By Paul Wolfert — adapted from the Moving MI video of the same name.
I've helped hundreds of people buy around here, and I hear people regret the same five Detroit suburbs for the same reasons over and over.
And they're not bad places. Every one of them is a good place to live. That's actually what makes it worse. They all look good on paper, and they all have something that nobody mentions until after you've already signed.
So I'm naming all five of them. The last one is the one that gets a lot of people — because they don't regret the house, they regret what it costs to live on that street.
Market figures below are from when the video was recorded (fall 2026). Inventory and prices move fast, so treat them as a snapshot, not today's numbers.
1. Novi — Great Schools, No Downtown
People move to Novi on purpose, for the schools. Novi schools are excellent, and people will pay a fortune to live in that district. Last year 635 homes sold there — more than anywhere else on this list — at a median of around $475,000, with about 2.6 months of supply, the tightest of all five.
The regret: there's nowhere to go on a Saturday night. You pay up to get in the district, you get the house, and then it's Saturday and you've got nowhere to go. They've been trying to fix this for over 40 years. Novi Town Center opened in 1987, and the mayor at the time called it the beginning of a downtown for Novi. It's a shopping center — a really nice one — but it's not a downtown. Main Street Novi was built from scratch in the '90s, all at once, which is not the way downtowns usually happen. In 2023 the city approved 193 townhomes on Main Street, so the thing that's finally filling in Novi's downtown is condos. What Novi has now is 12 Oaks Mall — genuinely a very nice mall — but that's the center of gravity for the whole thing. A giant mall and a parking lot. It's like the Troy of the West Side.
The part that costs money: the school-district trap. Novi feeds four different school districts — Novi, Walled Lake, Northville, and South Lyon — and your taxes are going to change pretty drastically depending on the schools you land in. Of the 635 homes sold last year, 443 went to Novi schools. So roughly 3 out of every 10 homes sold in Novi did not come with Novi schools. The mailing address is not the same as a school district. There are two different systems and they do not care about each other. If a house looks too good to be true for the price, that's usually the reason — not some sort of scam or trickery. It's a line on a map that somebody drew a long time ago.
If the school district is the reason you're buying here, check before you fall in love with the kitchen. One reassurance: Metro Detroit doesn't tend to move school boundaries, unlike what some out-of-state buyers tell me happened to them where they came from.
Who is Novi actually for? People who came for the schools, want a lot of house, and are fine driving to somebody else's downtown on a Saturday night.
One more thing — fences. Of the 71 homes for sale in Novi right now, eight have a fenced yard. Hold that thought, because the fence thing comes up a lot in this list.
2. Lyon Township — New Builds, Further Than You Think
This is where you land if you want a new house and you're not willing to pay Northville money for something built in 1962. The math is solid: 419 homes sold out there last year, median only $540,000. 54% of everything for sale right now was built in the last 10 years, and almost none of it is condos — 5 out of 55. That's houses with yards, with basements that were poured this decade.
The pitch buyers hear in their heads: "Wait, I can buy this one and it's brand new and it's $200,000 less than Northville and it's only 20 minutes further out."
The truth: it's 20 minutes further out at 11:00 in the morning on a Tuesday when you drove it once. It's a totally different number on a Wednesday in February on a two-lane road behind a school bus in six inches of snow that nobody's touched yet. It looks close on paper, but paper is very generous about distance.
Downtown South Lyon is right there and very convenient — it's just not the downtown that made you want to move there.
There is a workaround: the little sliver on the edge of Lyon Township that feeds into Northville schools. It's real. It does exist. Of the 419 homes sold last year, 12 were in the Northville district — 12 out of 419 — and people who land there don't shut up about it. Northville schools, a house built this decade, and you can usually put up a fence there. One of my absolute favorites in this zone is Windridge Estates. I toured their model home and have helped many people buy and sell there.
Fences again: 83 houses for sale in Lyon Township right now, only eight listed as having a fence. I never thought the fence thing would be such a big deal until I started helping out-of-state people move to Michigan. Michiganders are used to it, but out-of-state buyers say, "What? That's crazy."
3. Bloomfield Township — The Walkability Gap
Nobody ends up in Bloomfield Township by accident. People choose Bloomfield on purpose. They want the land, they want the schools, and they want the name without the Bloomfield Hills price point. Last year 619 homes sold there, median sales price $635,000, 3.5 months of supply.
Here's the telling number: of everything for sale right now, only 10% was built in the past 10 years, and zero are condos. Lyon Township is at 54%. Bloomfield is not being rebuilt and resold. Bloomfield already happened. You're buying a house from 1965 with a lot of land around it. And that's the entire point.
The regret is not an obvious one. People describe Bloomfield as walkable, and people instantly think of a downtown with shops and outdoor patio dining in the summer. In Bloomfield, walkable means a loop around your own subdivision and then into another, which is genuinely beautiful. And it's also the same loop every day until you add another loop to your loop. The people who love it call it peaceful. The people who don't say it feels like an upscale Farmington Hills.
Schools are the one that costs you more than any other mistake on this list. Bloomfield Township feeds four different school districts. Of last year's sales, 393 went to Bloomfield Hills, 163 to Birmingham, 41 to Avondale, and 19 to Pontiac. No one is looking at a Bloomfield Township address and picturing Pontiac schools. Yes, it's only 19 houses, and that's not that big of a number — but it's a very big number if it's your house and you didn't know about it. I ask that question before I write up an offer every single time, and I've heard from many people who found out about the school-district issue after they moved.
Fences — the thing I get asked about more than schools, taxes, or anything else by people moving here from out of state: 135 houses for sale in Bloomfield Township right now, and 21 have a fenced yard. That is three places in a row on this list where the answer is mostly no about any sort of dog or child containment system.
