More Than A Feeling
The News runs a feature on burglary in Ann Arbor. “The typical scenario is this: A student leaves the front or back door unlocked, then goes out for a while or heads to sleep, and later discovers a laptop computer, Sony PlayStation or DVDs missing.” Not typical enough, though, for a student to be the profiled victim in the accompanying “human side” piece, which explores the feelings of a serial burglar, a Burns Park homeowner and an Ann Arbor Police detective in the aftermath of crime. (One of the detective’s cases described in the story does involve the apartment of a recent U of M alum.)
But students aren’t just blamed for contributing to the problem by neglecting to lock their doors and windows; they’re actually buying the stolen goods. Or at least AAPD detective Brian Jatczak has “a feeling that they’re re-circulated around campus and sold back to students some way.”
“I always got respect for the people’s houses and never damaged things or ransacked,” says Wallace, leaning to the side in a blue plastic chair at the Boyer Road Correctional Facility in Carson City. “It was a rush to get through something that’s built not to be able to get into.
Wow! It’s so nice to know that some crooks actually have respect for the property they are stealing.
“Kids in Ann Arbor were spoiled and I didn’t like that,” Wallace says. “I wanted to take everything from everyone so they would feel the same pain I felt.”
A modern day Robin Hood! I’m sure the liberal hippies in AA could understand. After all, do they really deserve that $300,000 3 bdroom house?
I didn’t have a drug problem until I got money,” Wallace says.
They say that money is the root of all evil, no matter how you earn it.
posted by DrMandrake on May 30th, 2005 at 3:12 pm$300,000 3 bedroom house? Around the corner from me that gets a two-bedroom condo. (I’m guessing Anna could top that.)
Downstairs neighbors had a BBQ that got drunken and I’m hurting today. Unfortunately (though I’m sure there are differing opinons), Bloody Mary specials only on the weekends. It went okay, but they’re still chicks that graduated from ASU a year ago and that means I’m still old and stupid.
Let me take a shower. Maybe I could post something on topic then.
posted by Anonymous on May 30th, 2005 at 5:06 pmNow I’m wondering where the cheap iPod my brother got on Marketplace came from.
Probably the undergrad / science library, if illicitly at all, though. Christ. I could have stolen about three different laptops a night when I did my late-night counting-heads rounds there. But the kids making out in the journal room might’ve noticed, I suppose.
posted by Jen on May 30th, 2005 at 7:56 pmGot to love the blame the victim mentality. It’s not the crook’s fault that he stole but the fact that the doors were unlocked. And if he had broke a window or something, I suppose that would be the fault of the people for not having bars over them.
Gah.
posted by Kozzie_13 on May 30th, 2005 at 10:04 pmTop three hundred thousand for a condo? Um, no, out here, a three bedroom house goes for around $230-$350K.
posted by Anna on May 30th, 2005 at 10:11 pmErrr… out here /= AA
posted by Anna on May 30th, 2005 at 10:11 pmI’m not sure what the average is nowadays, but there are a great many three-bedroom houses in the city of Ann Arbor which would sell for well under $200,000.
Moreover, it’s a buyer’s market these days, and prices do not seem to be headed upward.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on May 30th, 2005 at 11:07 pmHi, Anna — I thought you were in NYC.
When I moved to town, I was living in a 4-room 1-bedroom in a carriage house 3-flat. It got torn down in 2001 to make room for a 5-bedroom single family dwelling. I think 3.5 bath, jacuzzi, granite cointertops, etc. Asking more than a million. Still hasn’t sold.
On topic …
I wasn’t in on this caper, so for sure this was a little off. I’ll use current jobs instead of names….
A filmmaker was studying in the UGLi. He went to take a leak and his calc(?) text disappeared. So he went to Ulrich’s to get another one — and there was the same book! Ulrich’s sells him the book and gives him the address of the guy that returned it (Markley dorm room). The filmmaker rounds up a salesman, a sys/admin, and a professor to go pay the guy a visit.
