After a long time of decreasing home prices, Detroit was the only metropolitan area in the country that announced rising property values in February. The price of homes in the Detroit area rose by a humble 1%, but is still down 3.7% in comparison with last year.

Reasons for this upwards trend might be the decreasing number of foreclosures, the sale of renovated formerly foreclosed homes and generally more expensive homes entering the market. Dan Elsea of Real Estate One said that agents were again receiving more than one offer per property and that sometimes bidding ended above the asking price.

David M. Blitzer, Chairman at the S&P index committee noted that despite the moderate rise in metro Detroit, the ten other metro areas supervised fell below their January levels. He added that home prices even in the Detroit metropolitan area were 30% lower now than they were in 2000. Therefore, property prices in Detroit might only be `bouncing along the bottom’.

"You can't read too much into one month even though it is a three-month moving average", Patrick Newport, economist at HIS Global Insight US, said. "Falling prices is a really bad thing. If you look at the index level, you can see that Detroit is way below every other city".