Who owns Detroit real estate?

Besides Matty Maroun (who Vicious has repeatedly exposed as a troll), there’s the following:

Michael G. Kelly who owns more than a 1,000 parcels, many of which are dilapidated and who has been slapped with $100k in blight violations since 2005.

He’s hardly alone:

A Detroit News investigation found more than 5,000 city parcels are owned by 10 private landowners and their companies. Most amassed portfolios buying inexpensive parcels by the dozen at tax sales and holding on to them until they can be sold for profit.

They wont improve the properties themselves, and are instead waiting for municipal or state revitalization projects so that they can sell them back to the state at a substantial profit.

For instance, Kelly bought up a bunch of plots that are where the alternative to Maroun’s bridge would be located - so if it happens, Kelly stands to hit the jackpot.

Kelly and Maroun are flippers, but without actually improving the properties they buy in the interim. More than a third of Detroit properties are vacant.

But others see reason to bet big on improvement, including Dan Gilbert, who’s bought up 1.8m sf of space downtown, making him the biggest property owner downtown besides GM and the City of Detroit itself. He’s betting on revitalization - and hoping for the city’s financial picture to turn around (though how that happens he wasn’t sure when he was asked in 2012 - before the bankruptcy came down).