Wickliffe Place

An open plan changes three things, and one of them is money

Open floor plans are the most requested feature in modern housing and they carry practical consequences that go unstated because everybody assumes the appeal is self-evident.

Sound is the first. Fewer interior walls means fewer barriers, so a conversation, a television or a kitchen carries across the whole level. In a household where two people are doing different things at the same time, that is the difference people notice after moving in rather than at a showing. Hard surfaces amplify it; soft furnishing and rugs are the practical remedy.

Heating and cooling is the second. A single large volume is harder to condition evenly than a set of separate rooms, particularly where it opens vertically. Ask how many zones serve the home and how the volume behaves in August and in January.

The third is the one that costs money and nobody expects. Appraisers and public records count rooms, and a room is generally defined by enclosure. An open plan can deliver an enormous amount of usable space that produces a low room count — and room count is among the strongest drivers in an automated valuation. So an open-plan home reads low to a model, systematically, in a way that has nothing to do with its quality.

The counter is documentation rather than argument: a dimensioned floor plan, an accurate measured area, and an explicit note about what each space is used for. It is one of the few cases where an afternoon's work by a seller materially changes an outcome.

There is also a renovation point worth knowing. In a condominium, what may be altered inside a unit is set by the master deed and the bylaws, and structural elements are frequently common element regardless of which side of them an owner stands on. An open plan that somebody wants to open further is a question for the association before it is a question for a contractor.

Downtown, and what that means for an association

A downtown condominium is a different proposition from a suburban one, and the differences run through the documents rather than the finishes.

Parking is the first and it is a more common friction point in central communities than almost anything else. Establish what comes with a unit, whether it is deeded, assigned or merely permitted, and what visitor provision exists. In a district with commercial parking demand, on-street availability is not something to count on, and a deeded space is a materially different asset from a permitted one.

Leasing rules are the second, and they matter more in a university city than almost anywhere. How many units may be leased at once determines what a unit can be used for and therefore who can buy it — an investor and an owner-occupier are different buyers with different limits. Those rules can be amended, so the current document is what matters, and the minutes will show whether amending them is under discussion.

Where a building is mixed use, with commercial space at street level, the documents will define how costs are shared between the residential and commercial portions and how each votes. That arrangement varies enormously and determines who pays for what and who controls the decisions. Lenders also look at the proportion of commercial space in a project.

The compensation for all of it is the thing that cannot be built: proximity to a city center is among the most durable features a property can have, because it depends on nobody continuing to fund anything.

Fifth Avenue and Kerrytown

Kerrytown is the district immediately north of the downtown core and one of the few parts of the city with a genuinely mixed character at a small scale: houses, converted commercial buildings, shops and a public market within a few blocks of each other.

The Ann Arbor Farmers Market operates there and has been part of the city for more than a century, running on regular market days through most of the year. The Kerrytown Market and Shops complex is the district's commercial anchor, and Zingerman's Delicatessen, which opened on Detroit Street in the early 1980s, has become one of the better-known food businesses in the state.

That combination is durable in a specific way: a public market operated by the city and a set of long-established independent businesses is a more stable neighbor than a commercial development, because none of it depends on a single tenant or a single owner.

The trade is the ordinary one for living beside activity. Market days bring traffic, parking pressure and early morning movement; a district with restaurants has evening activity. How much reaches a particular unit depends entirely on where it sits, and the only way to know is to stand there — once on a market morning, once on an evening.

The area north and east of downtown also contains established historic districts, and whether a specific address falls inside one has real consequences. Inside a local historic district, exterior changes generally require review before they are made, at the rear and to outbuildings as well as at the street, which constrains what an owner may do and equally what a neighbor may do. Listing on the National Register of Historic Places is a separate federal designation — an honor that can open certain rehabilitation tax credits but on its own places essentially no restriction on a private owner. Ann Arbor's historic district commission holds the mapped boundary and confirms a specific address at no cost.

In a condominium, exterior work inside a district is association work rather than an owner's, which puts the association in front of the commission and its timetable — and reviewed work is not always the cheapest work, so it belongs in the reserve planning.

A named builder, and a name worth being careful with

Garnet Johnson built these homes, and a named builder is worth more in a comparable analysis than most physical features. It usually means the homes are repetitions of a small number of plans rather than individual designs, so a same-plan comparable exists and can be found — and matching a sale to the same plan rather than to a similar square footage turns an approximate analysis into a tight one.

It also means construction practices were consistent across the community, so an inspection finding on one unit is informative about the others.

Identify the recorded project rather than the marketed name. The Washtenaw County Register of Deeds holds the master deed, which gives the legal name, the number, the address and the boundary.

The 10 percent size range here helps enormously in the other direction. Where every unit is within a few hundred square feet of every other, the community's own sales are usable evidence rather than a starting point requiring heavy adjustment, and what separates two units is position, orientation, condition and whether a unit is an end unit — real, priceable differences that an automated valuation handles worst.

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.

The wall between two households

In any attached housing, the wall or floor between two households is the variable that most affects daily life and appears in no listing.

What matters is the assembly rather than the finish: a genuine double stud wall with an air gap performs far better than a single framed wall with insulation, because sound travels through structure as readily as through air. Where a floor separates two households, footfall carries downward and carpet helps without solving it.

An end unit has one shared wall instead of two, which is a real and priceable difference that square footage ignores entirely.

The reliable test is the simplest: visit at an hour when people are home — an evening or a weekend — rather than mid-morning when the building is empty.

What to look up before a showing

The build year decides a great deal, because it sets the entire inspection agenda and in a condominium it also determines who carries which question. The 1960s and early 1970s raise aluminum branch circuit wiring, whose concern is the connections rather than the wire, and galvanized steel supply piping, which corrodes internally and loses flow before it fails. Anything before 1978 carries a lead-based paint disclosure requirement. The late 1970s to the mid-1990s raise polybutylene supply piping — the single most consequential era question in this region, identified by looking rather than by inference. From the late 1990s onward none of those apply, and the ordinary arc of first-generation components arrives instead.

In a downtown building there is a further question the year decides: whether it was purpose-built as residential or converted from something else. A conversion's reserve starts at zero on components that are already partway through their lives, which is a structural disadvantage a purpose-built project does not have. The recorded master deed carries the conversion date where there was one.

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.

Michigan taxable value generally uncaps in the calendar year after a qualifying transfer, and some transfers are exempt, so the tax a current owner pays is often not the tax a new owner will pay.

Buying or selling here

Parking, leasing and the plan documentation are the three things that decide this one.

For a seller, a dimensioned floor plan is the highest-return work available, because an open plan reads low to every automated valuation for reasons that have nothing to do with the home. Stating exactly what parking comes with the unit, and in what form, is the second.