Ridgmaar Square

An architect-designed condominium, which is unusual

Most condominium communities around here were designed by their builders, working from plans that had been built before. A named architecture firm is a different origin, and it is worth understanding what it does and does not mean.

Hobbs and Black is a long-established Ann Arbor firm with a substantial body of work in the region. A community designed by a practice of that kind generally reflects deliberate decisions about siting, massing, circulation and how the buildings relate to their ground — decisions that a catalog plan dropped onto a site does not make.

What that produces, at its best, is a community that works better than its specification suggests: better light, better relationships between units, better use of the site's contours. Those are qualities a square-footage comparison cannot see and an automated valuation cannot price at all.

It also means the units are not standard products. Twenty units to a considered design will not match the plans of any other community, which makes the comparable analysis rest on measured area, position, condition and design quality rather than on a model name. That is more work and it produces a better answer.

For a seller, the design provenance is worth stating. It is a specific, checkable fact rather than an adjective, and it distinguishes the community from the builder-designed stock it will otherwise be compared against.

Twenty units at forty years

Twenty units is small enough that the small-association arithmetic applies: a roof, a facade program or a shared mechanical replacement divides by twenty rather than by two hundred, so there is limited dilution and a major expense is felt.

At forty years, those expenses are not hypothetical. Roofs, drives, siding and any shared drainage have been replaced at least once and are due again on a rolling basis. Forty years is long enough that the association has been through a cycle, and how it handled it is a matter of record in the minutes — which makes those minutes more informative here than in a younger community.

The reserve study is therefore the most consequential document in the transaction, ahead of the inspection of the unit. Ask what the assessment has done over five years rather than only what it is today; a flat assessment against forty-year-old common elements is a question rather than a reassurance.

The good side of a twenty-unit association is real: decisions are quick, there is little scope for an unresponsive board, and owners generally know the buildings.

A 1985 unit, item by item

The era sets a specific agenda, which makes an inspection efficient rather than exhaustive.

Polybutylene supply piping is the era question and 1985 sits squarely inside the window — the material was in wide residential use from the late 1970s until it stopped in the mid-1990s. It is not universal and it must be identified by material during the inspection rather than inferred from the year in either direction. Where it has been replaced, that is a documented selling point.

What does belong to 1985 is original electrical service capacity, sized for the appliance loads of the time.

Original double-glazed windows of this vintage show seal failure as fogging between the panes rather than as an obvious defect. Insulation levels are below current practice but well above the 1950s and 1960s stock elsewhere in the area.

At 2,000 to 2,500 square feet these are substantial units, and a range of about twenty-five percent means comparables should be matched on measured area rather than on the community name.

A very small association changes the arithmetic

In a condominium the roofs, facades, drives and shared systems belong to the association, and their age lands on its budget. In a very small building that principle stops being general and becomes arithmetic.

A roof replacement across a 200-unit community divides into a per-unit figure most owners can absorb. The same work in a building of a handful of units divides by a handful. There is almost no dilution — each owner carries a large fraction of every major expense, and a single significant repair can arrive as a special assessment of real size.

That cuts both ways and the good side is genuine. A small association is easier to run, easier to get a decision out of, and far less likely to be captured by an unresponsive board or an expensive management contract. Owners generally know one another and know the building. Reserves, where they exist, are simpler to understand.

But it makes the reserve study more consequential rather than less, and it makes the specific questions sharper. What are the major common elements, when is each due, and what is actually set aside? Is there professional management, or is it run by the owners? And has there been a special assessment — in a building this size, one is a much more likely event than in a large community.

The documents, in order

The reserve study comes first, ahead of the inspection of the unit itself, because whatever the association is responsible for, its age lands on the association's budget rather than the owner's.

The five-year assessment history comes second and is more informative than the current figure. A single-level unit assessment across five years against ageing common elements is a question rather than a reassurance — it can mean disciplined management or deferral, and the reserve study tells you which.

The master deed's division of responsibility comes third: which elements are general common, which are limited common and assigned to a particular unit, and which belong to the owner outright. In a downtown building that division commonly covers windows, balconies, the facade and any parking space, and it varies between associations.

Then the recent minutes, where a pending special assessment or a long-running dispute surfaces before it reaches a disclosure.

The northeast side

Earhart Road runs north and south through Ann Arbor's northeast side, connecting toward Plymouth Road and the University of Michigan's North Campus.

That position puts the university's north and medical campuses within a short run, along with the North Campus Research Complex — the former Pfizer research campus the university acquired — and the commercial corridor along Plymouth Road. US-23 lies east.

The northeast side also holds a good deal of the city's natural area system, and where any of it adjoins a property the ownership question decides its durability: publicly held land, land under a recorded conservation easement, association common area, or merely unbuilt private ground protected only by whatever zoning and wetland rules apply. One inquiry to the city or a title company settles which applies.

Schools

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

Assignment here is set by address rather than by neighborhood or building name, and district boundaries in this county cross municipal and postal lines routinely.

Buying or selling here

The design provenance and the small association are the two things that distinguish this community, and they pull in opposite directions.

For a seller, Hobbs and Black is a specific and checkable fact that separates this community from the builder-designed stock it will otherwise be compared against. Say it.