The Bloomfield Township Road Assessment That Follows the House, Not the Seller

In March 2026, refund checks started arriving in two Bloomfield Township neighborhoods. Property owners in special assessment districts in the Kirkway and Bloomfield Village areas began receiving refunds for road paving projects completed under budget. Property owners in SAD 425 received a refund of $4,518.41 per full unit of benefit, or $2,259.20 per half unit. Neighbors compared numbers over the fence. Township trustees called it a win.

Here's the part that gets skipped in that story. If any of those homes had sold between the assessment vote and the refund, the buyer, not the seller, would have been the one holding the account when the check arrived. In Bloomfield Township, a road assessment is not a personal debt. It is tied to the parcel. That single fact changes how a buyer or seller should read a listing in dozens of the township's subdivisions.

What a Special Assessment District Actually Pays For

Bloomfield Township does something almost no other Michigan township does. Bloomfield Township is currently the only township in the state that directly provides road maintenance to its residents. That maintenance is funded by a dedicated levy: the township currently levies 0.699 mills of the approved 1 mill, after the Headlee and Proposal A rollbacks, for the maintenance and routine repair of subdivision roads, which works out to $138 a year for a homeowner with a taxable value of $200,000. That amount stretches to cover plowing, salting, sweeping and patching of more than 213 miles of concrete, asphalt and gravel subdivision roads, including the grading and dust control of 30 miles of gravel roads.

What that levy does not cover is the moment a road actually needs to be rebuilt. The millage was never intended to cover major projects such as the replacement or reconstruction of a road or the paving of gravel roads, so for road replacement or reconstruction projects in subdivisions, the creation of a Special Assessment District becomes necessary. When a neighborhood's pavement finally gives out, the township doesn't raise everyone's taxes. It bills the specific subdivision.

Township Supervisor Mike McCready put the scale of that bill in plain terms during a 2025 discussion of the township's road committee:

"We've been doing special assessment districts with our neighborhoods, and the assessment per household we're seeing range anywhere from $25,000 to $60,000, depending on the degree of work that needs to occur, and then it's financed over 15 years, which only adds more to the cost because you have interest on top of it."

The Numbers Behind Two Real Assessments

These aren't hypothetical ranges. The township's own hearing notices show what specific neighborhoods actually paid.

A total of 9.12 miles of new road were constructed through these projects, with the roadway pulverized and four inches of new asphalt installed, along with new curbs and gutters. Treasurer Michael Schostak explained how the refund happened:

"The way these SADs work, we create an estimate of what the project is going to cost, that includes construction, engineering, administration and financing, and that estimate is what the assessment is based on when we approve the SAD. We look at what the actual costs were on the construction, the engineering, financing, legal and anything that we collected in terms of assessments, above what we needed, we return to the residents."

The estimate comes first. The final bill, or refund, can land years later. That gap is exactly where a home sale can land in the middle of the process.

The Sentence That Changes Who Owes What

Here is the detail most buyers never think to ask about, because in most transactions it doesn't matter. When a subdivision authorizes a special assessment and the work is billed out over 15 years, the remaining unbilled balance does not stay attached to the person who voted for it. It stays attached to the parcel.

The road committee organizing one Bloomfield Village project spelled this out for residents directly: the special assessment for roads is linked to the property, so if you move from the Village, the unbilled special assessment will stay with the property, just like school or park millages, which is different from the last roads effort in 2013, since the governing statute has been amended to provide that the unbilled liability stays with the property upon sale.

Translate that into a real scenario. A homeowner signs a petition, the SAD is approved, the road gets rebuilt, and the family moves out four years into a 15-year payment schedule. The remaining eleven years of payments do not follow them to their next address. They stay on the house. The buyer who closes on that home inherits the balance, whether or not anyone mentioned it during the walkthrough.

