Cedar Hills

Custom construction, and how it prices

Where houses are individually designed, square footage stops being a reliable predictor of value. Two houses of the same size in a subdivision like this can differ substantially in materials, specification and finish, and none of that difference appears in the numbers at the top of a listing.

So a price per square foot drawn across the neighborhood misleads, and an automated valuation leaning on a neighbor's sale will be leaning on a different product. The price has to be built from the specific property: what is actually in the house, what the lot contains, and what condition both are in.

That takes more work than reading a spreadsheet. It is also where the value is found, in both directions — a seller who lets an automated estimate set expectations will be wrong, and a buyer who assumes the last sale establishes the market will be wrong the same way.

Webster Township bought the right to stay rural

Webster Township sits in northeastern Washtenaw County and was established in 1833, among the earlier rural townships in the area; Thomas Alexander settled here in May 1826. Its oldest institution is still standing and still in use — Webster Church, raised in the spring of 1834 from whitewood logs hauled out of Plymouth and sawn at Foster's Mill in Scio, on land donated by Moses and Hannah Kingsley, and completed with a hundred-dollar contribution from Daniel Webster. It is the oldest continuously occupied church in Washtenaw County.

The more consequential fact for a buyer is recent. Webster has deliberately limited development, holding to low-density agricultural and residential zoning, and in 2005 sixty-nine percent of its voters authorized a Purchase of Development Rights program. A five-member Farmland and Open Space Preservation Board, appointed by the township board, buys development rights from willing owners, permanently removing that ground from future building.

That is the difference between a rural setting and one likely to stay rural. A zoning ordinance can be amended by a future board; a purchased and recorded development right cannot. A subdivision surrounded by land under that program sits in a materially different position from one surrounded by farmland that merely has not been sold yet.

What acreage asks of an owner

Lots of an acre and up carry obligations a suburban parcel does not, and they are worth pricing rather than discovering. Driveways of any length need resurfacing and, where they cross a ditch, a culvert that eventually fails. Tree work on a wooded lot is a recurring expense, and a large tree over a roof or a drive costs four figures to take down safely.

A drain field has a finite service life.

Drainage on a large lot is its own question, and how the ground behaves in a wet spring tells you more than any map. So does what the recorded restrictions permit — outbuildings, fencing, clearing — because on this much ground people tend to have plans.

Seclusion is a physical fact, and it has trade-offs

Lots of one and a half to three acres with mature cover produce genuine separation between houses, which is the point of the place. The trade-offs are worth naming plainly rather than discovered afterward.

Services reach large-lot subdivisions differently. Snow clearance on a long private drive is the owner's problem; refuse collection, deliveries and emergency access all depend on the drive being passable. Utility interruptions in rural townships can run longer than in a city, and a well pump does not work without power — which is why standby generation is more common on properties like these than a buyer moving from a city expects.

Internet service is the one that catches people out most often in rural Washtenaw County, and it varies parcel by parcel rather than by subdivision. It is a fair question to ask about a specific address rather than to assume from the area.

The river corridor

The Huron between Ann Arbor and Dexter is one of the better-protected river corridors in southeast Michigan. Three metroparks sit along it — Delhi on the rapids about five miles west of Ann Arbor, Dexter-Huron upstream of it, and Hudson Mills at 8801 North Territorial Road.

The Border-to-Border Trail runs the corridor, connecting downtown Dexter to the Dexter-Huron and Delhi metroparks through riverfront, woodland and prairie, and the Huron River Water Trail follows the same stretch for paddlers. The run from Hudson Mills down to Dexter-Huron is a standard trip.

That is publicly funded and permanent open space rather than association amenity. It requires no assessment, it is maintained without a special levy, and it is not going to be sold — which is a different proposition from open ground that simply has not been built on yet.

Dexter is several different places

Samuel William Dexter arrived in 1824, thirteen years before Michigan became a state, and bought a large parcel. The settlement was established as a village in 1830 and remained one until November 20, 2014, when — after a process spanning eight years — the Village of Dexter became the City of Dexter, its voter-approved charter filed with the state.

That change matters more than it sounds. Those inside the new city stopped being residents or taxpayers of the townships the village had straddled, so a property in the city and one a mile outside now answer to different taxing authorities, and comparable sales from before 2014 predate the split.

A Dexter mailing address, meanwhile, reaches across Scio, Webster, Dexter and Lima townships, and Dexter Community Schools crosses all of them while matching none exactly. Two listings both saying Dexter can therefore differ in municipality, in tax rate and in school assignment.

The founder left a house behind. Samuel Dexter was born in Boston in 1792, the son of a politician who served as Secretary of War and of the Treasury under John Adams; he came to Michigan in 1824, became a land developer and civic leader, founded several towns, and named this village after his father when he established it in 1830. Gordon Hall, the Greek Revival house he built on a hilltop above the town between 1841 and 1843, was designed by Calvin T. Fillmore — brother of the president — with Sylvester Newkirk overseeing construction, and took two years largely because lumber was hard to get from Flint and Detroit. It carries a hexastyle Doric portico, runs about 2,500 square feet on each of its two main floors with unfinished attic and basement space above and below, and originally held 22 rooms, nine fireplaces and 55 windows. It became a Michigan State Historic Site in 1958, was listed on the National Register on November 9, 1972, and was bought by the Dexter Area Historical Society in 2006.

March 15, 2012

On the afternoon of March 15, 2012 an EF3 tornado cut a path of nearly eight miles through this part of Washtenaw County, with peak winds of 135 to 140 miles an hour. It damaged more than two hundred homes and businesses by the county's final assessment, brought down hundreds of trees, and left about twenty houses needing demolition. Total damage came to just under $10 million.

Nobody was injured, which given the strength of the storm and the hour of the day was remarkable. Most of what was damaged or destroyed has since been rebuilt, though some work continued for years afterward.

For a buyer this is a live diligence item rather than a historical note, and it is the Dexter equivalent of the flood question in Dearborn. A house in or near the path may have been repaired or substantially rebuilt in 2012 and 2013 — which is worth knowing, because it means newer roofing, siding, windows or framing than the build year suggests, and because the quality and permitting of that work varied.

Ask directly whether the specific property was affected and what was done. Where it was, the permits and the contractor records are the documentation that matters, and a seller who has them is in a materially stronger position than one who does not.

Schools

Cedar Hills is served by Dexter Community Schools. The district crosses several townships and does not follow municipal boundaries, and assignment is set by address.

Buying or selling here

Custom houses on varied acreage produce few genuinely comparable sales, and the honest approach on both sides is to build the price rather than look it up.

For a seller, the evidence is the specification of the house, the lot and what surrounds it — and where neighboring ground is protected under Webster's development rights program, that is a durable, recorded, checkable fact worth putting in front of a buyer rather than leaving as an impression.

For a buyer, the order is the private systems, the recorded restrictions, the specification of the house, and a visit in a wet spring. Minutes from a downtown on three secluded acres is a genuinely good proposition; it is simply not one a spreadsheet can price.