Detroit’s affordable real estate, diverse architectural styles and urban leadership won high praise from the Financial Times, with an article that digs deeper than statistics to interview several residents who couldn’t be more optimistic about the city’s progress. And though prices are still low around the city, one local real estate expert says the housing market is finally moving upward again.

Excerpt:

Kelly Sweeney, chief executive officer of Coldwell Banker Weir Manuel, has been a local estate agent for 30 years and is convinced of an upward trend. “Because of the loss of manufacturing jobs, our market went into freefall well before the subprime crisis,” he says. “But we reacted quickly to that, and we are in a better position now. And there has been some improvement in employment. Also, our inventory of bank-owned properties is going down.”

Read the rest of the article here

Detroit, MI- Check out this article at Freep.com Detroit Free Press and see some of the buzz that’s happening around the re-build of this city.

Detroit has become the flavor of the week and the talk of the nation. On the annual December global list of “100 things to watch” in the year ahead, the New York-based J. Walter Thompson advertising agency named Detroit No. 24 among products, places, people or trends that could shape public thinking and popular culture.

-FROM ROCHELLE RILEY: Detroit show is being viewed worldwide

Check out this story on mlive.com posted by Jeff T. Wattrick…

Video: CBS News sees Detroit’s entrepreneurial boomtown potential

The video features a reference to Quicken Loans Inc. that is Detroit based and was voted in Fortunes top 30 list of ‘Best Companies to Work for’ for the 8th year in a row.

Quicken Loans moved its headquarters and 1,700 team members to a vibrant state-of-the-art office space in the heart of downtown Detroit in the summer of 2010. The company’s new colorful and collaborative home was designed to inspire creativity and innovation by taking on a distinct “anti-corporate” identity. The company is planning on moving an additional 2,000 of its team members to Detroit in the next year.

This project is a great example how businesses are taking advantage of the Detroit market and creating new jobs.

Metro Detroit residential real estate sales up 3.5 percent in January; prices down 7.7 percent