Bridgewater Commons

Thirty homes changes the arithmetic

An association's fixed costs do not scale down with the number of members, so a small association pays a great deal per home for ordinary things.

Insurance, management, accounting, the annual audit or review, legal advice and the reserve study cost broadly what they cost whether there are thirty homes or three hundred. Divided by thirty, each of those is a much larger line on every owner's statement.

The same is true of the large replacements. Where the association is responsible for roofs, siding, driveways or a private road, the whole bill lands on thirty households. One roofing cycle across a small association can be a substantial sum per home if reserves have not been building toward it, and in an association this size there is no cushion of numbers to spread it.

That makes the reserve study the most important document here, and its absence the most important finding. Ask for the current reserve study, the reserve balance, what the association is responsible for replacing, and when each of those components was last done. In a thirty-home association those four answers effectively price the purchase.

Those are thresholds a large project would need many more units to reach, which means the answer can change between one sale and the next.

Governance has a corresponding fragility. A board needs officers, and thirty households is a modest pool from which to fill them year after year. Ask who is on the board, how long they have served and whether anyone is prepared to take over.

The compensating advantage is real. Thirty owners can decide something in an evening, the accounts are simple enough to understand in full, and there is no professional distance between the owners and the decisions. Small associations are often better run than large ones — but when they are not, there is nowhere to hide.

Bridgewater is a township, and this is not in it necessarily

Bridgewater Township is a real municipality in Washtenaw County, with its own board, tax rate, services, zoning and assessor. A development that borrows the name is not thereby in it.

This is the same category of thing as a development calling itself a Village. In Michigan a village is an incorporated municipality; a development named Village is a marketing name on a recorded plat. Names borrow the associations of real places without carrying any of their substance.

That matters to a comparable analysis as much as to a tax bill. Comparable sales must be matched on municipality, and two otherwise identical homes in different jurisdictions are not interchangeable without adjustment.

It also matters at a search. Where a development shares a name with a township, an automated search on the name will pull in results from the township that have nothing to do with this community, and a comparable set built that way will be quietly wrong. Confirm the recorded project name from the plat or master deed and search on that.

None of this is a fault of the neighborhood.

A site condominium is not a subdivision

Michigan uses the condominium form for detached houses far more than most states, and the result is the site condominium: a house that looks in every way like a house on a subdivision lot, but is legally a condominium unit.

In a platted subdivision the owner holds a lot described by metes and bounds, and any homeowners association is a separate covenant-based body. In a site condominium the owner holds a unit whose boundaries are defined by the master deed and shown on the exhibit drawings, and the ground around the house is frequently limited common element assigned to that unit rather than owned outright.

That governs what may be built, planted or fenced, who maintains what, and how the association is funded.

The consequence for pricing is real: a subdivision sale needs adjustment before it can stand as a comparable for a site condominium, or the reverse, however similar the two houses look. The recorded instrument for the parcel settles which is which, and it is worth confirming rather than assuming.

Ranches and condominiums in one small community

A community holding both detached ranches and condominium units is holding two products, and in a community of thirty homes the split makes each comparable set very small indeed.

That is worth planning around rather than hoping past. With thirty homes divided between two forms, in-community comparables for any particular home may amount to one or two sales across several years. The analysis has to widen deliberately into similar product nearby and then adjust for what it crossed — and an automated valuation does the widening and none of the adjusting.

The ranch is the form to separate first. Single-level living is a requirement rather than a preference for a substantial and growing number of buyers, and there are always more of those buyers than there are single-level homes, so ranches routinely outperform what their measured area suggests.

The compensating advantage in a community this small is human. Thirty households is few enough that neighbors know which homes have had work done, how the association actually functions, what the drives and roofs have cost and whether anything is coming. No inspection produces that and no listing contains it, and in a small association it is worth asking for directly.

In any attached housing, the wall or floor between two households is the variable that most affects daily life and appears in no listing. Sound travels through structure as readily as through air, so footfall from above is not solved by carpet. Visit at an hour when people are home rather than mid-morning.

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.

Repeating names, and why the recorded plat matters

Names are marketing. The legal identity of a platted subdivision is its recorded plat, and of a Michigan condominium its master deed — each recorded with the Washtenaw County Register of Deeds, each naming the project precisely.

The consequence for a comparable analysis is direct: a sale in a similarly named community is not evidence for a property here, however alike the marketing sounds. Two Maple neighborhoods a mile apart can differ in municipality, tax rate, school district, ownership form, size, age and association — every variable that sets a price.

A title company answers both quickly, and both are inexpensive relative to the decision.

What to look up before a showing

The Washtenaw County Register of Deeds holds the recorded plat or master deed: the lot or unit count, the dimensions, the original restrictions, the proprietor and the date, and for a condominium the exhibit drawings showing every limited common element assignment.

The year built sets the entire inspection agenda. 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.

The recorded instrument matters second, because it decides whether a property is a platted lot or a Michigan site condominium — a distinction invisible from the curb and material for pricing, since a subdivision sale needs adjustment before it can stand as a comparable for a site condominium or the reverse.

A Saline address is not necessarily the City of Saline

The City of Saline is a municipality in its own right, and it is ringed by townships — Saline, York, Lodi, Pittsfield and Bridgewater among them — whose mailing addresses read Saline. A mailing address is a delivery route rather than a jurisdiction, and it settles nothing.

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. There is a clear example a few miles away: a subdivision whose addresses read Ann Arbor, whose taxes go to Pittsfield Township, and whose children attend Saline schools — three different answers, all three correct, none derivable from the others. Match comparable sales on district.

Buying or selling here

In a thirty-home association the documents matter more than the finishes, because the exposure per owner is larger than in a big community.

For a seller, a current reserve study with a healthy balance, a clean set of minutes and a clear statement of what the assessment covers answer the questions a well-advised buyer will ask — and in an association this size those answers are genuinely reassuring rather than routine.