The filmmaker knocks on the door with the three other guys standing behind him with their arms folded like they’re in PE. Without much persuasion, the guy made restitution. When he was leaving, the filmmaker grabbed a bag of chips (?) off of the guy’s dresser, too.
posted by A Different Jon on May 30th, 2005 at 11:40 pmAlso, the apartment WAS going for $590/month, including all utilities.
posted by A Different Jon on May 30th, 2005 at 11:56 pm(no, I’m somewhere between NYC and Boston — I should say that you could get a house for less than $200K here, but the equivalent of the OFW would cost on the $230-350 range — astoundingly not far from what you’d pay in AA — and salaries tend to be higher out here; for a 3-bedroom on the water, you could pay anywhere from $350-1M, depending on which town and which neighborhood).
posted by Anna on May 31st, 2005 at 8:41 amBumper sticker of the week.
“Recycle Ann Arbor is my fence”
posted by Ryan on May 31st, 2005 at 9:50 am_I’m not sure what the average is nowadays, but there are a great many three-bedroom houses in the city of Ann Arbor which would sell for well under $200,000._
Really? where?? Having bought a house just 1-1/2 years ago, we had a heck of a time finding a 3-bedroom house for under $200K. And if we did, it was usually sold the same day it went on the market - for $20K more than the asking price - or in such bad shape that the house was uninhabitable unless it had at least $40K in repairs. There’s very little out there in that range I think, unless the market has changed *a lot* in a very short period of time. Heck, even most condos these days are starting in the $200s.
posted by KGS on May 31st, 2005 at 10:40 amKGS, if you’d pay me $200,000 for my house, it’s yours. And I can’t imagine that my house is at all unique.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on June 1st, 2005 at 1:04 pm3 bedrooms on the far southeast side, for example, often go for less than $200k … but to get something that cheap inside the city, you pretty much have to go to the edges … and at that point, you’d might as well live in one of the townships and save on taxes…
posted by Scott T. on June 1st, 2005 at 5:08 pmTwo and three-bedroom houses under 1000/sq feet still sell for under $200,000, even close in to downtown (the house across the street from me within easy walking distance to downtown and campus just sold for $188,000 last month). But most buyers these days think that is too small.
posted by Juliew on June 1st, 2005 at 5:46 pmWait, it was a “rush” to get in through an unlocked door?
posted by RD on June 1st, 2005 at 7:33 pmJuliew nailed it: if you want an ordinary 900-square-foot three-bedroom house on a smallish lot like most of us (of a certain age) grew up in, you can easily find one in good condition for under $200,000 in Ann Arbor.
Houses like this are plentiful because this was the standard middle class home until about 1965.
But if you want a much bigger house, sure, it’s going to cost more.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on June 2nd, 2005 at 12:14 amthere is a Pink house on Page (over by Packard
posted by Anonymous on June 2nd, 2005 at 2:04 pmand Industrial) that’s 800 sq. feet, and they are
asking $210,000! I think it has 2 bedrooms. It’s
a long narrow house….how bout that!?
Are you sure 900 sq feet really an average size for a family of four until 1965? Because according to the National Association of Homebuilders, the average in 1970 was 1400 (a figure I believe, but I have trouble believing the 900 square foot figure, partly because I *looked* for a small older home and couldn’t find one here much smaller than my 1700 square foot house, built in 1930, and which gained footage by the incorporation of a sleeping porch). It has one bathroom (and a half, which is in a former closet) and three bedrooms. I honestly don’t know where you could subtract more than about 600 square feet (you could make the rooms smaller), since it doesn’t have anything but a kitchen, lr, and dr on the first floor, and the garage isn’t attached.
posted by Anna on June 2nd, 2005 at 3:28 pmOkay, this all is an empirical question. I did a search on realtor.com, which lists all houses with an MLS listing. I restricted my search to single-family homes with 3-bedrooms, under $200K. There were eight properties (out of 232 total for sale). Realtor.com doesn’t always give addresses (you can get maps approximating the location), but as far as I could tell, none were in what is usually considered “walking distance” e.g., 2388 Yost, 2395 Yost, 2672 Elmwood, 2725 Canterbury. The addresses on Yost, for example, are 4.26 miles from Leopold Brothers (according to Mapquest), the address on Elmwood is 4.35 miles, and the one on Canterbury is 3.72 miles.
posted by Anna on June 2nd, 2005 at 4:05 pmAnna, the houses in my area were built in the early 1900s and are in the 850 to 1100 sq. ft. range and most of them have three bedrooms. You just keep making all the rooms smaller (fortunately the ceilings are often high) and usually one of the bedrooms is quite a bit smaller than the others. Plenty of room to live in though–until recently most of these houses had at least four people living in them and some still do.
