In mid-2012, Andrew Wallace and his son, Nathaniel, bought a two-bedroom condominium in Detroit's then-gritty and desolate Brush Park for $90,000.

The Wallaces, who own a small IT business in Troy, did roughly $200,000 in renovations and then watched as Brush Park evolved from an area that was largely avoided into the city's Next Hot Neighborhood.

This October, they sold the 4,400-square-foot condo to an out-of-state buyer. The sale price: $1.25 million.

"It was surreal," Nathaniel Wallace, who lives in Detroit, recalled last week. "We knew we had something on our hands. I didn't think it would be over $1 million."

That extraordinary deal was one of four $1 million-plus home sales in Detroit this year, which if not for last year's five sales, would have been a record, according to reported sales in the Realcomp multiple-listing service.

Three of the four sales were condos sold in October and November, a unique circumstance because most high-end homes sales in the city have been historic houses such as the Charles T. Fisher Mansion in Boston Edison and the Bishop Gallagher Mansion in Palmer Woods.

Each condo seller enjoyed a major return on investment, snagging sale prices that were far beyond what they paid for their units only a few years earlier.

"It looks like that $1 million home buyer is starting to hit the Detroit market pretty frequently," said Matt O'Laughlin, managing partner at Alexander Real Estate, which sold two of the four $1 million-plus properties, both of them condos.

Ford Motor Co.'s decision earlier this year to buy and renovate the old Michigan Central Station as the future centerpiece of its new Corktown Detroit campus likely had a stimulus effect on the final sale prices of two 6,000-square-foot luxury condos in the same Corktown building.

The first of the duo to sell fills the entire fourth floor of Sixth Street Lofts, a former Westinghouse appliance warehouse.

The recently renovated three-bedroom, three-bath unit with $420 in monthly condo fees and about $22,000 in yearly taxes has wood floors, exposed brick and expansive views. It previously sold for $495,000 in August 2014.

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Mark Krysiak, realtor and market director for Casablanca Real Estate, said that prospective buyers from across the country and even beyond toured the condo.

"Even in this price range in Detroit, we had a lot of people looking at the space. I had locals from Birmingham, I had people from New York, I had clients from out of the country," Krysiak said. “We also had a very well-known hip-hop artist from California look at it as well."

The condo listed for $1.4 million and sold for $1.25 million on Nov. 1. Two weeks later, the other for-sale condo in the same building sold for $1.125 million.

“There are still buyers out there who are looking for stuff like this," Krysiak said. "I have taken multiple calls from people who were interested in this unit, and now that it’s sold they are looking for something similar, but there’s just not much out there.”

Slower for historic homes

Real estate agents say that 2018 was a slower year in Detroit for $1 million-plus houses, in part because so many extraordinary houses such as the Motown Mansion that rarely hit the market were sold last year, leaving a smaller inventory of properties that can truly command $1 million.

But some sellers, motivated by last year's flurry of $1 million-plus sales, were perhaps too ambitious with their asking prices. Some of those listings just sat on the market.

“I wish I had more $1 million sales to report, but we still had a phenomenal year," said Realtor Jason Hill of Historic Realty Detroit. "Detroit does have a lot of those opportunities, they just don’t come on the market every day."

$1 million in Indian Village

The sole house on this year's list was sold for exactly $1 million in March. That seven-bedroom house on Iroquois in Indian Village dates to 1916 and features a redone kitchen, a sunroom, a library with oak shelves, an outdoor swimming pool and an old carriage house that functions as a one-bedroom apartment.

The buyers were Jarrett and Jazelle Irons, who moved to Detroit from Chicago with their two young children.

Jazelle Irons is originally from Detroit and Jarrett Irons, 45, a Texas native, was a standout linebacker and football team co-captain at the University of Michigan in the 1990s. He now works for a medical device company, overseeing the firm's Michigan market.

They had considered staying in the Chicago area and looked at houses out there, discovering that they would need to spent at least $1.2 million "just to barely get what we wanted," Jarrett Irons said.

“Chicago is a very expensive city where you really don’t get a lot for your money. And to be honest with you, I didn’t even realize how much we were paying until we moved to Detroit," he said.

The couple spent about a year house-hunting in Detroit before they were introduced to their future Indian Village home by Realtor Betty Warmack of Real Estate One. At the time, the Iroquois house wasn't on the market, although it was in move-in-ready condition.

"She is the reason why we’re here," Jarrett Irons said. "I was getting to the point where I thought we would have to rent something, but Betty had the house we wanted."

The couple plans to do a few minor renovations to the 8,833-square-foot house early next year in the master bathroom, the carriage house and the basement, where a home gym will be installed.

“What we got for the amount of money and where we live, I couldn’t be happier," Jarrett Irons said. "Some people might say we overpaid for our house because we could have gotten these houses five years ago for maybe half the cost or even less. But for me, I love the house, I love living in the city, I love the neighborhood."

Off the market

One closely watched $1.2-million listing, also in Indian Village, was taken off the market this fall. That four-bedroom house from 1914 at 1731 Seminole once belonged to Detroit musician Jack White and was where the White Stripes recorded "Get Behind Me Satan."

Agent Tom Ball of Real Estate One said the current owners decided to take the winter off and try again in 2019.

“We had a lot of lookers. Everybody raved about it. But sadly, nobody wrote," he said.

From $90K to $1.25M

When the Wallaces bought their Brush Park condo on John R in June 2012 for $90,000, the condo building was under the control of a bankruptcy court-appointed trustee.

Andrew Wallace, president of Communications Professionals Inc., said they originally intended to make the unit a Detroit office for their family business. However, the move-in date was delayed by a year because of title and other issues related to the building's unusual financial circumstances.

By mid-2013, with the surrounding Midtown area revitalizing fast and Little Caesars Arena and the QLINE on the way, the Wallaces changed their office plans and decided to rent out the space as housing.

They charged $2,000 per month for the two-bedroom unit, which is spread over two floors and includes a three-car garage. Meanwhile, a deluge of new building activity hit Brush Park, notably the 410-unit City Modern development by businessman Dan Gilbert's Bedrock real estate firm.

Earlier this year the Wallaces decided it was time to sell. They started off asking $1.4 million.

“At that time it was still a speculative market, so we were really just trying to gauge the market," said Nathaniel Wallace, who is Communications Professionals' vice president of operations.

More than 40 prospective buyers toured their condo, including numerous people from out of state and overseas.

“We had people come in from Asia, we had some people from New York, a lot of people from LA, a couple people from Germany," Nathaniel Wallace said.

Detroit real estate has been attracting international investors in recent years who may rent out and flip properties here while remaining in their home countries.

Yet nearly everyone who toured the Wallaces' condo said they were actually looking at the condo as a place to stay in Detroit.

Nathaniel Wallace recalled a conversation with one prospective buyer from South Korea.

“He said his father owned a casino and he was looking to kind of move away from where he was and start a new life in Detroit," Wallace said. “He wanted to come to Detroit because he heard it was hot — those were his exact words."

The Wallaces ultimately sold their condo in October to a buyer from New York.

Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JCReindl.

What sold this year