Burns Park “bargains”: This month’s map shows two homes in the coveted neighborhood for $650,000 or less on streets where seven-figure sales are common. And those houses—1303 Brooklyn Ave. ($650,000 for a 4-bed, 2-bath, 1,626-square-foot bungalow built in 1920) and 1302 Granger ($640,000 for a 1604-square-foot, 3-bed, 3-bath, three-story bungalow built in 1917)—aren’t the only ones. In the past six months, seven classic Burns Park houses have sold under that threshold. Some may need work, but “bargains” exist.
Bryant homes cross $300K: A 3-bed, 2-bath, 1,080-square-foot ranch at 16 Jay Lee Ct. is on the map this month at $300,000—a milestone for the diverse, low-income neighborhood that has long provided some of the city’s least expensive housing. Observer real estate consultant Sue Maguire says that this and a smattering of other $300K+ sales—three in 2023, one in 2024—show that even the market’s lowest end is making big gains.
Inglis House heading back to market?: Dan Musser III and Marlee Brown, owners of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, made headlines in 2017 when they bought the four-story, 12,000-square-foot, 4.5-acre estate at 2301 Highland from U-M for $2.1 million. A gift to the university in 1951 from industrialist James Inglis’s family, it once hosted the likes of Gerald Ford and the Dalai Lama. This month, Musser and Brown are on the map with the $2.3 million purchase of 2750 Whispering Woods Dr., a 5-bed, 5.5-bath mansion with a 5.5-car garage and a full indoor basketball court. If they put Inglis House up for sale, U-M holds a right of first refusal to buy it back.
This Old House of the Month: The distinctive mansard-roofed home at 514 W. Madison is known as the Bonin House after the first owners listed in public records. In 1898, John Bonin was a “laborer,” and by 1920 he was “assistant in charge of [the] surveying instrument room” at U-M, according to the real estate listing in 2017 when it last sold for $602,000. It’s a mystery how they could afford the 4-bed, 2-bath, 3,058-square-foot “Second Empire–inspired brick home” on the Old West Side, but they’d be gobsmacked to learn it would one day sell for $1.27 million. They wouldn’t recognize the interior, either; it underwent a major renovation after a 2013 fire.
