Ravines

One builder, one year, 101 houses

This is an unusually clean set of facts for pricing, and worth recognizing as one.

A single builder in a single year means one code cycle, one generation of materials and consistent detailing throughout. What one house here does well and badly, the others tend to as well — so an inspection finding on one property is informative about the neighborhood rather than idiosyncratic to a single building. On a street of 101, ask around: people know what the houses do.

One hundred and one units also produces enough turnover to generate genuine comparable data year after year, from inside the neighborhood, on similar product. Volume is the scarcest thing in a comparable-sales analysis and most neighborhoods around here do not have it.

Where a builder used a catalog of plans across those lots, identifying which model a house is and finding a recent sale of the same model turns an approximate analysis into a tight one. That is worth asking about.

The counterweight is that a single build year means the whole neighborhood ages together. Roofs across 101 houses reached the end of their first covering at about the same time, and the same is true of furnaces and water heaters. That is neither good nor bad — it simply means a house that has had none of that work done is further behind its neighbors than the same house would be in a subdivision built over twenty years, and a house where it is documented stands out correspondingly.

Wexford Homes appears elsewhere in the area as well, which means what is learned here travels a little further than one neighborhood.

Built on cropland, which the name does not say

This ground was farmed before it was built on, which is true of nearly every subdivision around here and worth stating here because the name suggests otherwise.

A ravine name promises topography. The land is described as a wooded setting, and this part of the county does undulate more than the flat townships east of here — so the claim is plausible rather than empty. But former cropland is by definition ground that was cleared and worked, so any woodland present is either what was left at the margins or what has been planted since, and a twenty-five-year-old planting is not a mature wood.

That matters practically for two reasons. Where trees are young, the screening between houses is still developing rather than established — which is a positive trajectory rather than a defect. Drainage in a wet spring, best asked of neighbors; and who maintains the corridor — the county drain commissioner, the township, the association or the owners — which is a documented answer rather than a matter of custom.

Sloped ground drains better than flat but concentrates water where it collects. Look at how the ground falls away from the foundation, where downspouts discharge, and where any sump sends its water.

A three-acre park the association almost certainly owns

The park, ball fields, tennis court, volleyball pit and gazebo are a substantial amenity package for a neighborhood of 101 houses, and the question that decides what they are worth is who owns and funds them.

In a development of this type they are usually association common area, which is the third of the four tiers of protected open space: protected while the association holds it and its governing documents say so — real, but a decision the association could revisit, and an upkeep cost it must fund.

That makes them budget lines as much as amenities. A tennis court surface cracks and is resurfaced on a cycle measured in years, with fencing and lighting alongside. Ball fields need mowing and maintenance. A gazebo has a roof. Three acres of grounds are mown, planted and renewed.

So the questions are: does the association own them, what does its budget allocate to them, and is there a reserve for the court resurfacing and any structure. An attractive amenity package with no budget behind it is a liability the association has not yet priced — and across 101 houses, a shortfall divides into a manageable but real per-household figure.

Read the recorded restrictions and the association's budget and recent minutes. On a neighborhood of this size those documents exist and should be produced without difficulty.

Ann Arbor address, Scio Township government

This is the most common and most expensive confusion on Ann Arbor's west side, and it is worth stating plainly.

Scio Township surrounds the City of Ann Arbor on the west and is a separate government with its own board, its own tax rate, its own services, its own zoning and its own assessor. A great many Scio Township mailing addresses read Ann Arbor, because a mailing address is a delivery route rather than a jurisdiction.

The differences are concrete. The tax rate differs, sometimes substantially, for otherwise identical houses.

School assignment follows a third line again. Ann Arbor Public Schools reaches beyond the city limits into surrounding townships in places, and Dexter Community Schools reaches into others — so a township property can carry either, and the boundary follows neither municipal nor postal lines.

A city sale and a township sale are not interchangeable without adjustment.

A house from 2000, at twenty-five years

A single build year makes this straightforward: every house is at the same point in its life, which is around twenty-five years.

What is on the list is the first full replacement cycle, which has arrived. Original roofs are at or past the end of a typical asphalt shingle service life and many have been replaced once. Original furnaces, air conditioning and water heaters are at or beyond normal expectancy. Original double-glazed windows show seal failure as fogging between the panes.

The item specific to construction of this period is exterior cladding and how water is managed at its edges. Composite and hardboard products perform well where ends, edges and penetrations were sealed properly and poorly where they were not, and twenty-five years is long enough for the difference to show. The bottom courses and anywhere a deck or porch meets a wall are where to look.

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.

Buying or selling here

The consistency is the advantage and the amenity budget is the question.

For a seller, a documented set of replacements — roof, furnace, air conditioning, water heater — puts a house visibly ahead of its neighbors in a neighborhood where everything came due at once. That is a stronger position here than in a mixed-age subdivision.

Not to be confused with

• Ravines of Ann Arbor · Ann Arbor