It has been my experience that these smaller houses are sold by owner and don’t get listed or shown by realtors so they are harder to find. Rental companies buy them up quickly if they are near campus (and flip them for *a lot* more a few years later). We went with a buyer’s agent and got a house that was listed, but was not being shown. It is true that you have to do some legwork and it is better if you have some time to find the right place.
posted by Juliew on June 2nd, 2005 at 4:35 pmMy house (3 bedrooms, 900 square feet, not including a full basement) is 1.8 miles by road from Leopold Brothers. It’s a perfectly good house, but it’s not worth $200,000 in the current market. And there are plenty of copies of my house all over the neighborhood and all over town.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on June 2nd, 2005 at 5:09 pmGiven the price of the others around your size that are much farther from campus, I’m not sure how you have come to the conclusion that your house isn’t worth $200K. Unless you’ve tried to sell it, it’s pretty hard to know (and the fact that none of those houses that you say are worth less than $200K seem to be on the market speaks to their value). Also, I’m not very convinced by the anecdotal evidence that maybe one could get one that wasn’t yet on the market for under $200K — if they are, indeed, snapped up before hitting the market, that means they’re being sold for under market value. The long and short of it is that it would be exceedingly difficult for a buyer to walk into Ann Arbor and get a 3 br house within reasonable walking distance of downtown for under $200K.
posted by Anna on June 2nd, 2005 at 5:38 pmAnna - Larry’s correct. I found lots of listings on the MLS in Ann Arbor for single family homes less than $200,000. They’re all 2-3 bedroom homes with 1 to 1.5 baths and 800 to 1200 sf in size. Although it seems that most of them are in the 48108 zip code, there are still some in the 48104 zip code immediately surrounding the main campus.
posted by JCP2 on June 2nd, 2005 at 8:16 pmAny true crime tales for the other theme in this thread?
posted by A Different Jon on June 3rd, 2005 at 6:49 amJCP2 - The search I did yesterday (for single family homes with 3 bedrooms) turned up 8 properties, all miles from campus (I restricted the search to 48104, but part of that zip is quite far — up to five miles from Leopold Bros.). You are right, If you want to buy a *two bedroom house* there are a few more. But the question was about three bedrooms. And most families will not find 2 br to be large enough. I probably should have put this in the other thread in which whoever it was claimed that families who want to badly enough can live within walking distance of downtown and ergo shouldn’t rely on cars.
posted by Anna on June 3rd, 2005 at 7:22 amIt looks like this one just off Main will be coming on the market for cheap pretty soon. (I’d link to assessment data, but the city’s database doesn’t want to cooperate).
posted by Dale on June 3rd, 2005 at 11:58 amIsn’t square footage a better metric of house size than number of bedrooms? 900 square feet is 900 square feet, no matter how you partition it.
We ARE trying to sell our house. It’s not listed yet, but we are talking with realtors, reading the ads, following reported sales, etc. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that anyone will give us $200,000 for it.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on June 3rd, 2005 at 2:08 pmNo, actually, I don’t think square footage is a better metric than number of rooms. What good does a very large master bedroom do you if what you really need is bedrooms for three kids? I say this from experience because my house used to be a four bedroom, converted into three by the previous owners so that the master bedroom could be larger. My house is worth less than if the conversion had never taken place and for good reason. Some families want/need the extra room more than they care about one large one.
posted by Anna on June 3rd, 2005 at 11:55 pmWell, our house already has three bedrooms, no conversion required. If somebody were to give us $200,000 for it, I’d be thrilled. But given the “glut” (per the realtor) of houses on the market, that is not going to happen.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on June 4th, 2005 at 12:18 pmThe guy from the future thread was right. You fucking hipsters! The next thing you’ll be saying is how you snorted mortgage points off of the bar at the BW3!
posted by A Different Jon on June 4th, 2005 at 2:40 pmJS, can’t you do anything about Anna?
posted by Anonymous on June 4th, 2005 at 5:30 pmDoes anybody know what a 4 bedroom, 3.1 bathroom house with a radiant heated driveway is?
Offered at $1,200,000.00.
posted by A Different Jon on June 10th, 2005 at 9:25 amsomeone tried to break into a third story apartment in my building. climbed onto the second floor balcony from the ground and jumped the second and pulled himself up. right by the nursing school. insane how desperate some people are
posted by Anonymous on June 11th, 2005 at 9:27 pm