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Originally Posted by dc_denizen
question for the detroit forumers..do any of you own property in the city?
what do you think about buying a vacant lot or two close to Woodward, maybe to develop as single family housing or re-sale in 5 or 10 years? Or buying a house in a nice but run down and eventually re-developable neighborhood like, i don't know, Dexter-Davidson?
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I personally don't own any property in the city but a good friend of mine owns several i worked with her on several occasions renovating one of her home's in a neighborhood on the northwest side. The home i worked on first is in a neighborhood that while a bit of a rough side towards telegraph rd it backs up to the rouge river and surrounding natural areas a former golf course that Kwame Kilpatrick and his administration gave to a neighboring mega church in a deal that it would be preserved for the residents. Unfortunately soon after he was booted out of office the church declared that it didn't have the expertise to run a golf course and has kept it as a fenced off natural area ever since. Since this area of NW Detroit was an old haunt so to speak of ours we were able to find a good niche area that had steals in the "wood-frame bungalow" area of the neighborhood but she also had a friend of hers that was willing to rent right away when we were done and moved across telegraph and worked on another property that has vacant lots next to it to use for her business that she has bought for i think its $500 per lot from the land-bank if you own the adjacent lot
There are a lot of opportunities along the Grand River corridor from the Old Redford neighborhood with its small artist community and properties in its downtown that have been bought by the developer who is remodeling the Fisher Building in New Center, through the Grandmont - Rosedale Park area down towards the Grand River - Greenfield shopping district. Grand River ave. has seen a decent amount of small bouquet style shops opening along with streetscape improvements making the area more walkable.
However this part of the city is more of a suburban style even if it as a 20s-50s notion of what that means which is obviously a much more urban style than many other cities in the south and west. The Russell Woods neighborhood area between Linwood and Livernois south of Davison which is a mile or two northwest of Boston - Edison & Virginia Park and a mile or two south of the University District which is receiving the most attention of any area outside of the greater downtown area is where i would invest in. It may be another 5 years when areas like B&E, Virginia Park and The University District have been "gentrified" that Russell Woods would most likely see real strong interest from bigger investors, but Virginia Park was much like this 5 years ago a neighborhood of great architectural stock but bordered on a couple sides by rougher areas.
The Virginia Park story is a great one though if i recall correctly it was a married couple of no great means who invested in a home or two at a time later on as they had more and more success flipping and eventually went down the whole block renovation many vacant and or blighted homes. Now that development has really taken off in New Center the bordering areas are in a position similar to Woodbridge ten years ago when Midtown really started to take off.
I'm no expert please don't anyone sink their life savings on my word do your do diligence when looking at renovation an old home they may be a great bargain but the costs are high and the returns outside of the immediate downtown - midtown & n.c. areas will require time for a good return living in the home till then would be advisable.
However the city and some banks it has partnered up with i think chase is included are offering low interest loans for buying and renovating homes right now i cant look up the link because i don't have time but only a couple dozen have so far taken them up WDET our local NPR did a piece on the program not long ago trying to get the word out, so anyone who is interested can try and look the program up but i have a couple items i wanna post later anyways ill do a search then and leave the info if i can find it without too much effort. haha