Bellemeade

Bathroom counts up to four-point-one, in Michigan notation

The houses here are described with bathroom counts running from two-point-one up to four-point-one, and that shorthand misleads people from other markets badly enough to be worth setting out.

The Michigan convention is that the number before the decimal counts full bathrooms — with a bath or shower — and the number after counts half bathrooms, a lavatory and basin only. So two-point-one means two full and one half. Four-point-one means four full bathrooms and one half.

The common national convention would write the same house as four and a half. Reading a Michigan four-point-one as four and a half happens to land in the right place; reading a two-point-two as two and a half does not, because two-point-two means two full and two half. The notations coincide when the second digit is one and diverge when it is not.

Four full bathrooms in a house of up to 3,357 square feet is a generous ratio, and it says something real about the specification of the larger plans here.

For a buyer, the practical version is to count fixtures at a showing rather than trusting the notation. For a seller, stating it both ways removes an ambiguity that only ever works against you — and this part of the county draws buyers from well outside Michigan.

A wide range in one subdivision

A span from about 1,852 to 3,357 square feet means the largest houses are more than eighty percent bigger than the smallest, so a subdivision average describes no actual house in it.

The two ends reach different buyers and compete against different alternatives, and the carrying costs differ with them: a larger house has more of everything that ages, and replacement costs scale with size.

So comparables have to be matched on plan and area rather than drawn from the subdivision at large. Where a builder used a defined catalog — and a production builder generally did — identifying which plan a house is and finding a recent sale of the same plan is what turns an approximate analysis into a tight one. A listing does not always name the plan, and asking is worth it.

One item that applies to any house approaching 3,300 square feet regardless of era: how many heating and cooling zones serve it. A single zone across that area commonly leaves one part of the building uncomfortable, and retrofitting zones afterward is expensive. It is a question a showing will not answer and a seller can.

Colonials and ranches are two different products competing for two different buyer pools, and single-level living reaches a persistent, geographically wide pool that will consider nothing with stairs — which is why ranches in a mixed subdivision routinely outperform what their square footage suggests. Match on form before area.

Lincoln Consolidated Schools, which is not Ypsilanti Community Schools

A Ypsilanti mailing address in this part of the county very often means the Lincoln Consolidated School District rather than Ypsilanti Community Schools, and those are two separate districts with separate boards, separate buildings and separate budgets.

Lincoln's boundary is unusually far-reaching. In Washtenaw County it serves parts of Augusta Township, York Township and Ypsilanti Township; in Wayne County it serves parts of Sumpter Township and Van Buren Township. A district that crosses a county line is uncommon, and it is a useful reminder that school boundaries in this region follow none of the other lines a buyer might reasonably expect them to.

The district's origin explains the shape. It was founded as the Agricultural Rural Training School Number 1 of Ypsilanti and Augusta Townships, and renamed for Abraham Lincoln because the board felt the name fitted the ideal it was founded on — equal educational opportunity for rural students as well as urban ones. That made it the first multi-township school in Michigan, and the first rural consolidated school system in the country affiliated with a teacher training school.

The teacher training school in question was the Michigan State Normal School in Ypsilanti, founded in 1849 as the first institution in Michigan for training teachers, the fourth in the country and the first outside New England. It is now Eastern Michigan University, and it remains the largest employer in the city.

For a buyer the practical points are three. Assignment is set by address, not by municipality or ZIP code. District is one of the larger drivers of price difference between otherwise comparable houses, so comparable sales must be matched on it. And in this part of the county, two houses a short distance apart can genuinely sit in different districts.

Rolling Hills, and the open ground around it

Rolling Hills County Park lies in York Township nearby and runs to 439 acres, held by Washtenaw County — which puts it in the most durable tier of protected open space: not a business that can close and be sold, and not dependent on any association continuing to fund it.

This is the southern, more open part of the county, where subdivisions sit among working agricultural land rather than among other subdivisions. That is much of the appeal, and it comes with a specific caution.

Farmland is not protected open space. It is privately owned working land, and it is the fourth tier — protected only by its owner's current use and whatever zoning and wetland rules apply. On a growing edge of a county this is the tier most often mistaken for the others, because a field looks exactly like a park from a kitchen window, and the difference is a planning application.

So for any lot whose outlook is the reason to buy it, the inquiry worth making is who owns the ground and what the township's zoning and master plan say about it. Both answers are public and both are obtainable quickly. Where the ground turns out to be under a recorded conservation easement or in a purchase-of-development-rights program — Washtenaw County has run one — that is a durable claim and worth a great deal more than a view.

The ponds and mature trees described within the subdivision are a different matter again: almost certainly association common area, which is real protection while the association holds it, and a recurring cost the owners fund. Ponds silt, weed and occasionally need dredging, and mature trees near houses need inspection, pruning and eventual removal. Both belong in the reserve study as named lines.

Ypsilanti Township is not the City of Ypsilanti

Ypsilanti Charter Township surrounds the City of Ypsilanti and is a separate government with its own board, tax rate, services, zoning and assessor. Augusta Township lies south of it and is separate again.

A great many township mailing addresses read Ypsilanti, because a mailing address is a delivery route rather than a jurisdiction. The tax rate differs for otherwise identical properties, which is why comparable sales must be matched on municipality or the analysis imports an error that nothing in the paperwork flags.

School assignment follows a third line again and tracks neither the municipal nor the postal boundary.

Three answers, all obtainable in an afternoon, and none of them derivable from the address alone.

Four tiers of protected open space

Where open ground adjoins a property, ownership is the first thing that decides whether it stays open — but not the only one.

Land held by a public body is generally the most durable, though a public body can still sell or repurpose land. Land under a recorded conservation easement is next — an easement runs with the land, surviving a change of owner and of local board. Association common area is real protection that the owners themselves pay for. Unbuilt private land carries the least protection of the four, but that is not the same as none: zoning, recorded deed restrictions and state wetland regulation can each constrain what may be built, filled or cleared, and EGLE requires authorization for specified activities affecting regulated wetland.

From a window all four look identical, which is why it is worth checking the record rather than the view: ownership, any recorded easement or restriction, the zoning, whether wetland is mapped, and whether a development application has already been approved.

Buying or selling here

The lot size and the district are the two things most likely to be assumed wrongly here, and both are settled cheaply.

Naming the plan and the number of heating and cooling zones answers what a well-advised buyer will ask about a house of this size.