Chateau Vert

Eighteen years of building, and every era question in one place

A build window from 1969 to 1987 is among the widest we cover, and it means the era questions here are house-specific rather than neighborhood-specific. Two units that look identical from the road can differ by nearly two decades of code, materials and mechanical practice.

For a unit from 1969 through the mid-1970s: aluminum branch circuit wiring was used in that period and needs specific remediation at connections rather than wholesale rewiring — it is a manageable, known issue when identified and a genuine hazard when ignored. Galvanized steel supply piping is also possible, and it corrodes internally over decades, reducing flow before it fails.

For anything built before 1978: a lead-based paint disclosure requirement applies, and that is a legal obligation on a seller rather than a matter of judgment.

For a unit from the late 1970s to 1987: polybutylene supply piping instead, which was in wide residential use from the late 1970s until it stopped in the mid-1990s and developed a reputation for failing at fittings.

In a condominium there is a further wrinkle a house does not have: whether supply piping and wiring are unit or common element varies with the master deed, and that decides who pays for a replacement and who decides when it happens. Where an association has already re-piped or rewired, that is a substantial thing to have behind you and it will appear in the minutes and the reserve history.

The single most useful thing anyone can do here is get the year first and tell the inspector before they arrive.

Compact units, and what that means

A range from about 860 to 1,062 square feet is narrow — under a twenty-five percent spread — which is genuinely useful for pricing, because it means the units really are comparable to one another and sales recur against a consistent product.

It also means this community competes in a specific and durable part of the market. Compact attached housing serves buyers for whom a smaller, lower-cost, lower-maintenance home is the point rather than a compromise, and that pool does not disappear.

The variables that then do the work are which unit within the community, what it faces, whether it is an end unit, and condition. An end unit has one shared wall instead of two, which is a real and priceable difference that square footage ignores entirely.

In any attached housing, the wall or floor between two households is the variable that most affects daily life and appears in no listing. What matters is the assembly: a genuine double stud wall with an air gap performs far better than a single framed wall with insulation, because sound travels through structure as readily as through air. Construction of the 1970s reflects the standards of its period, and the variation between buildings is larger than the variation between decades.

The reliable test is the simplest one: visit at an hour when people are home — an evening or a weekend — rather than mid-morning when the building is empty.

Buying an older condominium unit

Buying a condominium unit means buying into a corporation as well as a home, and in a community approaching or past fifty years old the corporation's condition is the larger part of the purchase.

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. In an older community this is decisive, because the components now needing replacement are exactly the ones whose ownership people assume rather than check.

The budget and the reserve study answer whether the association can pay for what is coming. At this age, roofs have been replaced at least once and are likely due again; siding, driveways, parking areas and any private roads are all within their replacement horizons; and original plumbing and wiring may still be in place. An association with thin reserves and several of those approaching at once is not cheaper — it is a deferred bill with an unknown date, and it arrives as a special assessment.

Read the last two or three years of minutes. Minutes are where a coming expense, a dispute or a construction defect claim surfaces first, and they are the most informative document nobody reads.

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.

Schools

This community is served by Ypsilanti Community Schools, which is a distinct district from Lincoln Consolidated — the district covering much of the southern part of Ypsilanti Township and parts of four other townships across two counties.

Assignment is set by address rather than by neighborhood name, and boundaries here cross municipal and postal lines routinely. District is one of the larger drivers of price difference between otherwise comparable properties, so comparables should be matched on it as well as on municipality.

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 year built and the association's finances are the two things that decide this purchase.

For a seller, the assessor's year built, an inspection-grade answer on the wiring and the supply piping, and a record of any association-level re-piping, rewiring or roofing answer nearly everything a buyer of a community this age will worry about.