Orchard Place

1990 sits inside the polybutylene window

Polybutylene supply piping was used in American homes from roughly the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, which places a 1990 build in the middle of the period rather than at either edge. That does not mean a given house has it — plenty of homes from those years were plumbed in copper — but it means the question is live and must be answered by looking.

The pipe is gray, flexible, and usually marked PB followed by a number. It is found at the water heater, at the main shut-off, and at fixture stubs where it comes through a wall. Checking takes about a minute and needs no expertise; an inspector will confirm it.

It matters because it affects insurability, financing and the cost of a foreseeable repair rather than being a matter of preference. Where it is present, the questions are what has already been replaced, whether any fittings have been changed, and whether the insurer has been told. Where it has been replaced, the documentation of that work is worth real money at resale and is routinely lost because nobody wrote it down.

What must never happen is an inference from the year in either direction, because it is the item where a wrong assumption costs the most and a correct answer costs a minute.

At thirty-five years, the first replacement cycle has largely happened and the second is beginning on the shortest-lived components. Roofs have been done at least once. Furnaces, air conditioning and water heaters have been replaced, possibly more than once. Original windows are well past the age where seal failure shows. So the useful questions are historical: what was replaced, when, and by whom.

Colonials, contemporary designs and two-story homes are not three categories

A colonial is a two-story home, so what actually varies here is conventional against contemporary design. That distinction points at something useful.

Where the mix is real it is straightforward: a 1990 neighborhood of conventional two-story houses, some of them built in a more contemporary idiom.

That mix, where it is real, is worth taking seriously for pricing, because architectural style is one of the few things that genuinely segments a buyer pool within a single neighborhood. A contemporary design from around 1990 — angular massing, large glazed areas, open plans, sometimes a more complex roof — reaches a different and usually smaller pool than a conventional colonial. Smaller pools mean longer marketing times and wider appraisal ranges, and they mean comparable sales should be matched on style rather than only on area.

The specific items on a contemporary design of that era are worth naming. Large glazed areas mean more original glazing units at the age where seal failure shows, and replacements in unusual sizes cost more. Complex roof geometry means more valleys and more flashing, which is where roofs fail first. And vaulted or open-to-above spaces mean heat rises out of reach, so a single heating and cooling zone commonly leaves one room that is never quite right — ask how many zones serve the house, and ask specifically about that room in August and in January.

Orchard in the name, and what land history is worth asking about

As with any development name, this one is chosen rather than descriptive, and it is not evidence about the ground. But where land in this county actually was orchard or cropland before it was subdivided — and a great deal of it was, within living memory — there is a short list of checkable questions worth answering before a purchase rather than after.

Whether a well or septic system ever existed on the parcel and whether it was properly abandoned. Whether there was buried fuel storage, which farms and orchards commonly kept for equipment. Whether field drain tile runs beneath the ground, because tile laid to drain fields does not disappear when a subdivision is built over it and can carry water in unexpected directions.

Most of these turn out to be nothing, and that is the point: they are questions with cheap answers rather than reasons for concern. A buyer who has the answers is in a different position from one who has suspicions.

The cheapest and least used tool is historic aerial photography. Coverage of this region goes back to the mid-twentieth century, and a series of images shows plainly whether ground was cropland, orchard, woodland or built on at each date. It answers in an afternoon what a name only hints at.

The Michigan seller's disclosure statement is the other half. It is a statement of the seller's actual knowledge rather than a warranty or an inspection, and it is exactly where questions about wells, septic systems, fuel storage and standing water get asked directly. A seller who has owned a property a long time knows things no inspector can see on a dry day. Read the answers, and read the blanks.

Pontiac Trail, Argo Park and the northeast side

Pontiac Trail runs northeast out of the city and is one of the older routes in the area — a road that existed as a trail before it was a road, which is why it runs at an angle to the grid rather than with it.

Argo Park is a City of Ann Arbor park on the Huron north of downtown, and publicly held parkland is the most durable tier of protected open space: not a business that can close and be sold, and not dependent on an association continuing to fund anything. It is part of a network rather than an isolated space — the Huron corridor through the city carries the Border to Border Trail, Washtenaw County's paved route intended to cross the county end to end and part of Michigan's Iron Belle Trail, linking the riverside parks to each other and upstream to the Metroparks.

Connectivity to publicly held land is one of the more durable features a location can have, and it is worth stating explicitly rather than describing as a view. For a comparable analysis that difference is real and almost never priced.

Argo is among the busier riverside spots in the city in season, which is the ordinary trade with any well-used park.

This part of the city is also within reach of the University of Michigan's north campus and the North Campus Research Complex — the former Pfizer research campus the university acquired. Institutional land is a more durable 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 and US-23 both lie within a short run, which puts a good deal within reasonable reach without crossing the center. Highway noise travels further than people expect at night and in certain wind conditions, and how much reaches a particular house depends on distance, orientation, glazing and what stands between.

Subdivision or site condominium

One question matters in Michigan more than almost anywhere, and nothing at the curb settles it: whether the homes sit on platted lots in a subdivision or are site condominium units.

The two look identical from the curb — detached houses on their own ground, driveways, yards — and they are different legal products. A site condominium unit is defined by a master deed rather than by a plat, the boundaries may be described differently, and there is an association with documents, an assessment and a reserve that a buyer is joining.

It also matters for what an owner may do: an association's documents can restrict things a subdivision's covenants do not, and the reverse.

The recorded instrument settles it and nothing else does. The Washtenaw County Register of Deeds holds either the plat or the master deed, and which document exists is itself the answer.

Where there is an association, everything that applies to a condominium applies: read the master deed for what is owned and what is shared, the bylaws for what is permitted, the budget and reserve study for whether it is solvent, and the last two or three years of minutes for what is coming.

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 occur around the city — 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

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

Buying or selling here

One minute at the water heater is the single highest-return action available on a house of this year.

For a seller, documentation that the supply piping has been checked and, if it was polybutylene, replaced, is worth real money and is routinely lost because nobody kept the invoice. Naming the architectural style precisely is the second thing, because style segments the buyer pool here and a model cannot see it.