University Estates

Split-levels, and why the square footage misleads

A neighborhood holding colonials and split-levels is holding two products whose measured areas are not comparable, and the split is the one that misreports itself.

A tri-level, or split-level, arranges the house on three half-story levels connected by short flights: typically living space on the entry level, bedrooms up half a flight, and a family room and utilities down half a flight. A bi-level, sometimes called a raised ranch, puts the entry on a landing between two full levels instead. Listings use the words interchangeably even though the layouts differ.

The lowest level is usually partly below grade, which means it may or may not count toward the official finished square footage depending on how far below grade it sits and how an appraiser treats it. Two houses with identical usable space can therefore be listed at different square footages, and comparing them on that number alone misleads in both directions.

For a buyer that is an opportunity, because usable lower-level space in a split is consistently underpriced relative to the same area upstairs. For a seller it is a reason to be precise about which part of the stated area sits below grade, because a surprise at appraisal is worse than a smaller number stated up front.

The form has a distinct buyer pool too: some people find the half-flights awkward, others value the separation of living and sleeping space the layout produces naturally. That means a wider spread of outcomes than a colonial of the same area, and it means comparables should be drawn from the same form rather than from the neighborhood at large.

The colonial, by contrast, is the reference form with the deepest comparable data and the simplest roof to replace. Match on form first, then on area.

Beside the university, and what that does to a housing market

Eastern Michigan University was founded in 1849 as the Michigan State Normal School — the first institution in Michigan for training teachers, the fourth in the country and the first outside New England. It is the largest employer in the city.

That produces two effects on the housing market at once, and both matter to a neighborhood in the middle of the city.

The first is stability. A large public institution provides year-round employment across faculty, staff and administration that does not move with a single industry, and that underpins demand in a way a private employer of similar size would not.

The second is a seasonal renting population near campus, which shapes the housing stock more than people expect. Houses close to a university are more likely to have been converted to multiple occupancy at some point, and the physical evidence survives conversion back: separate entrances, extra kitchens, added bathrooms, blocked doorways, unusual electrical arrangements.

So two questions are worth asking of any house here. What is the legal use — single family, two family, or something else — because that is a zoning fact rather than a description, and the city's planning department settles it. And has the house been divided and reunited, because that bears on both value and inspection.

Neither is a problem in itself. A legally established two-family house is a genuine asset with an income attached, and near a university it is a durable one.

For anyone considering letting a property, the city's rental registration and inspection requirements are a matter of ordinance rather than assumption, and worth establishing in advance.

The golf course changed hands, and changed character

The Washtenaw course between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor has one of the better origin stories in Michigan golf, and a recent history that matters to a neighborhood near it.

In 1898 three people — Cora Henry, I. Newton Swift and Daniel L. Quirk Jr. — persuaded a local farmer to let them push three empty tomato cans into his freshly cut hay field west of the city, and invited their friends over for a game. In 1899 fifteen men from Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor formed the Washtenaw Country Club in Ypsilanti Township, making it one of the oldest clubs in the state.

It was private for most of its history. An ownership change in 2019 opened it as a public course.

That is a change in the character of a neighbor rather than trivia. A private club and a public daily-fee course generate different volumes of traffic, different patterns through the day and week, and a different relationship with surrounding streets. It also changes what proximity means: nobody nearby had playing rights at a private club, and now anybody can book a tee time, neighbors included.

For durability, a course operating commercially is privately held business land — the least durable tier of protected open space. Courses do close, and when one does the land is usually proposed for something else. Who owns it now, and whether anything recorded restricts its use to golf or open space, are answerable questions worth asking before rather than after.

In every case the correct description is proximity rather than an ownership right, unless a recorded document says otherwise.

The City of Ypsilanti, and what a city address gives you

Being genuinely inside the City of Ypsilanti is a specific and checkable fact rather than a description, because a great many addresses around here read Ypsilanti and are not in the city.

It means the city's tax rate and services rather than a township's, municipal water and sanitary sewer rather than the well-and-septic question township parcels raise, city refuse and snow service, and the city's own zoning and ordinances.

The city sits on the Huron River, with Depot Town near the railroad depot and commercial cores along Michigan Avenue and near Cross Street, connected by Huron Street.

One further city-specific question is worth raising for any older address here. The Ypsilanti Historic District runs along the Huron through the center of the city and is the third largest in the state — but National Register listing is largely honorific and does not, on its own, restrict what an owner may do to a private house. A local historic district adopted by ordinance is the binding instrument, where a commission reviews exterior changes and issues or refuses a certificate of appropriateness. The two can overlap, be different shapes, or exist without each other, so the question is whether a specific address sits in a local historic district. The city's planning department answers it free.

School assignment is still set by address rather than by city boundary. A city sale and a township sale are not interchangeable without adjustment.

What the public record will tell you

A buyer can establish a great deal from the public record in an afternoon, and most of the searching costs nothing — though document copies, certified records and some requests do carry a fee. This is worth setting out explicitly, because most people do not know these documents exist, let alone that they are entitled to them.

The year built is the single most useful fact anyone can have, because it 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 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 Register of Deeds comes second. The Washtenaw County Register holds the recorded plat for a subdivision or the master deed for a condominium: the lot or unit count, the dimensions, the original restrictions, the proprietor and the date. For a condominium the exhibit drawings show every limited common element assignment, unit by unit — which is what actually settles who owns and maintains what.

That instrument also answers a question invisible from the curb: whether a property is a platted lot or a Michigan site condominium. Michigan uses the condominium form for detached houses far more than most states, and 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 association comes third. Once identified, it supplies the bylaws, the current budget, the reserve study, a certificate of insurance and the recent meeting minutes. A seller can obtain these, and a buyer is entitled to ask for them before making an offer rather than after.

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 form and the legal use are the two things to establish, and both are free.