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Birmingham to Royal Oak, Ferndale
and Berkley.
A decade ago, Downtown and
Midtown Detroit weren’t really
options. Today, singles and newly mar-
ried couples especially are looking at
real estate there, she adds. The open-
ing of Bloomfield Hills High School,
she says, is drawing more people to
Bloomfield and Bloomfield Township
properties.
WHITE LAKE LIVING
Steve Betel, 29, and his wife, Carly,
31, recently made the move from
Ferndale to White Lake, where they
had a new house built. Steve, who is
originally from the Farmington Hills/
West Bloomfield area, and Carly,
who hails from Royal Oak, headed to
White Lake in October 2016, drawn
in large part by the good education
system in Walled Lake schools.
Steve had lived in Ferndale since
2012, moving back from Florida to
be close to family. He says he liked
that the area was walkable and active
without being too fast-paced.
“There’s a lot going on [in
Ferndale],” he says. But with an eye
toward building a family, they needed
more space, and that’s when they
sought out their new home, a three-
bedroom, 2.5- bathroom house with a
three-car garage.
“I love that we’re out by the lakes
and by the water. That’s something
my wife and I really appreciate,” he
says. “It’s a new house that had what
we wanted; it was within our price
range and in the school district we
wanted. That was basically our deci-
sion.”
Though he hasn’t seen much orga-
nized Jewish life in the immediate
vicinity, he says, they’re close enough
to access all kinds of Jewish activities
in the greater West Bloomfield area
and plan to join a synagogue when
they have kids.
Their friends, mostly couples
without kids, largely still reside in
the Royal Oak/Ferndale area. It was
a much closer ride Downtown to
Quicken Loans, where Steve works
as a mortgage banker. “I have a nice
little hike Downtown,” he says. “I
was 15 minutes, now I’m 50.” Carly,
a psychologist, travels to offices in
Rochester or Farmington for work.
They originally considered moving
Downtown, but wanted to live some-
where they could put their property
taxes to work when it came to send-
ing their kids to school, he says. And
they expect to be in the area long-
term.
Meanwhile, their area continues to
grow.
“If you go north of us, there are
probably 25 new-build subdivisions
14
January 11 • 2018
jn
around. There’s a lot south of us in
Commerce,” he explains. “I can get
anything I could ever think of within
15 minutes.”
HAPPILY SETTLED
Lana Perica, 38, grew up in North
Oak Park and attended Berkley High
School. She and her husband, Steve,
41, who’s from Windsor, Ontario,
moved to Halsted and 14 Mile in
2009. Then, as her daughters, now
ages 5 and 9, attended preschool at
Temple Israel, she started getting the
sense that people were headed east.
“With my younger one, when she was
in preschool, it was very evident that
her classmates would be going to
Lone Pine Elementary,” she says.
They started looking at houses
last summer and, in August 2017,
traded their 2002 home, of which
they were the second owners, for
an older house they spent three
months remodeling. They moved in
November. And, while academically
she sees both schools as about the
same, she’s pleased with their new
area.
“It’s just that tight-knit community
that’s really appealing to families,” she
says. Her fourth-grader and kinder-
gartener integrated easily into their
new neighborhood, with people com-
ing out of the woodwork to set up
play dates, she says.
Meanwhile, they’re still close
enough to where they lived before
to keep in touch, she says. “We still
have lots of friends there — we have
old neighbors coming over for play
dates.”
In many cases, young families
have their eyes peeled for homes in
attractive areas like theirs — some of
which come to market when a mem-
ber of the older
generation decides
to sell.
Pam Stoler,
associate bro-
ker with Hall &
Hunter Realtors
in Birmingham,
says those who do
Pam Stoler
choose to down-
size, moving out
of homes where
they’ve already raised their children,
are heading for walkable areas or
places on the water where their chil-
dren and grandchildren will visit.
“Young families are focusing on
schools,” she says. “People who’ve
already raised their kids are focusing
on a lifestyle.”
Rebecca Bershad agrees. “The
people who are selling their homes
are the people of our parents’ genera-
tion,” she notes. “They don’t have to
worry about the school district.” •