Exactly. Well, almost. Substitute Farmington for Northville and it is exactly what we did.
We own a house in downtown Farmington, and were considering buying a vacation home, perhaps in some town on Lake Michigan. A couple of years ago, while biking on the riverfront, my wife suggested we buy a place in Detroit instead. We bought an apartment in north midtown and couldn't be happier with our "foot on the ground" [[I don't speak French). And while we definately make more money than average, there are still tens of thousands of people in the metro area that make more.
As far as amenities go, there are definately more than Farmington, not even close. This year, I did 90% of my Christmas shopping on foot or by rail within a few hours. We have season tickets for baseball and to the Fisher theater. Walking distance to tons of restaurants and museums.
I think that people take too narrow of a view when they talk about which kind of people are contributing to downtown or midtown's success. If you're at a restaurant and see one table of young 20 somethings and another with a couple of 40 somethings with 2 teenage kids, what is your assumption? You would assume that the family will be going back their suburban home afterward and the youngsters would be going back to their hip downtown loft, but that's not necessarily true. While I do see some younger millenials at owners meetings and shopping around for condos, they are a minority. If you are looking to see where a lot of the money is actually coming from, you may want to look somewhere in that space between the millenials and the billionaires.
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