Cherry Hill Orchards

Tri-level and quad-level are specific things

These two forms are frequently lumped together as splits and they are genuinely different products, from each other and from a two-story house.

A tri-level has three staircase-connected levels: an entry level with the main living space, a short flight up to bedrooms, and a short flight down to a family room, often with a garage beside it. A quad-level adds a fourth — typically a full basement beneath the lower level, giving four half-stories stacked in pairs. The consequence is that both have less continuous floor area than the square footage implies, and both feel quite different to live in from a colonial of the same size.

For a buyer that is a matter of taste, and split-levels have a narrower audience than colonials or ranches do. For a comparable-sales analysis it is a matter of arithmetic: matching a split-level against a two-story on square footage alone will misprice it, reliably, and in the same direction each time. Match on form first.

There is a practical dimension too. Split-level houses are harder to add on to than colonials, the stair arrangement makes single-level living impossible, and the lower level is frequently partly below grade — which makes drainage and moisture at that level a specific thing to look at rather than a general one.

One more consequence is worth naming because it affects resale directly. Split-level houses were built in volume for about two decades and then largely stopped being built, which means the buyers who want one are a defined and finite group rather than a growing one. That is not a reason to avoid the form — it can mean better value going in — but it does mean a seller should expect a narrower pool and price and market accordingly rather than assuming a colonial's audience.

A fifty-year-old house

Houses from 1975 to 1979 are approaching half a century, and every mechanical system has been through two or three rounds. Roofs, furnaces, air conditioning, water heaters, electrical panels and sewer laterals all have dates, and the dates matter more than the finishes do.

Some items belong specifically to the era. Aluminum branch wiring appears in some construction of the period and requires particular connections, so an inspector should identify it by name rather than in passing. A few electrical panel brands from those years carry known issues. Original windows are single-glazed or early double-glazed and fail at the seal. Federal law requires lead-based paint disclosure on housing built before 1978, which covers most of this subdivision but not its final years — one more reason to establish the build year of the specific house.

A camera inspection of the sewer lateral is the highest-value small expense on housing of this age, and on a split-level with a partly below-grade lower level it is worth more than usual: a backing lateral finds that level first.

The lots themselves are the other half of the proposition here, and they are generous by the standards of what Canton built later. Mature trees on a fifty-year-old lot are the reason these streets look the way they do and are also a recurring expense; a large tree over a roof or a drive is a four-figure job to take down safely, and storm damage to established canopy is not a rare event in this county.

The five hamlets, and the one that survived

Before the subdivisions, Canton was a scattering of crossroads settlements — five hamlets, of which Cherry Hill is the last to retain substantial historic significance. Sheldon Corners was established in 1825 beside the Sauk Trail, now Michigan Avenue, and grew into a small village with a post office, general store, blacksmith, church and school.

Cherry Hill was settled the same year and was originally called Ridge, for the ridge shore of an ancient lake it sat on. It took its present name around 1865, after Abner Hitchcock built an inn he called the Cherry Hill House for the wild cherry trees growing there; that inn later served as a general store and a dance hall and was the social center of the community for generations. The first area church, Cherry Hill United Methodist, went up in 1834.

Dairying followed. The Ypsi Creamery and the Detroit Creamery, later Wilson Dairy, operated until 1940, when Henry Ford bought the dairy and folded it into his village industry program — which here provided work for veterans of the Second World War disabled by their service. The Cherry Hill Historic District was added to the National Register in 2003. Eleven Canton houses built between 1825 and 1904 are listed under the Canton Township Multiple Property Submission, most of them added in 2000 and the rest in 2003. One of the eleven, the Sheldon Inn of 1825 on Michigan Avenue, was demolished in 2021.

How Canton got this big

Canton became a Michigan township on March 7, 1834 and was named, like the neighboring Nankin and Peking townships, after a city in China — Canton is the only one of the three still carrying the name. New England settlers arrived after the Erie Canal opened in 1825 and farmed the flat ground for well over a century; from 1925 to 1970 the township was known as the Sweet Corn Capital of Michigan, and its creameries supplied the region.

The township counted about 5,300 residents in 1961. What changed it was I-275, completed in 1977: once the freeway was in, a township of farms sat within an hour of anywhere in metropolitan Detroit. The population approached 50,000 by the 1980 census and reached 98,659 by 2020, making Canton the second most-populated township in Michigan. At the peak, construction here sometimes exceeded two thousand homes a year.

Canton has put an unusual amount of land into public recreation since. It owns two golf courses — Fellows Creek, bought in 1978, and Pheasant Run, opened in 1995 with 27 holes by Arthur Hills on more than three hundred acres. Heritage Park runs to 105 acres on Canton Center Road, the Summit on the Park beside it is a 95,000-square-foot recreation and cultural center opened in January 1996, and the Lower Rouge River Recreation Trail, begun in 2007, runs out to the I-275 Metro Trail.

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.

Match comparable sales on district as well as on subdivision and size.

Buying or selling here

A four-year build window produces a real comparable set, but only once form is accounted for. Two-story, ranch, tri-level and quad-level are four sub-markets sharing a subdivision name, and treating them as one will produce four wrong numbers.

For a seller of a split-level, the right approach is to name the form plainly and sell what it actually offers — separation between living and sleeping space, a family room on its own level, and usually more house for the money than a colonial of the same nominal size. Blurring it into a generic description reaches fewer of the right buyers, not more.

For a buyer, establish the form and the build year, look hard at the lower level and its drainage, camera the lateral.