Michigan Feasibility Studies

The Michigan Thesis

A statewide Michigan number is indefensible.

Michigan is not one market but at least five diverging ones, and the decisive fact for underwriting is that the same asset class reads oppositely across them. Auto-and-EV metro Detroit behaves nothing like fast-growing, diversified Grand Rapids and West Michigan; which behaves nothing like knowledge-economy Ann Arbor; which behaves nothing like declining Flint and Saginaw or the seasonal north and Upper Peninsula. Multifamily rent growth ran plus 3.8 percent year over year in West Michigan (Colliers, Q3 2025) and Detroit posted top-10 national rent growth at plus 2.2 percent (Yardi Matrix, Q3 2025), even as national advertised rents closed 2025 flat at zero percent, the first year without a gain since 2020.⁵³⁴ A single statewide capture rate applied across these regions misprices nearly every deal.

The state is also slow-growing and unevenly settled. Michigan reached roughly 10.1 million residents — the Census Vintage 2024 release put it at 10,140,459, a historic high, later revised toward 10.1 million — with growth driven almost entirely by international migration while the state recorded a natural decrease, more deaths than births, every year since 2020.¹² The Detroit–Warren–Dearborn MSA dominates at 4,400,578 as of July 1, 2024, and Detroit proper has grown for three straight years to 645,705, its first sustained gains in decades, even as 36 mostly rural counties lost population.¹² Detroit is not Grand Rapids; Grand Rapids is not Ann Arbor; neither resembles Flint or the Upper Peninsula. We underwrite Michigan region-by-region, against the current pipeline, the regional funding channel, and the Michigan-specific factors most studies miss.

Michigan's signature differentiators versus the Sun Belt are positive: relative multifamily supply discipline, low catastrophe exposure with no hurricanes and minimal wildfire, a full Certificate of Need regime that caps healthcare supply, a genuine Detroit downtown revival, and a new data-center tax incentive — set against the negative signature risk of auto and EV megaproject whiplash. What follows is organized as a working desk: a live oversupply monitor, a funding-routing map, the review failures that sink Michigan studies, the regulatory edges that decide outcomes, and a per-metro demand fingerprint. Every figure is dated and attributed in the sources below.

The Oversupply & Pipeline Monitor

Where Michigan markets stand, metro by metro.

A supply-pressure read for each metro and asset class, refreshed each quarter from named primary sources. A dash means we hold no current tracked reading, not that the market is balanced. Data current to Q2 2026.

Supply pressure: Oversupplied Balanced Undersupplied Digesting / softening
Metro	Multifamily	Self-Storage	Industrial	Office	Hotel Pipeline
Detroit metro	Balanced94.8% occ., +2.2% rent	Balanced~1.0 sf/capita	Balanced3.3–5.2% vac.; auto-drag	OversuppliedSuburban 22.2%; downtown digesting	Digesting+1,600 rooms by 2027
Grand Rapids / West MI	Digesting+3.8% rent; 5,142 UC	Balanced	BalancedDiversified base	Balanced	BalancedAcrisure Amp. 2026
Ann Arbor	Undersupplied~$2,021 rent; U-M demand	Undersupplied5.4 sf/capita; 7th nat'l	Balanced	BalancedTech / research, tight	Balanced
Lansing / E. Lansing	Balanced	BalancedEmerging market	Balanced	Balanced	Balanced
Kalamazoo	BalancedStryker / WMU anchored	Balanced	Balanced	Balanced	Balanced
Flint / Saginaw	BalancedWeak demand	Balanced	Balanced	Oversupplied	Balanced
Traverse City / N. MI	Undersupplied30,000-unit gap by 2027	Balanced	Undersupplied	Balanced	DigestingSeasonal, leisure-led

Readings compiled from sources 3–22 below. Vendor vacancy estimates for the same metro can differ; each figure is attributed at its point of use.

Multifamily: supply discipline that outperformed the Sun Belt

Michigan metros have been markedly more supply-disciplined than the Sun Belt, producing stable, positive rent growth even as national rents flattened; December 2025 closed with zero percent year-over-year advertised rent growth, the first year without a national gain since 2020 (Yardi Matrix).³ Detroit ran an average asking rent of about $1,332, up 1.9 percent year over year against 0.5 percent nationally and 8th among the top-30 metros, and posted 2.2 percent annual rent growth at 94.8 percent occupancy, 20 basis points above the U.S. average, on disciplined deliveries of roughly 1,500 units in 2024 (Yardi Matrix via Lument, Q3 2025).³⁴ West Michigan is the growth engine: Grand Rapids asking rents reached $1,370 per unit, up 3.8 percent year over year and the strongest pace since early 2023, at 6.1 percent vacancy with 5,142 units under construction (Colliers, Q3 2025), and the GVSU Seidman review cited roughly 4 percent rent growth across Kent and Ottawa counties on 1.4-month for-sale supply (GVSU Seidman Business Review, 2026).⁵⁶ Ann Arbor is the tightest market, with average apartment rent near $2,021 per month in January 2026 against a $1,741 national average, held tight by University of Michigan demand (RentCafe, January 2026).⁷

