By Rockwell Rutter, founder of Ugly House Finder, which scores residential property distress from imagery and public records at county scale.
Quick answer: Detroit property records are published by the City of Detroit Office of the Assessor at detroitmi.gov. You can look up a parcel by address or parcel number and see assessed and taxable value, year built, building characteristics, and sales history. What the county record will not tell you is the condition the house is in today, which is the gap Ugly House Finder fills.
Where to look up Detroit property records
Detroit property records are published by the City of Detroit Office of the Assessor at detroitmi.gov. A Detroit property search there lets you look a parcel up by address or parcel number, and returns assessed and taxable value, year built, building characteristics, and sales history.
One thing worth knowing: Detroit parcels are assessed by the city, while deeds are recorded at the county.
Deeds, mortgages, and liens are held separately by the Wayne County Register of Deeds, so a full picture of a parcel usually means checking both offices.
What the county record shows, and what it leaves out
A Detroit property search answers ownership and value questions well. It will tell you who holds title, what the county thinks the property is worth, when it last sold, and how large the structure is. It will not tell you whether the roof is failing, whether the yard has been left to go wild, whether windows are broken, or whether the house reads as vacant. Assessor data describes a parcel on paper. It does not describe the condition of the house standing on it. That gap is why we built Ugly House Finder: we score visible condition from street-level and aerial imagery, then pair it with the same public records you can pull yourself.
How much of Detroit, Michigan shows visible distress?
Out of 401 homes we could assess from street-level imagery, 150 showed at least some visible neglect, a rate of 37.4 percent. Because this is a random sample rather than a full count, the true citywide rate sits within roughly 32.8 to 42.2 percent at 95 percent confidence. Street-level imagery covered 93.3 percent of the sampled properties.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Homes sampled | 430 |
| Homes scored | 401 |
| Street-level imagery coverage | 93.3% |
| Some visible neglect (2.5 or above) | 37.4% (32.8 to 42.2%) |
| Clear distress (3.5 or above) | 1.2% |
| Average distress score | 2.36 |
Which parts of Detroit show the most distress?
Grouping the sample by ZIP code shows where distress concentrates. ZIP is derived from each property’s mapped location, not the owner’s mailing address, so absentee-owned homes count where the house actually sits. Sample sizes per ZIP are small, so read these as directional rather than precise, but the pattern is clear: Springwells (48210) is the most distressed area in the sample at 50.0 percent.
| ZIP | Area | Homes scored | Some neglect | Average score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 48210 | Springwells | 16 | 50.0% | 2.5 |
| 48238 | Dexter-Linwood | 29 | 48.3% | 2.49 |
| 48204 | Nardin Park | 18 | 44.4% | 2.51 |
| 48235 | Bagley/Schaefer | 27 | 40.7% | 2.33 |
| 48228 | Warrendale | 33 | 39.4% | 2.34 |
| 48234 | Nolan | 26 | 38.5% | 2.35 |
| 48221 | Bagley | 29 | 37.9% | 2.34 |
| 48227 | Greenfield | 26 | 34.6% | 2.33 |
| 48205 | Denby | 29 | 34.5% | 2.36 |
| 48219 | Brightmoor/Grandmont | 32 | 18.8% | 2.14 |
What the imagery actually found
The scoring model records specific named conditions rather than one opaque number, so the distress can be broken down by what is actually visible.
| Condition | Share of scored homes |
|---|---|
| Overgrown or neglected yard | 62.6% |
| Peeling paint or damaged siding | 49.4% |
| Accumulated debris or trash | 18.2% |
| Roof damage | 5.0% |
| Broken or boarded windows | 17.2% |
| Visible structural damage | 3.0% |
| Reads as abandoned | 2.0% |
The common conditions describe wear rather than crisis. The rarer structural conditions are the ones that separate a genuinely distressed house from a merely tired one, and those are a much shorter and more actionable list.
How we did this
- Sample. A random sample of 430 residential parcels drawn from across Detroit, Michigan, excluding vacant land and government-owned parcels. This is a sample, not a full census of the city.
- City, not metro. These figures describe Detroit itself. The surrounding suburbs would read differently, and the wider metropolitan county rate would be lower because it folds in more affluent outlying areas.
- Method. For each property we retrieved street-level imagery aimed at the structure and scored it with our current production vision model against a fixed distress taxonomy derived from our own hand-labeled training set. The model returns named indicators with a severity rating plus a distress score from 0 to 5.
- Thresholds. A score of 3.5 or above is clear distress; 2.5 to 3.5 is visible but milder neglect; below 2.5 is unremarkable.
- Confidence. With 401 scored homes, the citywide neglect rate carries a 95 percent confidence interval of about plus or minus 5 percentage points. Per-ZIP figures rest on far smaller samples and are directional only.
- What is not in here. This scan used street-level imagery alone. It includes no aerial imagery scoring and no tax-delinquency data, both of which our platform can add on request.
- Known error mode. Purely visual scoring can over-call distress where heavy shade or dark facades read as damage. We corroborate a visual-only finding against a second signal before treating any single property as a lead.
Finding properties in poor condition in Detroit
Run your own scan of any Detroit neighborhood, or request a full-county file. Start scanning, or see plans and pricing. For how we measure distress across every market we have studied, read the full research writeup.
Common questions
How do I look up property records in Detroit?
Detroit property records are published by the City of Detroit Office of the Assessor at detroitmi.gov. Search by address or parcel number to pull a parcel’s record. There is no charge to search.
What information is in a Detroit property record?
A Detroit parcel record typically shows assessed and taxable value, year built, building characteristics, and sales history. It does not describe the current physical condition of the house.
Can I search Detroit property records by owner name?
Not directly. The City of Detroit Office of the Assessor indexes parcels by address or parcel number, so start from the address if you only have a name.
How do I find properties in poor condition in Detroit?
Public records will not tell you condition. Ugly House Finder scores visible distress from imagery across Detroit and returns a ranked, per-property list. You can run a neighborhood scan yourself or request the full county.
Which Detroit neighborhoods have the most distressed homes?
In this sample, Springwells (48210) showed the highest rate at 50.0 percent. Several adjacent ZIPs also ran well above the citywide average. Because each ZIP rests on a small sample, treat the ranking as directional.
How accurate is it?
Accurate enough to rank and prioritize, not to decide on a single address without looking. The model reliably separates a house in poor condition from one in good repair, and it can over-call in unusual lighting, which is why the output is a ranked list to work through rather than a verdict on any one property.