The trend troubles Harvey, who is still glad people are buying in Detroit again.

“But what pains me is at whose expense?” he said. “I don’t blame anyone. I just know that systematically, institutionally it has not been in our (African-American’s) favor.”

‘There is still more work to do’

Duggan has made improving neighborhoods the focus of his administration and points to the work of the Detroit Home Mortgage program to ease home ownership barriers.

"Whether through traditional mortgages or other programs, everyone's goal is to turn more Detroiters into homeowners," Donald Rencher, the city's director of housing and revitalization, said in a statement.

Funded by banks, the Detroit Home Mortgage program has helped 243 people buy, and in some cases renovated, Detroit homes, said Krysta Pate, the program’s director.

So far, those loans have helped buyers in just under half of the city’s neighborhoods, Pate said, and those loans have helped lenders make other loans to people not in the program.

Pate said she wants to expand its footprint to areas where sales have almost all been cash-only. “There is still more work to do,” she said.

Rencher pointed out that African-Americans have bought more than than two-thirds of 6,000 homes sold by in recent years by the Detroit Land Bank, a government agency that takes and resells foreclosed property. Most of those sales are for cash. Chemical Bank, as part of its contract with the city to be its primary banking institution, also has committed $50 million in mortgage lending through traditional and non-traditional programs.

Pate said she understands the lure of the suburbs and their schools, relative safety, jobs and retail opportunities.

“We’re happy that people are taking advantage of homeownership,” she said. “But when it comes to Detroit, we understand there are challenges.”

Morrow-Bartell, the real estate agent, said she, too, is glad that would-be black homeowners are jumping into the market again, even if it is in the suburbs.

“It doesn’t matter (where) as long as those people get the opportunity,” she said.

Anna Maria Santiago, a professor in Michigan State University’s School of Social Work who has studied the city’s housing market, said she fears that segregation might occur in the suburbs as it has in Detroit.

“I think it’s opened up,” Santiago said, referring to the suburban housing market. “But I don’t think it’s fully opened up.”

Indeed, blacks are moving into nearby suburbs such as Redford Township, Southfield and Farmington Hills, but few are choosing to buy homes in farther-flung communities such as Troy, Rochester Hills or Washington Township in Macomb County.

But most aren’t choosing Detroit, either.

For all the construction downtown, with the new lofts and glittering arenas, what continues to make Detroit less attractive is what has hurt it for decades: schools, crime, insurance rates, Harvey, Peele and others said.

Gene Kelley, a real estate agent who works in both the city and Oakland County, said buyers want access to a grocery store, banks, restaurants, good schools.

“There are very few (Detroit) neighborhoods that have all those things.” Many people don’t want to cash a check or buy their groceries at a party store, he said.

“I think once you get those things back in the city, I think you’ll get those people back, black, white or whatever.”