Self-storage: below the national per-capita line

Michigan metros run below the 7.8 net-rentable-square-feet-per-capita national average, signaling relatively low oversupply risk (Multi-Housing News citing Yardi Matrix, December 2025).⁸ Detroit sits at roughly 1.0 square foot per capita across 14 facilities and about 970,991 square feet, though development is picking up: 2025 added about 74,277 square feet, up 8.3 percent year over year, and Detroit was added to Yardi Matrix's Top-30 storage metros in October (StorageCafe, 2026; Multi-Housing News, December 2025).⁸ Ann Arbor is the clearest undersupply, at about 5.4 square feet per capita and ranked 7th nationally for high-demand storage markets on student-driven demand, while Lansing–East Lansing screens as a top-20 emerging market on roughly 16 percent population growth (RentCafe, 2025).⁸

Industrial: the signature Michigan asset class, caught in the EV transition

Detroit's roughly 540-million-square-foot industrial base is anchored by auto OEM and Tier-1 supplier facilities along the I-75 and I-94 corridors, and its fortunes now hinge on the EV and battery transition and its whiplash. The vendor reads diverge sharply and must be presented as a range: CBRE put Detroit industrial vacancy at 3.3 percent in Q1 2026, among the lowest in the country after four consecutive quarters of positive absorption with 2.6 million square feet under construction; Cushman & Wakefield reported 4.1 percent, the highest since 2015 after eleven straight quarters of increase; Newmark reported 4.4 percent, down from a 4.6 percent peak; and Savills reported 5.2 percent in Q3 2025 with year-to-date net absorption of negative 0.6 million square feet, negative in four of five quarters, driven by automotive-sector uncertainty tied to EV production changes.⁹¹⁰¹¹¹² CBRE nonetheless named Detroit among the most attractive Midwest markets for occupier expansion in 2026, citing labor and power availability.⁹

The whiplash is not abstract. Ford's BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall was announced in February 2023 at $3.5 billion and 2,500 jobs, then scaled back in November 2024 to about $2.5 billion and 1,700 jobs as Ford cited a turbulent EV market; Michigan cut over $625 million from its roughly $1 billion incentive package, and Ford's December 2025 announcement shifted the plant to LFP cells for residential energy storage, citing lower-than-expected demand (Bridge Michigan, 2024; Marshall Ad-Visor & Chronicle, 2025–2026; The Center Square, 2025).¹³ GM delayed Orion Assembly's EV pickup from 2024 to late 2025 to mid-2026 (Autobody News, July 2025; CNBC, October 2023);¹⁴ sold its Ultium Cells Lansing stake to LG Energy Solution (Bridge Michigan, December 2024; GM Authority, March 2025);¹⁵ reversed the Lansing Grand River EV conversion for a $1.25 billion gas-Cadillac retool (Detroit Free Press / WLNS, October 2025);¹⁶ and the Gotion plant near Big Rapids was effectively terminated by the state in October 2025 (WOOD TV8; Michigan Public, October 2025).¹⁷ Grand Rapids and West Michigan industrial rests on a healthier, diversified base — office furniture, food processing, and medical devices — without the same single-industry auto concentration.

Office: a downtown-Detroit revival against a soft suburban market

Detroit is a national outlier positive story downtown amid broad office distress: Bedrock has invested $7 billion into downtown since 2011, anchored by the completed Hudson's Detroit tower, driving a flight-to-quality (Lument, 2025).⁴ But the metro read is still soft: office vacancy held at 21.5 percent in Q1 2026 at Newmark and 19.2 percent at Cushman & Wakefield, the suburban market remained soft at 22.2 percent despite positive absorption in Southfield, and Q1 2026 leasing of 757,000 square feet across 173 deals fell well short of the 25-year quarterly averages of 1.67 million square feet and 327 transactions (Newmark, Q1 2026).¹¹ Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor office are healthier, with Ann Arbor's tech-and-research demand keeping it tight, while the office markets of long-declining Flint and Saginaw carry structural oversupply.

