Moving to Detroit

[Dustin Zentz]

Hello, My wife and I are considering selling our house in Denver, moving to Detroit, and investing in real estate. I have 15 years experience in home construction and renovation, but limited experience in investing. We will have around 150k cash to invest and I plan on doing most of the renovations myself. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Dustin Zentz]

UPDATE: Six months ago, I became a member of Bigger Pockets and published this post considering a move. We made it to Detroit and are now closing on 2 homes in the next 2 weeks. The first, is a HUD home in Oak Park (a suburb, north of Detroit), and the second is a short sale in the Sherwood Forest/Green Acres neighborhood (North Detroit, just south of 8 mile). We financed the Oak Park house and bought the Sherwood house with cash. Our plan is to do a live in/fix up in the Oak Park house right away. It shouldn't take long to do, because it's mostly just lipstick....Sherwood is going to be more involved and it is double the sf.. I'll be doing much of the work myself, but hiring out electrical, plumbing and floor refinishing (labor prices are very reasonable here, compared to Colorado). I'd like to thank everyone who chimed in on this post with great advice and words of encouragement, especially Dan Mullins and Richard Dunlop. Detroit gets a lot of bad press, but my personal experience so far has been a good one. The people have really been great. I take my 14 month old son to the Meijer on 8 mile on a regular basis, and I've never experienced so many smiles, and friendly conversations, anywhere. Ferndale and Royal Oak have great bars and restaurants, Belle Isle is scenic and quiet, Detroit has beautiful historic homes and great museums (thank God the DIA kept it's collection), and you can really feel the excitement that is building around the cities rebound. That said, there is still a lot of work to be done, and it is still really rough in many parts. But, I hope that it becomes the socially progressive, entrepreneurial, artistic, and culturally diverse example of what a city can and should be.