Detroit’s economic recovery from its 2014 bankruptcy has resulted in nearly $3 billion in real estate wealth, a boon to the city’s Black and Latino homeowners, according to a new study from the University of Michigan.
Released Tuesday by the University of Michigan Poverty Solutions, the report, titled “The Growth of Housing Wealth in Detroit and its Neighborhoods: 2014-2022,” found that the largely Black homeowners in Detroit amassed $2.8 billion in added home value between 2014 and 2022, an 80% increase.
Mayor Mike Duggan credited the gains to a number of city-run beautification and blight-fighting programs, as well as the Detroiters who stuck it out and invested in their communities.
“For the past nine years, the active members of 600 organized block clubs and neighborhood associations in the city have been working to rebuild their neighborhoods,” Duggan said in a statement. “The $3 billion in new home wealth they have created and earned is a direct result of their dedication and hard work.”
The study was authored by Jeffrey D. Morenoff, a professor and associate dean at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and professor of Department of Sociology and Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, and Kurt Metzger, demographer and founder of Data Driven Detroit.
It found that home values in Detroit grew the most from 2014 to 2022 in neighborhoods with the lowest property values and highest poverty rates in 2014.
According to the study, the net value of all owner-occupied homes increased from $4.2 billion in 2014 to $8.1 billion in 2022, a 94% increase. It estimates Black homeowners realized the vast majority of gains, but that the largely Latino neighborhoods in Southwest Detroit experienced some of the largest increases in home values over the same period, too.
For example, in the Condon neighborhood in Southwest Detroit, the average home sale price in 2014 was about $7,500. By 2022, the price rose to more than $71,000 — an 853% increase.
Neighborhoods like Jefferson/Mack, Kettering, Springwells, and Davison saw increases of 300% or more.
The study also found that the real estate growth was dispersed across the city, not just concentrated in Midtown and downtown, where much tax-subsidized corporate investment has occurred over the past decade.
“There has been a huge shift for the better in Detroit’s home values, driven largely by the improvements being made in neighborhoods,” Ken Scott, president of the Greater Detroit Realtist Association and Detroit Association of Realtors, said in a statement. “My [fellow] realtors and I have been seeing this shift for years. Black owned homes are rising in value and Black families are gaining the most family wealth. And while home values have risen dramatically, there is a lot of growth yet to come. Detroit homes are beautiful and dollar-for-dollar still a great value.”
Scott credited programs like Detroit’s Down Payment Assistance Program with creating nearly 500 new homeowners in Detroit, most of them Black. Census data from 2022 shows that a narrow majority of Detroiters now own homes as opposed to renting.
Still, Detroit’s real estate boom is not without its problems. Black residents are still denied mortgages at a higher rate than white applicants, and a study by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy found that Detroit illegally and disproportionately overtaxed homes worth less than $35,000.
Last month, Detroit City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on owner-occupied foreclosures on houses valued at less than $30,000, a move that was rejected by the Wayne County Treasurer.
And Census data shows that since the turn of the century, Detroit has lost nearly 300,000 Black residents — more than any other U.S. city.
