The Most Expensive House in Detroit

Leaving aside a huge Victorian home that is currently for sale and operates as a bed and breakfast, the most expensive house in Detroit is for sale for $1,200,000. That is about the same as a high-end one bedroom apartment in Manhattan.

The house at 450 Keelson Drive has everything a splendid mansion should have, other than that it is in the largest dying city in America, and one of the most dangerous. Among the amenities, the house sits on a canal that runs into the Detroit River, has four bedrooms and three baths, and at 3,400 square feet, it sits on a modest 0.84 acres. Presumably, the canal location offers a spot for a boat.

The house is old — very old. It was built in 1929, part of a small building spree of expensive homes, presumably for car company executives, or management at companies that provided the car companies with parts. The real estate listing for 450 Keelson Drive says it has been “renovated,” which would make sense for a house that is 85 years old.

At $1.2 million, a home like 450 Keelson Drive would sell for several million dollars in Greenwich, Conn., or the wealthy suburbs of any other American city of any size. One sign of the trouble of Detroit’s decline is the houses being auctioned off for as little as $1,000 by Building Detroit. There are scores of these, some of which will eventually be bulldozed into the ground. Detroit’s government cannot afford to provide emergency services to the entire city. Some parts do not even have working street lights.

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With a population that has been halved since 1950 and stands at less than 700,000, it is impossible that Detroit will ever have much of a tax base. Many residents are poor, and many large companies fled the city a long time ago.

It would be a sign of recovery if the price of homes like the one at 450 Keelson Avenue soared into the millions of dollars. That won’t happen. The most expensive houses in Detroit likely will never sell for much more than $1 million, and possibly less.