This is not a hypothetical corner of the township. It has already happened across a long list of named subdivisions. Neighborhoods that have used this same special assessment process to repair their roads include Still Meadow, Pinewood Court, Lauren Court, Kirkwood, Chestnut Run South, Chestnut Run North, Hickory Heights, Overbrook, Wabeek 5 and 6, Concord Green, Dell Rose, Thorncrest, Kentmoor, Hickory Grove, Echo Park, Sandalwood, Carillon Hills, and Knob Hill. If a listing sits in one of these areas, or in Bloomfield Village or Kirkway, the assessment history deserves a direct question, not an assumption.

Why the Township Can't Just Fix This With Tax Dollars

The obvious question is why the township doesn't simply pay for road reconstruction the way it pays for plowing. The answer sits in who legally owns the pavement. Public roads in residential subdivisions are owned by the Road Commission for Oakland County, not by Bloomfield Township itself. Public Act 51 establishes how the state distributes gas tax and vehicle registration revenue for the maintenance of certified local roads and thoroughfares, and while the state, cities, and counties are generally responsible for maintaining public streets, Bloomfield Township is an exception to that arrangement. The township can't use PA 51 state funding to provide for subdivision road improvement, because subdivision roads do not provide a thoroughfare for general traffic.

In plain terms, the state funds roads that move regional traffic. A cul-de-sac in Sandalwood or a loop street in Thorncrest doesn't qualify, no matter how badly it needs new asphalt. That leaves two ways to pay for reconstruction: a township-wide tax increase, which residents outside the affected subdivision would have to approve, or a Special Assessment District, which bills only the homes that benefit. Township officials have consistently chosen the second path. The creation of a special assessment district is completed under Public Act 188 of 1954, and the property owners benefiting from the project pay for the entire cost through the assessment.

What This Means If You're Buying or Selling Here

For sellers, the practical move is straightforward. If your subdivision has an active petition, an approved but not fully billed SAD, or a recent reconstruction project, that status is worth surfacing before a buyer's agent finds it independently. A clean disclosure builds the kind of trust that keeps a transaction moving instead of stalling at the title company.

For buyers, the question to ask isn't just "what are the property taxes." It's whether the specific parcel carries any remaining special assessment installments, and whether the subdivision has an open petition that hasn't reached a hearing yet. Forming a new SAD only requires 51 percent of the frontage and 51 percent of the parcels in a section to sign a petition, and any parcel that doesn't sign is treated as a no vote, which means a neighborhood can commit a household to a five-figure bill even if that household never signed anything. The Bloomfield Township Assessing Department, reachable at 248-433-7710, can confirm whether a specific parcel sits inside a pending or existing district.

There is one relief valve worth knowing about, though it has its own limits. The township's Special Assessment Deferment Program allows qualifying residents to defer their annual road or water and sewer special assessments, with eligibility based on a household gross income threshold of $150,000 per year or less, along with an asset test. It's built for current owners facing hardship, not a feature that transfers automatically to a new buyer, so it shouldn't be treated as a workaround during a purchase.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will a home inspection catch an unbilled special assessment? No. A standard inspection evaluates the physical condition of the house, not the township's assessment rolls. That information comes from the Assessing Department directly, not from a home inspector's report.

If a subdivision's road project comes in under budget, who gets the refund? Whoever owns the parcel when the refund is issued. If a homeowner paid their assessment in full, they receive a refund check within a few weeks; if they're paying in installments, the refund is applied to future installments. A buyer who closed mid-project would be the one receiving that credit, not the seller who lived through the construction.

Can a petition that hasn't been approved yet still affect a sale? It can affect the decision-making around a sale, even if it isn't yet a recorded liability. A pending petition with strong neighborhood support is a reasonable thing to disclose and a reasonable thing for a buyer to ask about before writing an offer.

Does every Bloomfield Township subdivision go through this? No. Many neighborhoods have roads in good condition and no open assessment history. The point isn't that every home carries this risk. It's that the ones that do won't announce it on a listing sheet, so it has to be asked about directly.

Special assessments are exactly the kind of detail that separates a smooth Bloomfield Township closing from a renegotiation two weeks before the walk-through. If you're weighing a purchase or preparing to list a home in the township, Erin Keating DeWald can help you get a clear answer on a parcel's assessment history before it becomes a surprise. Let's Connect.