Arbor Village Condos

Two forms in one community

This community contains both two-story and ranch townhouses, and that distinction does more work than the small difference in square footage suggests.

At around a thousand square feet, a two-story unit puts roughly half its area upstairs, which means stairs to the bedrooms and a smaller ground-floor footprint. A ranch puts everything on one level, which requires a wider footprint for the same area and produces a different relationship to the ground and to the neighbors on either side.

They also draw partly different buyers and can move differently in the same market, so a two-story sale is a weak comparable for a ranch even at identical square footage within the same association. Establish which form a unit is, not only its measured area.

The bathroom count varies widely for a community this size — from one to two and a half. That is a substantial difference in a thousand square feet, and it is one of the larger drivers of value between otherwise similar units here.

Carport or garage, which is not a detail

Some units here have carports and some have garages, and in Michigan that is a material difference rather than a preference.

A garage is enclosed, lockable, heat-retaining and usable as storage and workspace. A carport is a roof: it keeps snow off the vehicle and does nothing else. Over a Michigan winter that gap is felt daily, and it shows up in value accordingly.

So the first question about any unit here is which one it has, and the second is whether the master deed treats that structure as a general common element, a limited common element assigned to the unit, or part of the unit itself. Those three answers produce three different maintenance obligations and three different outcomes when the structure needs work.

Where a community mixes the two, comparable sales have to be matched on it. A carport unit and a garage unit are not interchangeable without adjustment.

A 1989 building

At around thirty-five years, everything mechanical in these units has been replaced at least once, and the common elements have reached or passed a first full replacement cycle.

Polybutylene supply piping is the era-specific question. It was in wide residential use from the late 1970s into the mid-1990s, and 1989 sits in the middle of that window. It should be identified by inspection rather than assumed from the year, in either direction.

What does belong to 1989 is original electrical service capacity, which was sized for the appliance loads of the time.

Original windows of this vintage are double-glazed, and seal failure shows as fogging between the panes rather than as an obvious defect.

The documents that decide the cost of ownership

In a condominium, the roofs, drives, siding and shared drainage belong to the association rather than to the individual owner, so their age lands on the association's budget. That makes the reserve study the most consequential document in the transaction — more so than the inspection of the unit itself.

Ask what the assessment has done over the past five years rather than only what it is today. A single-level unit assessment against ageing common elements is a question, not a reassurance, and a special assessment is what arrives when reserves fall short of a replacement that could not wait.

Then read the master deed's division of responsibility, which decides whether the windows, the deck, the garage door and the basement belong to the owner or the association. That division varies between associations and should never be assumed from experience of another one.

Then the minutes, which is where a pending assessment or a long-running maintenance dispute surfaces before it reaches a disclosure.

The neighborhood at Palmer and Sheldon

Palmer and Sheldon Roads meet in southern Canton, a part of the township that developed earlier than its western edge and sits closer to Michigan Avenue and the I-94 corridor.

Franklin-Palmer Estates, a single-family subdivision with houses dating from around 1978, occupies the same road junction — south of Palmer, east of Sheldon. The two are neighbors of different types and different vintages, and they are a useful illustration of why a location descriptor is not a comparable: two properties can share a corner and share almost nothing else.

Sheldon Road runs north to Plymouth and south toward Michigan Avenue, the historic Detroit-to-Chicago route and still a major commercial spine. Sheldon Corners, at Michigan Avenue and Sheldon, is one of Canton's original settlements, established at about the same time as Cherry Hill Village.

Three school districts, not one

Canton Township is served by three separate school districts: Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, which covers the substantial majority of the township, along with Van Buren Public Schools and Wayne-Westland Community Schools.

That makes assignment an address-level question rather than a township-level one. Match comparable sales on district as well as on subdivision and size.

The question buyers skip

Sound transmission is the attached-housing question people most often leave until after they move in.

It varies enormously with how the party walls and floors were built — whether a wall runs all the way to the roof deck or stops at a ceiling, what the floor assembly is, and how mechanical chases were framed. Two buildings of the same age by the same builder can perform quite differently.

There is no document that answers it. The only method is to stand in a unit at an hour when neighbors are home, which means an evening or a weekend rather than a midday showing of an empty building.

Buying or selling here

Three variables move value inside this community more than the community name does: the form, the parking structure, and the bathroom count. Match comparables on all three.

For a seller, that means stating them: two-story or ranch, carport or garage, how many bathrooms. In a community where those vary, a listing that leaves them vague invites the buyer to assume the less favorable answer.