Top 10 Biggest Midwest Cities: Which are Growing & Attractive for Investors?

Question

Just in!

After decades of being a national joke, Detroit has turned the corner and is outpacing the rest of the Midwest!

It's even doing better than Columbus, OH, which is starting to fade.

Detroit's focus on removing blighted buildings has been key to its renaissance, reducing inventory and improving neighborhoods.

The recent NFL Draft, hosted by Detroit, brought in over 300,000 visitors who's attitudes about Detroit did a 180.

Detroit also beat out Miami last year for the city with the highest appreciation rate in the US.

It's not all unicorns & rainbows though, as there are still many areas of the city investors should avoid, which scammers keep trying to sell to naive OOS investors.

PM us if you'd like to know more about how we've assisted hundreds of investors make logical investment choices in Detroit and avoid portfolio crushing mistakes:)

Robert Ellis · Answer

I travel pitching the midwest and specifically ohio. if you think a chart like this is going to change investor sentiment I'd do some research. I live in columbus and miami about half the year both. economic activity in miami is like 20x what columbus is. net migrations by number of people are waaaaaayyyy more in miami. columbus has 10 out of the 14 growing counties in ohio. it's not just one county or city, it's the entire MSA. cool chart but definitely would never put Detroit in the same category as either. I can barely get firms to look at columbus with 10x years of experience thats mostly for ground up. the average house cost is still less than 100k which means you have a lot of houses to tear down still to create a housing shortage. the economics don't make it favorable for any type of investing but turn key or maybe ground up in the urban core which works in any city. but compare any of these cities, I'll take Indianapolis, Chicago, Minneapolis, and columbus and Milwaukee and pass on the rest.

James Hamling · Answer

Yup, as said I hate these "charts" that are "A" city but framed in a way to represent the ENTIRE MSA....

Journalism is extinct, it is, we now have media marketers who just pump out BS to get clicks, views etc and at best, pump a narrative vs click baiting.

To judge a MSA, needs MSA data. To judge "A" city, ok, city #'s.

For example, Detroit MSA AMI for household is $67k+. So MSA vs city, is very different #'s. The Detroit MSA #'s are nearly half that of Twin Cities vs Detroit city around 1/4. (just a little jab, little friendly one, lol)

Marcus Auerbach · Answer

Statistics about Milwaukee are often wrong or let's call it misguided.

The problem is that the statistics refer to the City of Milwaukee, which represents only 1/3 of the population of the Milwaukee metro area. But the City of Milwaukee also conecntrates almost 100% of everything negative you have heard about Milwaukee, from poverty to crime. The other 2/3s of the metro area are doing more than well in every aspect.

Outlook:

We are currently in the middle of a giant freeway expansion/modernization project costing $1.7 billion dollars. Infrastracture spending of this magnitude rarely goes without resulting economic growth. And the Milwaukee major wants to grow its population by more than 60% by changing the zoning law (project Growing MKE) opening up the sea of low density single family zoning to townhomes, mixed use, MF and ADU's.

So yes, as an investor I am quite bullish for the next 10 years. More about Milwaukee on YouTube.

Drew Sygit · Answer

@James Hamling was waiting for someone to rain on the parade!

The median income and other MSA data is garbage, at least when it come to Detroit, so agree your $30k is also then garbage, per your logic:)

City of Detroit is suing the Census Bureau for their antiquated methods leading to misrepresentations of Detroit.

James Hamling · Answer

@Drew Sygit the Twin Cities MSA is about 218 Municipalities, your chart weighs via 1.... Arguably one of the WEAKEST in the MSA.

Let's look at MSA median incomes, because reality is when "investing" in a MSA Real Estate, well, revenue and profitability will be DIRECTLY dictated by your customer bases ability to pay, right.

Detroit is UNDER $30k yr.... That's poverty....

Minneapolis $65k+....

Now, if we look at AMI (Area Median Income) in Twin Cities for family of 4 (remember the 2.5 kids thing) it's $124k+ in Twin Cities.

All these SINGULAR city charts/metric to INFER a MSA weight are best defined as GIGO, Garbage In garbage Out. When use garbage data one will only get a garbage analysis.

Drew Sygit · Answer

@Marcus Auerbach we have a similar problem with OOS lumping the 5 million suburban population of Metro Detroit with the City of Detroit.

While the suburbs of Detroit have already recovered, our good news is the City of Detroit is now also recovering:)

Top 10 Biggest Midwest Cities: Which are Growing & Attractive for Investors?

Most Popular Reply