

Canopy over roofs 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.

For a unit, backing onto mature trees rather than onto another building is a real and priceable difference that square footage ignores entirely.

Northeast Ann Arbor

This part of the city sits north of the Huron River and within reach of the University of Michigan's north campus and the North Campus Research Complex — the former Pfizer research campus the university acquired, which is a more durable kind of institutional neighbor than a corporate site, because an institution holds ground for its own long-term purposes rather than as a business that can be sold.

M-14 runs west from the northern side of the city and US-23 lies east, which puts a good deal within reasonable reach in several directions without crossing the center.

Highway proximity carries the ordinary trade-off, and highway noise travels further than people expect at night and in certain wind conditions. How much reaches a particular unit depends on distance, orientation, glazing and what stands between — and on a 1970 building the glazing is a live question, since original units are long past the age where seal failure appears and in a condominium the windows are usually common or limited common element.

The northeast side also holds a substantial part of the city's natural area system, and Ann Arbor actively stewards its natural areas rather than leaving them alone, which means the character of that land is maintained deliberately rather than allowed to drift.

Where any open ground adjoins the community, the ownership question decides its durability, and the four possible answers look identical from a window.

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

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

Buying or selling here

At fifty-five years, what the association has already replaced is the transaction. The unit is secondary.

For a seller, a record of what has been done — roofs, piping, wiring, drives, siding — with dates and how each was funded, together with a current reserve study, is worth more than anything inside a unit. And on a community with a range this wide, naming the size band and the plan prevents a unit at either end being measured against an average that describes nothing.