Detroit’s housing market combines low measured home values with substantial affordability pressure, an aging housing stock, and uneven access to mortgage credit. The City of Detroit’s 2025 Consolidated Plan reports a $52,700 current home value and $636 median contract rent, while Chicago Fed reporting describes rising purchase activity alongside insurance, title, and property-condition challenges.
Contents
- Home values and rents
- Housing stock and tenure
- Household incomes and housing cost burden
- Unit sizes and household needs
- Mortgage activity and access
- Insurance, heirs’ properties, and blight
Home values and rents
The City of Detroit’s 2025 Consolidated Plan puts Detroit’s current home value at $52,700, compared with $162,600 statewide in Michigan. The same plan reports that Detroit’s median home value rose 25% between 2009 and 2020, from $42,300 to $52,700. These are different measurements: the first compares Detroit with Michigan in the plan, while the second describes change across the plan’s 2009–2020 period.
Rent also increased over that historical period. Detroit’s median contract rent rose 15%, from $555 in 2009 to $636 in 2020, according to the City of Detroit’s 2025 Consolidated Plan. At about $636 per month, Detroit’s median rent remained below Michigan’s $892 median rent.
The 2016–2020 American Community Survey distribution in the plan shows that most Detroit renters paid between $500 and $999 per month. There were 88,030 renters in that range, representing 62.1% of renting households. Another 41,350 renters paid under $500, or 29.2% of renting households. Higher rent bands were much smaller: 8,840 renters paid $1,000–$1,499, 2,480 paid $1,500–$1,999, and 1,015 paid $2,000 or more. Those groups represented 6.2%, 1.8%, and 0.7% of renting households, respectively. (City of Detroit 2025 Consolidated Plan.)
Chicago Fed reporting gives a separate 2025 Q1 measure of market movement: Detroit had a 29.3% median home price markup across the city. The report says the highest ZIP-code markups were above 200% in 48211 and 48208, while ZIP code 48203 had a negative markup. These figures describe variation in the report’s pricing analysis, not a replacement for the plan’s $52,700 home-value measure.
Housing stock and tenure
Detroit had 358,140 residential housing units, according to the City of Detroit’s 2025 Consolidated Plan. Detached one-unit structures made up the largest share: 234,695 homes, or 66% of the stock. The remaining structure categories included 25,315 one-unit attached homes, equal to 7%; 30,555 structures with two to four units, or 9%; 19,895 structures with five to 19 units, or 6%; and 46,305 structures with 20 or more units, or 13%. The plan also counted 1,375 mobile homes, boats, recreational vehicles, or vans, effectively 0% of housing units.
The city’s housing stock is old. The plan reports that 53% of Detroit homes were built before 1950. That age profile matters for maintenance, rehabilitation, energy performance, and the cost of keeping homes habitable, especially when household incomes are low.
Detroit’s occupied units were split between 128,745 owner-occupied units and 141,705 renter-occupied units in the plan’s unit-size table. Expressed as household shares, Detroit was 48% owner households and 52% renter households. The tenure balance helps explain why both homeownership conditions and rental prices are central to the city’s housing-market picture.
Household incomes and housing cost burden
The City of Detroit’s Consolidated Plan reports 270,450 total households in its CHAS table. The income distribution included 90,015 households at 0–30% of HAMFI, 46,265 above 30% to 50% of HAMFI, 55,235 above 50% to 80%, 22,815 above 80% to 100%, and 56,120 above 100% of HAMFI. HAMFI is the household-income framework used in the plan’s CHAS table; the brackets should be read as the plan presents them.
Across those households, 103,670 experienced some form of housing cost burden, equal to 38% of households. The statistic identifies the scale of reported burden, but it does not by itself specify whether each affected household was a renter or owner, nor does it give a separate burden amount for every income bracket.
The plan also provides income-band counts for family households. Small family households included 25,855 at 0–30% of HAMFI, 17,080 above 30% to 50%, 18,425 above 50% to 80%, 8,535 above 80% to 100%, and 23,705 above 100%. Large family households included 6,920, 4,350, 4,895, 1,885, and 4,280 households in those same five brackets, respectively. These counts show that low-income housing needs extend across both smaller and larger family groups.
Detroit’s population was 645,705 in 2024, up 1% since 2020, while median income was $32,498, according to the City of Detroit’s 2025 Consolidated Plan. Chicago Fed reporting gives a different 2024 median-income figure of $39,209 for Detroit and $76,403 for the broader metro area. Because the two sources report different values, their measurement definitions or coverage should not be silently combined.
