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BELOW: Lana and Steve Perica with daughters, Vanessa
and Isabella; they enjoy their tight-knit neighborhood.

Steve and Carly Betel — and Bruno — moved from Ferndale to a
new- build home in White Lake.

Rabbi Brent and Jill Gutmann with their daughters Lyla, Daria
and Tzipi moved here from New Zealand. They live within walk-
ing distance of Lone Pine Elementary School.

continued from page 10

HOUSE HUNTING

Though they already live in a house they
love — 3,000 square feet on a corner lot
with access to Walled Lake’s highly rated
Oakley Park Elementary — Ben and
Rebecca Bershad say they are far from
the first of their friends to consider mov-
ing their family to the Lone Pine area.
That would mean their kids — 5-year-old
twins Adam and Livia — would attend
Bloomfield Hills’ Lone Pine Elementary
School when they start kindergarten in
the fall.
“You have to take in all the consider-
ations,” Rebecca says of their housing
hunt, which they began in earnest in the
past few months.
Rebecca, 38, who grew up in Florida
and then Ann Arbor, and Ben, 35, who
is from West Bloomfield, moved to their
current residence, a four-bedroom with a
three-car garage at Haggerty and Pontiac
Trail, from an apartment in Farmington
Hills in 2009. They bought at the bottom
of the market in a family-friendly area
with well-manicured lawns and sidewalks.
As the years went by and families —
including theirs — grew, people they knew
started moving toward Bloomfield Hills
and Birmingham schools, they say. Ben’s
sister and her family were among them.
And so, within the last year, the Bershads
started looking online.
“All of a sudden, it was in the picture,”
Rebecca says. They’re looking for a
house that would let their twins go to
school with their cousins at Lone Pine
Elementary School, a school they see as
diverse with lots of Jewish peers.
The houses they’re seeing are older,
built between the 1960s and 1980s, com-

pared with their current house, which was
built in 2001. A new house in that area
likely will require some work before they
could move in, Ben says. It’s a closer drive
to Temple Shir Shalom, the synagogue
his parents attend, and only a bit farther
from Temple Israel, where the twins go to
preschool.
A move will mean changing where he
shops — everything’s a quick hop on M-5
for now — but he says he’s excited about
the area they’re hoping to move to, where

within walking distance from Lone Pine
Elementary School. There are Jewish
families on their street as well as across
Metro Detroit, which is a stark difference
for them from New Zealand, where the
Jewish population was a small fraction of
a percent, they say.
Their house is close to his work at
Temple Kol Ami and accessible to nearby
bike trails. Coming from an urban envi-
ronment, they like to bike everywhere
they can, Jill says. “It’s a great place to live.”

“With my younger one, when she was
in preschool, it was very evident her
classmates would be going to
Lone Pine Elementary.”

— LANA PERICA

they know a lot of people and see a lot of
neighborhoods turning over with young
Jewish families.
“When we hear about the families that
are looking in the same neighborhoods
and competing for the same houses, a lot
of them are Jewish, and we either know
them or we know people who know
them,” he says.

IN THE ZONE

Rabbi Brent Gutmann, 34, and his wife Jill,
33, moved from Auckland, New Zealand,
to the eastern West Bloomfield area less
than two years ago. The pair, who spent
their childhoods in Ohio, and their three
girls, Daria, 6, Tzipi, 3, and Lyla, 1, live

For now, their oldest daughter attends
Hillel, where many of her peers seem to
come from their area, but others trek in
from Windsor, Northville, Ann Arbor and
beyond. “Just because you send your kid
to Hillel doesn’t mean you’re not going to
use the schools eventually,” she says.
They celebrate Jewish holidays with
their neighbors and enjoy the strong sense
of community. “People who move into our
neighborhood never leave our neighbor-
hood,” she says. “They stay forever, and
their kids want to move back.”

CLOSER TO THE CITY

Meanwhile, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham,
Royal Oak, Ferndale, Berkley and

Huntington Woods are also among the
areas drawing young people today, says
Linda Singer, a real estate agent for Max
Broock in West Bloomfield. Commerce is
still seeing some activity as well, she adds.
“I think people are heading east to be
close to Royal Oak, and, now more so, an
easy drive to Downtown.
“It’s a whole new scene. I think they
want to live in urban places and go where
the new restaurants are and be able to
walk places,” she says. Parks and restau-
rants are among the highlights. “When I
was young, everybody lived in Southfield;
then everybody started moving.”
That said, some areas, like Rolling Oaks,
a Farmington Hills neighborhood that’s
home to Farmington Public Schools’
Forest Elementary, have been popular
for several decades. Children who grew
up there, by way of example, return to
live near their parents, she says. “It’s a
very hamishe area.” The subdivision is
connected by about five miles of walking
paths with six different jungle gym areas.
“People don’t move from there; they just
reinvest money into their properties.”
Nanci Rands, associate broker at Hall
& Hunter Realtors in
Birmingham, notes
Huntington Woods as
an area with a strong fan
base. “There are people
who live in Huntington
Woods who grew up
there and whose grand-
parents lived there as
Nanci Rands
well. It continues to
be a much-in-demand
area,” she says. It’s part
of an interest in walkable locations, from

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January 11 • 2018

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