Learn more about Bloomfield Township
4. Northville — A Real Downtown, With Hidden Challenges
One of my favorites of all five. The downtown is a real thing — not a lifestyle center with a fountain in the middle of a parking lot. It's an actual downtown where you park once and you walk around for 3 hours. So many good restaurants, shops, bars, coffee shops. It's what you probably imagine when you think about a downtown. People fly in, walk around downtown Northville one time, and make up their minds. One Saturday and they call me and go looking for a house.
There's more new construction near downtown than you'd think. Over half of everything for sale in the city of Northville right now was built in the past 10 years. When somebody builds new on an old lot in Northville, it usually looks like it's always been there. I toured one of Mike Miller's builds on the channel — you'd swear the house had been on that street for a hundred years, and it hasn't. It's only a few years old.
But reality: all of those new builds happening right now are not the same as that one. 25 of the 32 newest listings in the city are townhouse-style condos, mainly filling in the old racetrack site right next to downtown. They're nice. I'm not knocking them. But if you came here picturing a brand new build with a yard and somewhere to put the dog, that's not what's going up downtown.
You can see it in how long things sit: the city of Northville has nearly 6 months of supply right now — the slowest city of any of the places I'm covering today, and it's not even close. Remember, Novi is 2.6.
So most people end up in Northville Township, where there's more land and fewer condos. It's beautiful out there. You just end up with your favorite parking spot in Northville instead of actually living in the thick of it. Nobody's ruined. It's just not the picture they had in mind when they picked out Northville while walking around and looking at a map.
If you're looking in the township, check your district: 38 of last year's township sales went to Plymouth-Canton schools, not Northville. And two things nobody else mentions. Northville actually sits in two different counties — same city, but you've got Wayne on one side and Oakland on the other. You do not want to find out about that at the closing table, because it changes your schools and it changes your taxes.
Then there's the landfill: Arbor Hills, just west of town. Not in Northville, but very visible from a few neighborhoods. Most days you'd never know it's even there, but then the wind does what the wind does, and you can smell it. You can see it from homes that cost well over a million dollars — so it's not a cheap house problem. If you're looking to live out near there, go stand on the lot at 6:00 in the evening in July before you write the offer. And as I was putting this video together, the landfill's owners proposed adding another landfill right across the street, right next door to Steeplechase, one of the nicest neighborhoods in all of Northville.
5. Birmingham — The Pressure to Update
412 homes sold there last year, median sales price a little over $882,000, about 3.5 months of supply. Unlike the other four, Birmingham is actively rebuilding itself: 44 of the current listings were built in the past 10 years, and only six of those are condos. Northville puts condos right next to its downtown. Birmingham tears down a house and puts up another house.
The actual regret is not on any spreadsheet. You buy a perfectly nice house in Birmingham, nothing's wrong with it. You love it, you think you're done, and then about a year and a half in, it just starts to feel like it needs something. Nobody tells you to update anything. There's no rule, no HOA meeting, nobody knocks on your door. The street just sets a number and everyone just sort of lives inside it.
Birmingham does not pressure you loudly. Birmingham pressures you politely. I've heard it time and again: "We're different. We're not going to care what the neighbors do." Everyone says that. I actually say that about my own house. And then a kitchen, bath, and remodeling truck shows up next door for 6 months. You start looking at everything around you a little bit differently. Many Birmingham homeowners told me flat out they didn't expect to feel like they had to update a house that was completely fine — and then they ended up doing it anyways.
The other problem is physical: whatever house you buy is probably going to be built to the edges of the lot. So you're going to be using the parks a whole bunch, and you're not going to have some sort of giant garage to park all your cars in. I'm a member of a Birmingham club called Out of Office Garage — basically a country club for people who love cars. Meets, track days, happy hours, rallies, free car washes, car storage. You don't have to live in Birmingham to be a member, and it's a pretty handy membership to have if your garage only fits one car and a lawn mower but you own four 911s and a scooter.
The existence of that kind of place sort of explains why anyone would put up with any of the negatives to be in Birmingham. Nobody moves to Birmingham for the house. They move there to be close to all the things they're into: top-tier schools, 26 parks — that's over 10% of the entire city — two city-owned golf courses in a city that small, sidewalks that actually go somewhere, a downtown that works on a Tuesday in February and not just in the middle of July, and a location where you can get just about anywhere in the Detroit area in about a half hour. There's nowhere else like it in all of these suburbs. Not one that I can think of.
Fences: 94 houses for sale in Birmingham right now, 46 have a fenced yard — half, and I'd bet the number is actually higher. Remember, Novi was 8 out of 71. Lyon Township was 8 out of 83. But here, you get small yards, old streets, and nobody's stopping you from having a fence.
That's the trade that nobody explains to you before you get here. You can have the new house, or you can have the walk, or you can have the yard that you're allowed to fence in. Around here, you can get about two of those, but almost nobody gets all three.
But if you want all three, I can absolutely help.
The Bottom Line
None of these are bad places. Every one of them is a good place to live — that's what makes the regrets sting. They look good on paper, and the thing nobody mentions only shows up after you've signed.
Before you buy in any of them, check the school district for the specific address, drive the commute at rush hour in bad weather, and walk the neighborhood on a Saturday night. And if you want the full picture — property taxes and how they reset the second you buy, real car-insurance costs, real rush-hour drive times — grab my free Metro Detroit Relocation Guide: Relocation Guide.
Want to talk through which of these fits you? Schedule a call or reach out: Contact Paul — call (734) 743-1482.
Watch the original video: Detroit Suburbs You'll Regret Moving To (And Why)
