Oakland county’s luxury housing market is booming. With stronger prices and quicker sales, 70 homes listed at $1 million and higher have gone pending in Oakland County in past 30 days. Post pandemic, buyers are wanting a lifestyle upgrade. Instead of world travel, buyers are sinking their money into their homes. Currently, Birmingham has the highest price per square foot in Michigan.
Gravel miners and other business groups are pushing to make it easier to open sand and gravel mines in residential areas. Senate Minority Leader, Jim Ananich, is sponsoring a package of bills that a senate committee will consider on Thursday. The bills would take the approval of gravel mining permits away from local governments and give it to the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE). Critics say this would result in the dust and noise of gravel operations coming to many Michigan residential neighborhoods.
Bedrock LLC finalized the purchase of the Stroh River Place property from The Stroh Companies, Inc. The 500,000-square-foot building sits in the Rivertown Warehouse District, east of downtown Detroit. The purchase includes 735 parking spaces and 4.4 acres of undeveloped land. The property sits along the 3.5-mile Detroit Riverwalk and is the company’s second purchase outside of downtown Detroit. The site used to be a manufacturing and research facility. The Stroh Brewery Company purchased the building in 1979 and renovated it.
Because of a building permit application, the Apple Developer Academy’s future site is finally public knowledge. The Apple Developer Academy is going into the 850,000 square foot National Building in downtown Detroit. It will be located on the second and third floors of the building. Based on permit cost, construction is estimated to be $1.41 million. The program will cover coding, design and entrepreneurship.
The history St. Vincent and Sarah Fisher property in Farmington Hills may soon be repurposed into a two-story, 140-bed nursing facility and 3 three-story multi-family apartment buildings. Novi-based Optalis Healthcare would keep the existing administration building and one of the other smaller buildings. It would also leave 7.5 acres of open space on the property. Nearby residents have voiced concerns that the three-story apartment buildings would clash with the nearby residential areas. The site has been vacant since 2005.
A vibrant tourist destination, small town Charlevoix is struggling to recruit workers. Upward pressure on rent and home prices is scaring workers off who can’t find affordable year-round housing. The two hardest hit groups are workers who make less than $26,000 a year and professionals who make between $70,000-$100,000 a year. Rentals are scarce, as are affordable homes for sale. Recent efforts to convert part of a golf course into affordable year-round housing was voted down by residents.
The Wayne County Treasurer filed a motion requesting that the redemption period on property tax foreclosures be extended. Judge Timothy Kenny ordered that foreclosure protections for occupied homes and commercial properties be extended to March 31, 2022. The order will keep properties off the annual auction block. However property taxes must continue to be paid. The Treasurer asserts that the main objective is to keep people in their homes.
White-collar workers at Stellantis are likely to continue working remotely much of the time once they formally come back to the office. The company has devised a new work model that it calls the New Era of Agility. As part of a new pilot program in October, 450 employees will return to the Chrysler Technology Center at the headquarters complex in Auburn Hills. What’s learned in the pilot program will determine how the company proceeds with its remaining employees, but it envisions a split of 70% remote work to 30% on-site time.
The commercial real estate industry is historically homogeneous, populated largely by white men in the executive ranks, even in a city like Detroit, where the population is more than 80 percent Black. The Greenwood Commercial Real Estate Group adds some diversity to the homogeny. The firm is named for the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, commonly called Black Wall Street and at one time a thriving Black economic hub before it was destroyed in 1921 after the arrest of a young Black man for the purported “assault” of a 17-year-old white girl. James Pitts, head of the Atlanta office of Greenwood, believes that Greenwood CRE will help Black real estate professionals break into commercial real estate.
Across the country, eviction hearings have moved to the computer because public officials don’t want to risk exposure to sick tenants arriving for court appointments. Lawyers have seen virtual eviction hearings that take as little as 30 seconds. Tenants often don’t have access to computers and have to dial into the hearings with their phones. Many courts only accept documentation online, and tenants who try to submit their records in-person are turned away. Many argue that tenants’ due process rights are violated by the technological and financial barriers of the eviction proceedings.
