Which neighborhood is really Detroit’s hottest neighborhood for 2017?

January means year-end report time, and one we received from Redfin was interesting in a few ways. The report attempts to predict the hottest neighborhoods for 2017. They looked at page views on Redfin, favorites, and agents assessments. By their reports, here are the hottest neighborhoods in Detroit:

1. Downtown
2. Rosedale Park
3. Palmer Park

Redfin

So the first red flag is that Palmer Park isn’t really a neighborhood, per se. There are a lot of neighborhoods surrounding the park, for sure. A click on each ‘hood shows us what areas they’re actually talking about.

Downtown:

So basically we’re looking at everything from Belle Isle, along the Riverfront, Eastern Market, Lafayette Park, Downtown, and Corktown. That’s all the hottest neighborhood in Detroit.

Our take? Downtown and Corktown haven’t had a lot of properties for sale in the past year. There have been quite a few condos in the Westin Book Cadillac, and some houses in Corktown. The areas with a lot more property are Lafayette Park and the Riverfront. Lafayette Park especially last year had many properties (co-ops and condos) that were sold.

Rosedale Park

This map is much more accurate. This is including Rosedale Park and North Rosedale Park.

Our take? These are stable family neighborhoods with a dense housing stock. There’s not just move-in ready homes, but many houses that can be renovated. It’s also close to a lot of businesses along Grand River. As more and more homes are fixed up and sold, we can see the property values rising here.

Palmer Park

Let’s run down all the neighborhoods captured here. We’ll start with Green Acres in the north, move down to Sherwood Forest, over to Palmer Park, down to some Golf Club homes, and then over to University District. That’s a lot of neighborhood.

Our take? We love a great Palmer Woods mansion, but they tend to sit on the market for a while. We’ve seen some good stuff in Green Acres and Sherwood Forest lately. But the University District has seen so much real estate action in the past year. So many homes have been flipped (or restored) and some have sold for over $300k. It’s another dense neighborhood near a vibrant commercial corridor. We can see more happening here in the next year.

What’s missing from the list? We’ve seen a lot listed in Boston Edison lately, especially west of the Lodge. Across Woodward, the North End has beautiful homes, and we feel its proximity to the M-1 rail could be a boost. We love the Villages, but for sale listings are scarce in West Village. Could Jefferson Chalmers pick up some steam this year? We’ve seen a lot of energy and resources going that way. And don’t count out East English Village, our Curbed Cup winner.

For more of our takes, here are our neighborhoods to keep an eye on in the next year.