It’s hard to believe but the Challenge Detroit fellowship is 75% complete. With only three months to go, my wife and I find ourselves constantly asking, “What’s next?” One thing is for certain, we want to stay in Detroit. Living, working, giving, playing and leading in the city over the past 9 months has been eye-opening and we have fallen in love with the city we were once skeptical about moving to. In the hopes that other areas of our lives allow us to stay, we have started to look at homes around the city. In our quest, we stumbled across the website www.buildingdetroit.org and were intrigued at the premise—buy a house via online auction.
eBay, Detroit Style
Buildingdetroit.org is one of Mayor Mike Duggan’s initiatives to fight blight around the city. In conjunction with demolishing blighted properties that are too damaged to rehabilitate, BuildingDetroit.org seeks to sell off properties in stable neighborhoods that are in good enough shape to
rebuild. The real genius to the program, however, lies in the details. Unlike the general city-owned property auction, this website has very strict requirements for buyers of the houses it auctions. First, only buyers that have the intention to occupy the home themselves are allowed to buy (with a few exceptions). After the sale is completed, the house must be brought up to code and occupied within 6 months or the city will take the property back. These stipulations are designed to discourage one of the biggest problems Detroit has with its property—speculators. Forcing the buyer to have the property up to code and occupied in such a short timeframe guarantees that these houses will be actively developed which is exactly what these neighborhoods want. The excitement this has caused in these neighborhoods is very apparent—when my wife and I attended an open house showcasing houses in the Boston-Edison district that were listed on BuildingDetorit.org we quickly learned that the volunteers staffing the event were residents of the neighborhood. They were all very friendly and wanted to meet the open house attendees. More importantly, every one of them was very excited to see people interested in buying these homes.
A win-win-win transaction
A quick look at auction results reveals that every one of the houses put up for auction thus far has sold, with a majority of them exceeding $30,000—a sum far greater than the $1,000 opening bid. Even though the renovation costs are likely high for these properties there is clearly demand for this type of housing. The best part is that the way the program is designed makes it a win-win-win transaction for all involved. The city unloads usable property that it owns, the buyers get a house that they can make their own for a reasonable price and the neighborhoods get neighbors to fill in their vacant property. Nicely done Detroit. If things line up for my wife and I to stay in the city after my Challenge Detroit year is over, we will definitely use this website in our own housing search.