The French explorer
Antoine
de la Mothe Cadillac, with a small group of settlers and soldiers,
looked out onto the Detroit River more than 300 years ago and saw
opportunity. From the position of the river to the fertile land, they
imagined that a settlement could grow from this location.
"The
land is very beautiful and appropriate to build a city later on," wrote
Cadillac in a letter to the French minister responsible for the Detroit
colonies. "The various things one finds in this Land make it very
pleasant."
Three centuries later, Detroit has another Frenchman
looking out at that same river, with that same vision. From the 17th
floor of Spinnaker Tower, just off
East
Jefferson, Laurent Diemunsch is standing in the living room of his
newly purchased two-bedroom high-rise apartment. The Detroit River and
Belle Isle are beaming through a foggy sliding glass door to the
balcony.
"I see that the future can be better here," he says,
slowly, looking for the words.
The apartment isn't for him to
live in, though. He bought it to rent out; he bought it as an
investment. Diemunsch isn't an investor in the sense that you might
think. He's not buying 100 foreclosures and selling them on Craigslist.
He's a flight attendant, who happens to own an apartment in the
Spinnaker and another in
New
Center, on Pallister. And he already has a tenant.
Diemunsch
may be less tuned in with honest to goodness investors and more in step
with his compatriot Mr. Cadillac. The two Frenchman both saw not only
opportunity but also potential and a future in the wilderness off the
banks of a river.
"I can see what this city can become,"
Diemunsch says, unknowingly paraphrasing from Cadillac's letters.
Yet
the headlines about Detroit overseas (or anywhere for that matter)
aren't exactly golden. In fact, according to Diemunsch, they are
terrible. So, how did this French flight attendant with spiky, jet-black
hair end up roaming the streets of Detroit? Well, the Internet,
naturally, and a local French speaking real estate agent,
Sabra Sanzotta,
whose husband also hails from France.
"I saw Detroit on the
Internet, I saw some really bad things," Diemunsch says. We can all
imagine what those "things" were. "Then I made some research and it
wasn't like that. I came to Detroit (to meet with Sanzotta). I saw
downtown Detroit, some of the neighborhoods. I thought it was beautiful.
It was impressive to me."
So impressive that Diemunsch brought
some back up on his most recent visit. In tow was his father, Jean
Claude, a fellow flight attendant, Nathalie Krief, and Krief's brother,
Nimrod. And the French entourage kept busy. Jean Claude closed on one
property at
St.
Anne's Gate and has another offer pending in New Center. And Nimrod
has an accepted offer at Spinnaker, which should close sometime this
month. Sanzotta, who will act as the property manager for these spaces,
says they should have tenants six weeks after closing.
Let's not
kid ourselves. Though Diemunsch and his posse aren't big time rollers,
flipping houses like a short order cook flips flapjacks, they're still
trying to make a buck. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, Sanzotta
says.
Now there are fewer foreclosed, empty condos in Detroit,
more renovated upscale rental properties available for those who want to
live downtown, and more homeowner dues coming in to the developments,
she says, "which in turn keeps the maintenance up and the resale value
spiraling upwards. Plus, as they keep drying up the inventory, (there
will be) more demand for fewer properties." That would help prices
recover.
However, right now, Detroit property is cheap. Not just
cheap, it's really, really cheap, and abundant. The Euro is stronger
than the dollar and that bodes well for foreign investors, including
French flight attendants, and the fathers and brothers of said flight
attendants. They can pick up property along the riverfront or right
downtown for the price of a small car. Something that, in other cities ?
like Paris or London or New York ? is impossible.
Flags might
already be going off and some of you are probably saying to yourself,
"But Detroit isn't Paris or London or New York. They are completely
different markets."
"Foreigners have a different mindset (when it
comes to real estate)," says real estate broker
Joy Santiago. "People in
the tri-county area see these property values every day and compare them
to their own. But if you compare them to New York City's riverfront or
Chicago's riverfront, there's a definite difference." And a definite
draw, she says.
Santiago says the perception of Detroit's real
estate is totally different from across the pond. In urban centers in
foreign cities, properties are either outrageously expensive or, as they
are passed from family to family, nonexistent.
Even though
property can be had for a song in other parts of the United States, real
estate investment is still coming to Detroit.
"Investors see the
potential of growth (in Detroit), not decline," she says.
"I
think it's a symbol of hope," Sanzotta says. "Coming half way around the
world, investing on the potential of Detroit, when some won't even come
down here for dinner, it's inspiring."
One thing you get from
the flight attendants is that they talk about and see Detroit as a
commodity, a place to go, to be. As flight attendants, they see hundreds
of cities a year, so it would seem that they would know a cool place
when they see it.
"This is my first time in Detroit," says
Nathalie, Diemunsch's fellow flight attendant. "But what I see here is
people willing to take risks on Detroit's potential. I feel new life
here in Detroit. Nice people, new neighborhoods, and good rentability.
There's a bourgeois bohemian lifestyle here."
Bourgeois bohemian?
"Yeah,"
she says. "It's a good thing."
This story first appeared in Model D.
Terry Parris Jr. is a regular contributor to Concentrate,
Metromode and Model D.
His previous article was Pizza 2.0
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