Remember when you could get a storefront lease for $800 a month in Corktown?

I was walking down Michigan Ave last week and saw a 'for lease' sign on a spot I almost rented back in 2019. That place was $850 a month for 1,200 square feet then. Now the same landlord wants $2,200. It got me thinking about how much Detroit has changed in just three years. I remember when I first started my painting business out of a tiny shop on Grand River for practically nothing. Now every new coffee shop and boutique that opens seems to drive rents up another notch. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the city is coming back, but it's a different game for small owners like us. Has anyone else noticed their overhead jump way faster than their revenue since 2020?

3 comments

3 Comments

iris9271d ago

Oh man, been there. I negotiated a graduated lease in 2021. Locked in $1,000 for year one, then 5% increases each year after. Landlord was grumpy about it but agreed since I signed a 5 year term. @thomas_torres thats the thing - some of them will work with you if you push back hard enough. Saved me from that 40% jump everyone else is dealing with.

jade5171d ago

Man, that hit me right in the gut. The way rent has shot up in Corktown and all over Detroit is just wild. Remember when that whole stretch of Michigan Ave was mostly empty storefronts and a few old school places like the Bucharest Grill? Now every inch is getting snatched up for triple what it used to be. It feels like the landlords saw all the development happening and decided to cash in on the hype before the small guys could even catch our breath. You're not wrong about the overhead thing either. My revenue went up maybe 15% since 2020, but my rent jumped 40%. That math just doesn't work for people like us who started out scraping by and hoping for a fair shake.

thomas_torres1d ago

When you say the landlords are cashing in, do you think they're deliberately pricing out the old businesses or just riding the wave?