There Goes the Neighborhood
“As students move in, neighbors cringe and property values fall,” the Daily asserts (the latter claim isn’t so preposterous, but is backed by absolutely no evidence in the story.) The “nut graf,” as those in the news biz like to say:
[Gwen] Alexander still hasn’t been able to sell the house she bought when she came to Ann Arbor for graduate school. Although she hasn’t turned down any potential buyers, she said she told her realtor not to sell the house to someone who would turn it into student housing.
So in other words, this woman, who bought her house as student housing, is now trying her best to keep it from turning into student housing. Of course, it was the good kind of student housing when she bought it, but if she sold it to a landlord, it would go to the kind of students who have to rent. Not our sort of people at all.
Ha! I don’t think you really “get it”; things were DIFFERENT back in her day–more people dressed like her and talked like her, and there wasn’t all this tomfoolery and loud music and hanging in pool halls, and you know where you stood and people knew it, too, because people had their legs further apart… I could do this all day, I really could. Reading about that crap makes me nostalgic in the wrong way for when I lived in the Old West Side.
posted by Lazaro on February 15th, 2007 at 9:10 amAlexander’s realtor may have legal problems. Check out this provision of the City Code:
9:152. Discriminatory housing practices.
(1) No person shall discriminate in leasing, selling or otherwise making available any housing facilities.
One basis of discrimination is “educational association”, which means the status of enrollment or non-enrollment in an educational institution.
So it is illegal to discriminate in housing because of people’s student or non-student status, within the City of AA.
posted by David Cahill on February 15th, 2007 at 10:32 amInteresting. I recall a certain visitor to this site having a listing for a rental saying s/he would offer to lower the rent if the potential tenant was not a student.
posted by Anna on February 15th, 2007 at 10:48 amWe rented when we first moved to town. When we found a house we wanted to buy, our landlady was quite adamant at first that we couldn’t sublet the place to students. When the AA News called me back about our advertisement, the kind woman from the classifieds informed me that it was not possible to put “no students” in the ad. Who knew? I wonder how widespread this is?
posted by Young(ish) OWSider on February 15th, 2007 at 11:08 amAll a smart landlord who wants to exclude students or young people needs to do is routinely run credit checks on applicants. No credit? No apartment.
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on February 15th, 2007 at 11:24 amI see your point but I would much rather have a judgmental seller then half the town be owned by Barnes and Barnes as it is in Ypsilanti. Rental property has ruined some great houses and neighborhoods all around EMU and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
posted by simplehiker on February 15th, 2007 at 11:40 amPlus I think their is a huge difference between the average graduate student and a house full of undergrads renting a house.
Yeah, discriminatory selling practices could keep out all sorts of “undesirables”.
posted by Anna on February 15th, 2007 at 12:22 pmGrad students may behave differently from undergrads, but they’re treated pretty much the same by landlords and are affected just as much by the constrained supply of housing.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 15th, 2007 at 1:44 pm‘So in other words, this woman, who bought her house as student housing, is now trying her best to keep it from turning into student housing. ‘
Maybe not as much fun, aaio, but isn’t her point owner occupied vs. rented? Do students who live in houses they own (or parents own) have better relationships with their neighbors? Probably not if their parents own them.
posted by abc on February 15th, 2007 at 2:06 pmWell, of course it is, but if she admitted that, she would have to admit that she doesn’t want to live around people who can’t afford to own a house, which is a little less socially acceptable to state outright.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 15th, 2007 at 2:09 pmI don’t think the student housing thing is what’s behind her difficulty in selling. Check out how long houses are staying on the market in Ann Arbor (not that I have any real data, just observations). I don’t think many sellers in the deuce right now have the luxury of specifying what kind of people will be buying their houses. This sounds like a convenient excuse.
posted by dcwp on February 15th, 2007 at 2:28 pmThe news article leaves out the two most important facts: the price she paid when she bought the house and the asking price she wants to sell it for. I wouldn’t be surprised if “losing $10,000″ actually means losing $10,000 off the inflated profit she was expecting to make when selling the house - it’s like cutting taxes by lowering the rate of tax increase.
posted by UM Postdoc on February 15th, 2007 at 3:38 pmGood point UM Postdoc, but the housing market in AA is actually down pretty significantly this year. I think a lot of folks are losing money in the sense of selling for less than they paid.
posted by dcwp on February 15th, 2007 at 4:00 pm“Well, of course it is, but if she admitted that, she would have to admit that she doesn’t want to live around people who can’t afford to own a house, which is a little less socially acceptable to state outright.”
Oh, c’mon, it’s not a social class thing, it’s an age and maturity thing — most UM students, after all, grew up well-off and will be rich enough in their own right in a few years.