Hotels and senior housing: an event-and-convention thesis

Detroit hotels are underwritten to an event-and-convention thesis. The 2024 NFL Draft generated a record $213.6 million in total economic impact, $161.3 million from out-of-region visitors, per the economic-impact study by Dr. Patrick Rishe, director of the Sports Business Program at Washington University in St. Louis, for Visit Detroit and the Detroit Sports Commission, released July 11, 2024; Detroit hotel occupancy peaked at 92 percent on April 25, 2024.¹⁹ Downtown has about 6,000 hotel rooms and is adding more than 1,600 by 2027, roughly a 25 percent increase, including the JW Marriott Detroit Water Square at 601 rooms and $396.5 million, opening Q1 2027 ahead of the 2027 NCAA Men's Final Four, plus The Detroit EDITION at 227 rooms inside the Hudson's tower (Axios Detroit / Crain's, 2026).²⁰ Grand Rapids adds the 12,000-seat Acrisure Amphitheater in 2026 (Jeff Burke & Associates, 2025),²¹ and Traverse City and northern Michigan run a strong seasonal leisure market where the 10-county northern region needs 30,000 more housing units by 2027 (Bridge Michigan, 2025).²² In senior housing, national occupancy rose to 88.7 percent in Q3 2025, the 17th consecutive quarterly increase, and 89.1 percent in Q4 2025 (NIC MAP, October 2025); Michigan's aging population, with deaths exceeding births each year since 2020, supports long-run demand.¹⁸

The Funding-Routing Map

How a Michigan deal actually gets funded.

Feasibility work exists to satisfy a specific reviewer. Knowing which channel funds your asset in your region is half the battle. This is the routing most feasibility pages never publish.

The SBA and USDA funding spine in Michigan

A single statewide SBA district office, a dominant 7(a) lender, a leading 504 CDC, and a rural-focused USDA office.²³
Channel	Lead routing
SBA District Office	One statewide office, McNamara Building, Detroit, with a Grand Rapids alternate work site
SBA 7(a) lending	Huntington National Bank, #1 in Michigan and nationally; Chase, Comerica, Fifth Third, PNC in the top 10
SBA 504 (CDC)	Michigan Certified Development Corporation (East Lansing), projects in ~90% of counties
USDA Rural Development	State office in East Lansing; area offices from Gladstone to Sault Ste. Marie to Grand Rapids

The funding spine is bifurcated by region and program. A single SBA Michigan District Office in the McNamara Building in Detroit serves the entire state, with a Grand Rapids alternate work site (SBA.gov, 2026).²³ On the 7(a) side, Huntington National Bank is the number-one originator by volume both nationally — a seventh consecutive year in FY2024, with more than $1.5 billion across over 7,500 loans — and specifically in Michigan, where it was named the district's FY2024 Lender of the Year, with Chase, Comerica, Fifth Third, and PNC in the Michigan top 10 (Huntington / SBA, FY2024; Detroit Regional Chamber, 2024).²⁴ Nationally, Live Oak Bank leads by dollar volume at $2.68 billion in calendar 2025 (GoSBA, 2026).²⁶ On the 504 side, the Michigan Certified Development Corporation in East Lansing is the leading statewide CDC, a nonprofit since 1982 with projects in roughly 90 percent of Michigan counties and the first Michigan CDC to earn Premier (PCLP) status; that leading claim is self-reported and should be verified against SBA Open Data (MCDC, 2025).²⁵ For rural credits, USDA Business and Industry, REAP, and Community Facilities loans route through the Michigan Rural Development state office in East Lansing, whose area offices span the heavily rural-eligible north and Upper Peninsula (USDA RD, 2026).²⁷ The decisive new tool is the July 4, 2026 decoupling of the 7(a) and 504 caps to $10 million combined, the highest in agency history.²⁸

Industrial or manufacturing in metro Detroit or the auto-corridor countiesHuntington, Comerica, or Fifth Third paired with MCDC on the 504, but stress-test any EV-megaproject demand assumption first.
Multifamily or mixed-use in Grand Rapids and West MichiganMercantile, Independent, or Huntington paired with MCDC; healthy demand against a sizeable pipeline.
Anything in the rural north, the Upper Peninsula, or agricultural areasUSDA Rural Development East Lansing first — Business & Industry, REAP, or Community Facilities.
Any healthcare-adjacent asset — hospital beds, nursing beds, imaging, an ASCCertificate of Need status gates the deal before financing; the CON application is itself a deliverable.
A capital-intensive manufacturer previously capped at $5MAfter July 4, 2026, re-route to a sequenced 7(a)-plus-504 structure for up to $10 million combined.

Common Review Failures

How Michigan feasibility studies fail review.

Each failure below is tied to a real Michigan number. These are the recurring reasons a Michigan study loses credibility with a lender or agency, engineered out of our deliverables before they ship.

