Detroit confirme sa nouvelle position de "Real Estate Hot Spot"

La renaissance de Detroit entraîne dans son sillon une croissance du marché immobilier. Alors que les prix étaient descendus bas en 2008, ils ne font que remonter depuis plusieurs années. Sur l'ensemble des cinq comtés qui composent le Sud-Est du Michigan, celui de Detroit emporte la mise avec une augmentation de 157 % des prix entre 2009 et 2015. 
L'article détaillé en anglais du Detroit Free Press analyse finement ce boom en affirmant que l'amélioration du cadre de vie et une demande de plus en plus importante entraîne une hausse des prix, visible nulle part ailleurs dans le pays. 

Home values in Detroit neighborhoods are finally experiencing some upward momentum after years of rock-bottom prices.

Still among the cheapest places in the nation to buy a house, Detroit neighborhoods are seeing prices inch up on most residential blocks with substantial gains in the strongest areas.

A Free Press analysis of land records shows the median sale price of any home in the city was $30,000 last month, more than four times the $7,000 median in 2009, an especially dark year for the economy and real estate.

To be sure, there are still plenty of houses in Detroit selling for $1,000 or less because of their poor physical condition and the still-deteriorating neighborhoods. And occasionally, a $1 house will hit the market when a bank or other owner wants to rid itself of the liability of ownership.

"Are prices going up? Yes. Let's say three years ago it was $3,000, now it's $12,000," said Albert Hakim, owner of City Management Group, which sells dozens of Detroit houses a month. "It's still not back to where it should be, but it's better than it was."

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But within the city, modest incomes combined with scarce mortgage financing and an abundance of vacant and ramshackle houses have kept prices in the majority of neighborhoods very low.

But local real estate brokers and experts say the prices in neighborhoods are finally rising because investors with cash are purchasing more houses and some are investing in repairs to attract tenants or buyers.

They also cite the activities of the Detroit Land Bank Authority, which has acquired tens of thousands of vacant houses and is auctioning off the good ones and demolishing the hopeless in a wide-ranging blight removal effort.

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Detroit also has been enjoying a warmer national image lately as a city that survived bankruptcy with more young people now looking for homes in trendier neighborhoods. As these newcomers compete over a thin supply of available houses in neighborhoods such as Woodbridge and Corktown, prices get pushed up, helping boost the citywide median price.

Also, a new mortgage program started last month and touted by Mayor Mike Duggan could increase prices quicker in some neighborhoods that traditional lenders abandoned after the crash.

The land bank now completes about 10 house auctions a week, or 363 finalized sales since the online auctions began in spring 2014, said land bank spokesman Craig Fahle, a former WDET-FM radio show host. Demolitions are averaging 150 structures per week.

Auction bidding starts at just $1,000 for each house and usually ends much higher. This spring, a well-kept, Georgian-style brick house in the Boston-Edison Historic District sold in a land bank auction for $130,100.

"Everything starts at $1,000 and if no one else bids on it, you can get that house for $1,000," Fahle said.

Another factor behind the rising prices is the resilience of Detroit's historic districts and the trendiness of certain other neighborhoods where property values didn't dip below the $50,000 mark at which lenders generally stop writing mortgages.

These areas include Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest, Indian Village, University District, Hubbard Farms, Grandmont Rosedale, Lafayette Park, Woodbridge and Corktown.

Agents say demand is outpacing supply in these parts of the city. Move-in-ready properties have lately been attracting multiple offers and selling within days.

"The last 18 months I have way more buyers than I have places to sell," said Ryan Cooley, owner of O'Connor Real Estate and Development, which handles many listings in Detroit's high-demand neighborhoods.

"We are starting to see people want to move here just because of the interest in Detroit right now, where before it was always 'I grew up in the area' or that kind of thing," he said.

In the Grandmont Rosedale area of northwest Detroit, houses in good condition are again selling for more than $100,000. That wasn't happening two years ago, said Tom Goddeeris, executive director of Grandmont Rosedale Development Corp.

"Any of the houses of nice quality that are going on the market these days don't last very long," he said.

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Low prices have meant great bargains for buyers such as Joan Morris Buchanan, 50, who bought a handsome brick house last year on Lansdowne on the east side for $6,700 in cash at a Detroit Land Bank auction.

"I got a great deal," she said, "but it was definitely a fixer-upper."

She paid less for the house than she did each year in rent for a slightly larger house in the city on Bedford Street. With her children now grown, she decided to leave the rental property because she no longer felt safe living on her previous block.

"The street was declining fast. Lots of vacant houses, lots of burned homes, lots of property that was not being taken care of," Buchanan said. "I even thought about getting a license to carry a gun, but I just didn't feel comfortable with that."

Today, she loves her new neighborhood and its vigilant block club. She said she has spent nearly $12,000 on renovations at her new house, including carpeting, electrical work, a new kitchen and a paint job.

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Brokers say that more than half of their home sales in Detroit neighborhoods are to buyers who acquire them for investment purposes and often rent them out. As these investors pay with cash, they're unaffected by the reluctance of most lenders to do mortgages for amounts smaller than $40,000 or $50,000.

Hakim, the management group owner, said a typical Detroit investment property deal could involve a house that sells for $10,000 and will need $15,000 in renovations.

Once that house is fixed up, the investor might find a renter at $750 a month, which nets $9,000 a year. Subtract $1,200 for taxes, $900 for property management fees and $600 for insurance, and the investor's yearly take would be $6,300 — a 25% return on his or her initial $25,000 investment,

"That's a 25% return. You can't get that anywhere" else, Hakim said. "So people are looking at those numbers and that's one of the biggest reasons."

Even with the recent price increases, out-of-state investors are impressed with how much property they can buy in Detroit with their money, said Ronald LaCasse Jr., owner of Weichert Realtors and Cass Realty in Dearborn.

"People are still amazed at the value of our real estate compared to other cities," he said.

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Extrait d'un article publié dans Detroit Free Press le 17.07.2015

Journaliste : JC Reindl & Kristi Tanner

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