And I thought one of the funniest things in the article was that some of these neighborhoods had student renters moving in for the first time because the renters were trying to get away from the noise and trashiness of student neighborhoods.
posted by mw on February 15th, 2007 at 9:04 pmdcwp,
“I think a lot of folks are losing money in the sense of selling for less than they paid.”
If they bought the house in the last 2-3 years, quite likely. In this case, the house was purchased in 1993. (Source: City of Ann Arbor online assessing - and possibly earlier; that was a $1 sale, and the article stated she’s been living there for 18 years, so possibly her parents bought it and then sold it to her?) Zillow estimates the 10-year change in value of this house at about +70%, down from a high of +95% about 8 months ago. Anybody want to guess what the 18-year change in value was? I’m sure there are people in the present housing economy losing actual money (but if you bought a house to own for a mere 2-3 years, you were making a very risky investment to begin with), but in this case, I feel comfortable going with the “$10,000 loss from inflated expectations” explanation.
Also note, from the City’s assessing data, the only property in the city owned by under this name not on White Street was purchased this summer for $498,500. I don’t feel *too* much sympathy for her loss of $10,000 worth of expectations if she’s buying half million dollar homes.
posted by Yum, data! on February 16th, 2007 at 10:32 amHow are people getting away with breaking the law if discrimination against those with an “educational association” is illegal? For the same reason that Ann Arbor Housing Codes state that no more than six unrelated individuals may live in a unit and most student units house 7 or more. Nobody is going to enforce it. Landlords and Ann Arbor residents like Alexander will break the law when they know they can get away with it.
UM Postdoc and Yum, data!, good point. If that’s the case, then Alexander’s (and the local realtor in the article) case is very much diminished. As for the argument of grad students behaving differently than undergrads, I wouldn’t be so quick to generalize. I’ve been to a few “events” hosted by grad students at their houses/apartments, and have at times been indistinguishable from undergrad get-togethers.
posted by Jared Goldberg on February 16th, 2007 at 12:26 pmWow. Wish I’d bought a few years earlier!
Looks like you’re right, what a whiner.
posted by dcwp on February 16th, 2007 at 3:59 pmI rented a house on the ‘wrong side’ of Burns Park until a couple of years ago. The rent was ridiculous, but the property was very well taken care of only because we (the renters) took meticulous care of it. I think that Alexander may not want her home to turn into student housing because the HOMEOWNERS are often negligent in providing more than basic maintenance, and the property becomes a blight on the neighborhood.
Students aren’t usually up for a weekend of gardening, sidewalk sweeping, etc. That’s part of the reason why they rent. The rentals end up looking like shit because the property owners let it look that way.
posted by amyp on February 16th, 2007 at 7:20 pmSimplehiker…Barnes and Barnes aren’t the problem in Ypsi…it’s some of the shady landlords like Kircher that are the problem. B&B often purchase already divided homes that are in disrepair and raise them to at least average student housing levels if not better.
posted by andy on February 18th, 2007 at 4:54 pmDidn’t know where to post it, but felt like this would be a great forum to at least get some type of explanation. The topic is the apparent building boom in Ann Arbor despite the bad economy. It seems that office and residential development is proceeding at a fever pitch. Take a drive down to Depot street and marvel at the new white three story office building (with the “where-the-railroad-ends” art piece and the blue neon streak or as you exist US-23 at Plymouth road, check out the huge brick office complex that remains empty. Finally, check out the new office building and mall going up on Plymouth road with artificial pond. Anyway, my question:
1. Are AA council members totally blind to structured and perhaps planned development or are they receiving “kick-backs” to let developers build on every unbuilt parcel left within the city?
posted by futball fo bo on February 20th, 2007 at 9:52 pmI see your point but I would much rather have a judgmental seller then half the town be owned by Barnes and Barnes as it is in Ypsilanti.
Barnes and Barnes? The guys who sang “Fish Heads”?
posted by RMc on February 21st, 2007 at 9:33 amfutball…. The council will give a permit to anybody they think will bring in more tax dollars, existing home owners be dammed. For Plymouth-Green Crossings they *demanded* a certain amount the project be residential. As a condo owner a few blocks away with a unit that has decreased in value 15%+ in the last two years I’m looking forward to having even more housing units to saturate the market.
My next rant (I’m going to see if there’s a topic about it somewhere in the blog) is openning a third high school when you have 3000+ people leaving town with Ave Maria/Pfizer and related businesses. I guess the concept of a sunk cost is lost on City & District aministration.
posted by randomguymike on February 25th, 2007 at 6:21 pmHousing in all of Michigan is screwed. What makes people blame the students for housing issues? Stuoidity.
Ann Arbor is owned by UM. It is also usually little effected by blights to the economy by the fact that UM brings in a lot of money on research and tuition. If UM left, AA would collapse with the rest of the state as it swirls down the toilet bowl of auto industry influenced poverty.
Glad I left when I did.
Go Figure.
posted by Scooteronomy on March 24th, 2007 at 3:18 pm