857 Camden Ave
Real estate in Ferndale appears poised to ascend to a new realm of hyperspace, with two brand-new homes made of shipping containers hitting the market and listing for at least $400,000. Neither are in neighborhoods where that price can remotely be considered normal.
One is at 857 Camden Ave., three blocks north of Eight Mile Road and a stone’s throw from a CN rail loading yard where heavy diesel equipment rumbles and shipping containers are used for their stated purpose. It’s asking $399,900. The other is at 3271 Inman, also east of Woodward and close to Harding Park and I-696, with a $450,000 list price. Both neighborhoods are characterized by small, working-class to middle-class homes, with plenty of vinyl siding. (A third shipping-container home being built at Lewiston and Gainsboro does not appear to have come on the market yet.)
To be sure, both represent a premium on size in Ferndale, a city dominated by smaller homes generally under 1,500 square feet. And to be sure, they look very nice, a real departure from standard pre- and postwar Ferndale home styles and layouts.
3271 Inman St.
The former offers 2,200 square feet, four bedrooms, three-and-a-half bathrooms, built with wood and steel and four shipping containers, plus a two-and-a-half-car garage. There’s a grand entrance with a modern staircase and a 20-foot ceiling, plus an 8-by-30 upper deck accessible from the master bedroom and hallway. “You’ll enjoy entertaining in this gorgeous kitchen complete with dove grey cabinets and quartz counter top,” the listing says.
Up on Inman, that $450k gets you three bedrooms, two full and one half-bath, with 1,808 square feet. There’s a spacious open floor plan upstairs, where the kitchen and dining and living rooms are located, with floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors and a second-story walkout balcony. “Perfect for entertaining.” In 2017, the old home that was demolished to make way for the new place sold for a mere $23,000.
I’ve written before about how Ferndale is seeing a boom in residential and other development, but we now appear to be reaching a new supercharged stage, with tear-down infill redevelopments starting to pop up here and there in the neighborhoods, the new FerndaleHaus loft apartments under construction and the two new developments by Robertson Brothers Homes well under way. More than simply an organic rise in home prices, these projects represent an infusion of new, modern and more urban housing styles, further diversifying Ferndale’s housing mix.
- Move-ins are expected to start at the FerndaleHaus starting in May. Prices range from $1,350 a month for a studio to $2,650. Floor plans follow an Ikea-esque nomenclature, with models like the Aalten and the Forst.
- The townhouses at Parkdale Townes appear to be starting around $220,000, while the single-family homes at Wilson Park Village — another Robertson Brothers Homes development started around the same time — range in the mid- to upper-300s.
- Meanwhile, a 2-bedroom, 2-bath, 1,164 condo in the new attached units built on Livernois just south of Nine Mile is asking $329,900.
Granted, these are all new-build units that offer something in short supply in Ferndale — either more modern amenities (like functional kitchens!), more square footage, modern architecture or some combination thereof. But there’s no way all this development — plus the possible coming of Baker College — doesn’t have a knock-on effect for the rest of us stuck on the other side of the economic imbalance in older homes with tiny kitchens and a lack of closet space. For both good and bad.
But hey, the old widower on my block just sold the vinyl-sided home she’s lived in for half a century after less than a week on the market, reportedly to the first person who toured it. The sale price was reportedly around $180,000.
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