Regrid Data Reveals Who Owns Property Here and Much More
Have you heard the rumors that people from foreign countries are buying up foreclosed homes in MorningSide? Have you wondered if the taxable value of your home is accurate or fair?
Alex Allsup, 37, of Detroit, collects data about Detroit tax foreclosures and property ownership and delinquencies. He can tell you who owns what and much more. It’s his job as Vice President of Research and Technology at Regrid, formerly Loveland Technologies.
His data, for example, shows that a vast majority of once foreclosed properties in MorningSide from 2014-2016 are owned by people – not in China – but just across Eight Mile, suburban Detroiters! A very few Europeans and fewer Africans own our homes but a majority of our landlords are in metro Detroit. Here’s his data mapped out on this chart:
Below is a property map that shows where property tax bills were mailed for about 4,000 owner-occupied homes purchased at auction in 2014-2016. The maps show tax bill mailing locations regionally, nationally and internationally to give a sense of where this ownership sits.
Regional, National, and International property maps shows the number of tax bills mailed between 2014- 2016 to owner occupied homes. Image courtesy of Regrid
Alex came to Detroit 12 years ago and became the first employee of Loveland Technologies, an innovative software company that did interactive city mapping and crowd sourcing. There he developed their software and data collection tools to help communities and the city understand what was happening to Detroit properties and property taxes.
Both past and present presidents of MorningSide Community Organization, Jackie Grant and Eric Dueweke, worked with Alex and have known him for over 10 years each. “It’s amazing what Alex can do,” Jackie said. “He can take data that people don’t understand and create a snapshot that your average Detroiter can understand and use. We created programs necessary to make changes – but first we needed to know what needs to change.” And they learned that with the valuable data they collected and organized.
When Alex was asked what surprised him while collecting data about Detroit properties, he replied about two issues:
I was amazed how clearly tax foreclosed houses and city property tax were the largest forces shaping property ownership in the city and yet no one in the government seemed to know about it or cared.
I realized that the true cost of the tax foreclosures was that foreclosed homes were a lost asset. The wealth represented by that home for the homeowner (once our neighbors) was now gone. And if the home went to a landlord in the auction, and was no longer an owner occupied home, the new tenants were at the whim of a rental market that was unregulated by the city.”
When asked what are new ways data can help Morningsiders, Alex said that Community-based outreach, i.e. people going door to door, can give us a starting point of what tenants are dealing with: How is your landlord? What does your home need? What problems are you facing?
Alex’s newest tool just released this October, 2022 is the Detroit Assessment Gauge that every homeowner can download from Regrid’s website. It can be used to fight your tax assessment if you feel the city’s value of your home is incorrect. It compares your assessment to comparable homes in your neighborhood. The next time you can appeal is January, 2023. Download the assessment tool here: https://regrid.com/reports/detroitassessment-gauge
Alex’s work is no longer limited to Detroit. Regrid has gone national collecting parcel data around the country. Surprisingly, Alex says, “there is no central repository of parcel data for every property in the country.” His company along with others is standardizing data so other cities can learn what Detroit is learning.
Decades ago former Mayor Coleman Young gave a prescient warning, “Detroit today is your town tomorrow.”
“It’s important to learn what happened to our communities that lost homeowners to unnecessary foreclosures and tax issues, and not repeat those mistakes,” Alex said. And solid data is shedding light on that investigation.
