Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert announced a partnership with Home Depot to rehabilitate 65 homes in Detroit, according to the Detroit Free Press. Gilbert and Mayor Mike Duggan have announced a program to renovate as many as 65 abandoned but salvageable homes in four Detroit neighborhoods to boost home prices across the city.
Quicken Loans partnered with the home improvement store and the Detroit Land Bank Authority on the program, with Quicken Loans donating $5 million to the effort targeting homes in the Bagley, Crary-St. Mary’s, College Park and Evergreen/Outer Drive areas.
The money will cover any shortfalls between what the Detroit Land Bank spends to rehabilitate the houses and the actual sale prices.
“If homes sell for more than the cost of repairs, the excess money goes back into the program,” Detroit Land Bank spokesman Craig Fahle said.
Officials said that Home Depot is heading up the contracting and repairs, hiring Detroit companies and workers to help out.
“Detroit’s neighborhoods, particularly stable ones like Bagley, are ripe for investment, because the homes are worth more than they’re selling for,” Gilbert said. “Detroit’s property values have stayed artificially low because mortgage companies are reluctant to lend in the city, which was hammered by the recession and the national foreclosure crisis.
“The aim of the Rehabbed and Ready program is to get the homes move-in ready, with the goal of selling the homes at higher prices that will in turn help boost appraisals when other people go to get a new mortgage or refinance existing loans,” Gilbert added. “Home appraisals generally depend on recent sales of similar homes, and the rehabbed homes sold through the land bank will have a snowball effect on appraisals. That’s the idea: to get stability into the marketplace and get us over the hump. We think this program will get us there.”
Gilbert predicted people would be surprised by the impact that selling two rehabbed homes a week will have on property values in Detroit, noting that doubters five years ago were dismissing the idea of a resurgent downtown.