The appreciation seen here and throughout Detroit is mainly from real estate speculation - the buying of severely distressed property and increasing its value through speculative improvements.

it’s brand new being built as we speak so there is no past performance just speculation of what it can doNothing is up and running yet! 

If you're talking about buying land and speculating a developer would be interested, knowing the growth patterns of the area would be a must. 

@Krishna Rayapudi  I don't think your telling the whole story here so other posters are speculating.1. did you get the contruction loan in your name?

HML will not lend on a speculative deal where it takes 2-3 years to get their money back. 

I've done ground up development and building, redevelopment, fix/flip, private lending, non performing note workouts, buy/hold rentals, raw land speculating, and probably more if I really thought about all the deals I've done.  

You don't want to be one of those guys who tries to analyze everything and never pulls the trigger.Don't speculate.

The upside is on the appreciation speculation...

While you're right in some regard, I'd say the speculators were just the tools on which banks built their toxic balance sheets.Here are the 5 pieces of the housing bubble machine:United States GovernmentBill Clinton rewrites community reinvestment act in 1995 basically making mortgages available to most borrowersFinancial Institutions Originating NINJA Loans like crazy to repackage into mortgage backed securities (MBS) and sell to investorsESPECIALLY SUB PRIME MORTGAGES which generate the best yield Banks sold these off of balance sheet within 30 days of origination so as to never experience the penalty of booking a high risk loan (no collections expense and no charge off)Federal ReservePinned interest rates at zero bound to help recover from internet bubbleCreated a lot of leverage in capital markets to buy MBSIncentives for consumers to spend on housing and HELOCsHedge Funds buying Mortgage Backed SecuritiesHedge funds looking for yield had a great demand for MBS, especially on subprime debt (nobody defaults on mortgages, right?)

That is speculating and not investing.Numbers work going in and the rest is icing on the cake if it happens and if not you hit your goals anyway.It seems the primary reason you are buying is for a home for the family to live in so the investment portion seems like a much less important detail than the emotional component from what you have said so far.Maybe just view this property as a happy family home purchase and then if you like the area once you live there look around for properties where you buy just off of investment from the additional cash flow with the low mortgage payment.