Published by REALTOR.com | August 24, 2024
In 2013, Detroit infamously filed for bankruptcy, becoming the largest municipal filing in history with $20 billion in debt.
Chase C. Hunter became a real estate investor in Detroit in an unusual way. She searched for “best places to buy cheap properties” on Google.
At the time, Hunter was living in Houston and was curious to see where she could afford to invest in real estate on a limited budget. After searching online, she decided the Motor City certainly seemed to fit the bill, with sites like the Detroit Land Bank Authority selling vacant “as is” properties for as little as $1,000.
Despite her reservations, Hunter pulled the trigger.
“I closed on my first two properties the same day in June of 2021,” she says. “The day I closed was my very first time in Detroit.”
Her first property cost $2,000, the second was $1,800. Since then, Hunter has purchased a total of eight Detroit homes. She’s transformed one property into her office, while renovating and renting out the others.
She permanently moved to the city last year to have “boots on the ground” near her investments.
“The market can be a challenge to navigate if you aren’t here every single day,” she explains. “Buyers have to know the culture of Detroit to understand how to invest here.”
Hunter is so passionate about the Detroit market, she became a real estate agent 10 months ago and is launching a real-estate investment group to help others buy and rehab homes in Detroit like she has.
“Investors come to Detroit from all corners of the country because the market is like no other,” says Hunter.
In 2013, Detroit infamously filed for bankruptcy, becoming the largest municipal filing in history with $20 billion in debt. But since then, the Motor City has rebounded in a major way, with The Wall Street Journal calling it “America’s most unlikely real-estate boomtown.”
Real estate prices bottomed out in the area in 2009, at a median sale price of $58,900. Since 2009, however, sale prices have climbed annually each year to land at $217,100 in 2023—an impressive 113.3% higher than the median sale price 10 years earlier.
“Buyers, including investors, took advantage of low home prices in the area over the last decade, bringing energy and funds into the city,” says Realtor.com® senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones.
As of the latest data in May 2024, the median sales price in Detroit was $250,000—10.5% higher than just a year earlier. However, Jones points out that “even after substantial price growth, the median sales price in Detroit was still [much] lower than the national sale price.”
The latest figures put the median listing price across the U.S. at $439,950.