Unit sizes and household needs
Owner-occupied housing was concentrated in larger units. Detroit owner households had 99,515 three-or-more-bedroom units, representing 77% of owner units. Two-bedroom units accounted for 26,465 units, or 21%; one-bedroom units accounted for 2,445, or 2%; and no-bedroom units accounted for 320, or 0%.
The renter distribution was more varied. Detroit renter households had 60,255 three-or-more-bedroom units, or 43% of renter units; 40,690 two-bedroom units, or 29%; 34,195 one-bedroom units, or 24%; and 6,565 no-bedroom units, or 5%. The unit-size table therefore shows a substantial supply of larger rental homes as well as a meaningful one-bedroom segment.
The plan identifies households with particular age and family characteristics. There were 18,675 households with at least one person aged 62–74, and 8,810 households with at least one person aged 75 or older. There were also 16,130 households with one or more children aged six or younger. These figures describe household presence, not the number of individual residents, and they point to differing needs for accessibility, stability, and family-sized housing.
| Housing measure | Detroit figure | Measurement period or source |
|---|---|---|
| Total residential housing stock | 358,140 units | City of Detroit 2025 Consolidated Plan |
| Owner households | 48% | City of Detroit 2025 Consolidated Plan |
| Renter households | 52% | City of Detroit 2025 Consolidated Plan |
| Households with cost burden | 103,670 (38%) | City of Detroit 2025 Consolidated Plan |
| Public housing units | 3,968 | City of Detroit 2025 Consolidated Plan |
| Housing Choice Vouchers | 5,893 | Detroit Housing Commission, as cited in plan |
Mortgage activity and access
Mortgage activity increased sharply over the period described by the Chicago Fed’s 2026 Detroit housing market report. Home purchase applications increased about 520% from 2012 to 2023. Home loans rose from fewer than 100 in 2012 to almost 3,600 in 2023. These are application and loan counts reported for the period, not a forecast of future transactions.
Access was not uniform across prospective buyers. Detroit Future City research cited by the Chicago Fed found that potential African American home buyers were twice as likely as White counterparts to have mortgage purchase applications denied in 2020. The statistic describes an application-denial comparison for that year; it does not say that every borrower faced the same outcome or explain all factors behind individual decisions.
The Chicago Fed report also cites Detroit Future City research estimating that at least $268 million in household wealth is tied up in Detroit heirs’ properties as nonworking capital. Heirs’ property ownership can complicate the use, transfer, or financing of a home, so this estimate describes wealth tied to property that is not functioning as accessible capital in the cited research.
For the city’s public housing resources, the City of Detroit’s 2025 Consolidated Plan lists 3,968 public housing units and 5,893 federal Housing Choice Vouchers available through the Detroit Housing Commission. These are program-resource counts, not totals for every assisted household or every affordable unit in Detroit.
Insurance, heirs’ properties, and blight
Homeownership costs extend beyond the purchase price and mortgage. University of Michigan research cited by the Chicago Fed found that about one-quarter of Detroit homeowners lack homeowners insurance. The Chicago Fed’s cited portfolio also saw annual insurance-cost increases of 30% in recent years. The portfolio statistic should not be interpreted as a citywide average for every property.
Mortgage affordability is also a concern. More than 30% of Detroit homeowners were burdened by mortgage payments, according to the Chicago Fed’s 2026 report. This measure differs from the City of Detroit plan’s broader figure that 38% of all households experienced some form of cost burden, because the populations and burden definitions are not identical.
Rental affordability varied by neighborhood in the Chicago Fed report. Average market rents for selected 2025 Detroit neighborhoods were at or below the 50% AMI threshold except Corktown. The statement applies to the selected neighborhoods and the report’s comparison threshold; it does not establish a single market rent for the entire city.
Property condition remains another defining feature of the market. Detroit’s blight data showed almost 164,000 officially deemed blighted properties. The city also had more than 820,000 blight violations since 2005, according to the Chicago Fed’s 2026 Detroit housing market report. The two counts measure different things: properties officially deemed blighted versus violations recorded over a long period.
Together, the figures describe a city with a predominantly detached, older housing stock; a renter share slightly above half; low reported median home value and rent compared with statewide benchmarks; and serious affordability, insurance, title, and property-condition pressures. The market’s rising purchase activity sits alongside these structural constraints, so a single price or transaction statistic does not capture Detroit’s full housing situation.