Tighter housing code enforcement by the City of Detroit appears linked to a rise in rental properties on the market.
Crain's Detroit Business connects the dots:
Carol Trowell, a broker with DuPont & Associates who focuses on Detroit, [said] that many of the new listings are one-time rental properties. Landlords who didn't get paid for months [during a pandemic eviction moratorium] don't want to pay for certificates of compliance or to test for lead in their units, she said, expensive propositions that can sometimes eat up the money they are receiving.
"If you're a slum landlord, it's going to cost you," she said.
More than 1,600 Detroit houses were listed for sale last month, a 24-percent increase from December 2020, according to Realcomp data cited by Crain's.
The city is a clear outlier in the metro area, where listings across the board have been down. ...
In fact, according to Redfin data, Detroit is the only city of the 88 metros it tracks where the number of seasonally adjusted listings was up in December.
Residential real estate reporter Arielle Kass also quotes broker Darralyn Bowers of Bowers Realty & Investments in Southfield:
"Some investors, landlords, have decided not to be landlords in the city of Detroit," she said. "Landlords are just being ripped every way. ... They're running the landlords away."
(Photo: Zillow)
David Bell, director of the city's Building, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department, tells the business weekly in a statement that landlords could be fined up to $2,500 if a child tests positive for elevated lead levels and a landlord hasn't removed lead paint hazards.
"In many cases landlords that are having a hard time doing the work necessary to make their rentals safe have deferred maintenance for many years and are now being held accountable, as they would in any community," he wrote. ...
"We expect that the new owners of many of these properties will know at the outset what the expectations are and will work within the new ordinance to come into compliance," [Bell added]. "Others may become owner-occupied homes, which would likely represent an increase in home ownership among Detroiters, and that's also a good thing."