Statewide-average error

Michigan grew only about 0.3 percent in 2024–2025, but that masks Kent County up 4,800 to 675,232 and Oakland up 5,800 to about 1.3 million against 36 mostly rural counties that lost a combined 3,449 residents. Underwriting a statewide growth rate to a shrinking county, or vice versa, is the foundational error.¹²
Auto and EV megaproject whiplash

The signature Michigan failure mode. Ford Marshall was cut from 2,500 to 1,700 jobs and roughly $3.5 billion to $2.2 billion; GM Orion slipped from 2024 to mid-2026; GM Lansing Grand River flipped from EV back to gas; and Gotion's 2,350-job plant was terminated. Underwriting workforce housing, retail, or supplier absorption to peak announced employment has repeatedly been invalidated within 12 to 24 months.¹³¹⁶¹⁷
Legacy-city and shrinking-market capture-rate error

Detroit fell from about 1.8 million in the 1950s to 645,705 in 2024 — though it has now posted three straight years of gains — while Flint, Saginaw, and much of the rural north continue a multi-decade decline. Assuming growth-market absorption in a structurally shrinking submarket is a classic rejection trigger; the exceptions must be proven, not assumed.¹²
Auto-cyclicality and single-industry concentration

Metro Detroit's heavy auto concentration makes demand cyclically exposed to UAW strikes, such as the 2023 stand-up strike, plant closures, and the EV transition. A pro forma that underwrites to peak auto-cycle demand rather than a mid-cycle base is a failure mode on its own.¹²
Property-tax and pop-up mispricing

Proposal A caps annual taxable-value growth at the lesser of 5 percent or CPI, but taxable value uncaps and resets to State Equalized Value on sale — the pop-up — which can sharply raise a new buyer's bill versus the prior owner's. Michigan's effective property-tax rate averages about 1.19 percent, and Detroit's high millage remains a diligence item.³³
Ignoring a relative insurance advantage

Michigan has materially lower catastrophe exposure than coastal or Sun Belt states — no hurricanes and minimal wildfire or hail — a genuine positive for insurance cost and debt-service coverage. A study that imports national catastrophe-loaded insurance assumptions overstates NOI drag; the real residual risks are Great Lakes shoreline flooding, the June 2021 Detroit-area flooding, and aging stormwater infrastructure.²
Energy, utility, and data-center mispricing

DTE Energy and Consumers Energy face load growth from data centers and manufacturing; the Related Digital “Stargate” contract alone would raise DTE's load about 25 percent. With PA 235 of 2023 mandating 80 percent clean energy by 2035 and a 2,500-MW storage target, underwriting utility rates and interconnection timelines to today's environment is risky.³¹³²

Regulatory Edges

The Michigan rules that decide feasibility outcomes.

Four regulatory realities separate a Michigan study that survives review from one that does not. The first is the one competitors most often state wrong.

Certificate of Need: Michigan is a full CON state

Michigan is a full Certificate of Need state, and competitors who state that Michigan has no CON are catastrophically wrong. The program is administered by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services through an 11-member Certificate of Need Commission — appointed by the Governor with Senate advice and consent, no more than six from one major party — created under MCL 333.22211 within the Public Health Code, Act 368 of 1978, Part 222, MCL 333.22101 et seq.²⁹ CON approval is required to increase or relocate licensed beds, acquire or begin operating a health facility, and start, replace, or expand covered clinical services and major medical equipment — including hospital beds; nursing-home and HLTCU beds; MRI, CT, and PET scanners, megavoltage radiation therapy and linear accelerators, cardiac catheterization, and open-heart surgery; freestanding surgical outpatient facilities and ASCs; and psychiatric units (MDHHS; Michigan Health & Hospital Association, 2025).²⁹ Nursing-home bed CON is strict and formula-driven: the CON Review Standards for Nursing Home and HLTCU Beds (CON-217) apply an age-specific bed-need methodology per planning area, approved December 10, 2020 and effective March 19, 2021, with the CON Commission approving an updated 2026 Work Plan on December 4, 2025 and the capital-expenditure threshold indexed to $4,002,500 effective January 1, 2024 (MDHHS).³⁰ The feasibility implication matches New York, Illinois, and North Carolina: healthcare supply is heavily gated, oversupply risk is low, and the CON application is both a barrier to entry and a gating deliverable.

The data-center incentive and the energy question

Michigan's enterprise data-center sales and use-tax exemption, SB 237 and HB 4906, was signed December 31, 2024, exempting operators that invest at least $250 million from sales and use tax on equipment through at least 2050, and 2065 on brownfield or former-power-plant sites, in exchange for at least 30 jobs at 150 percent of the regional median wage; the Senate Fiscal Agency estimated a cost of up to $90 million in general-fund revenue plus $52.5 million local through FY2065–66 (Crain's / Data Center Dynamics, December 2024).³¹ A surge of projects followed, led by the Related Digital “Stargate” data center in Saline Township, announced at roughly $7 billion and later reported escalating toward $16 billion, with Oracle as tenant and about 1.4 GW of DTE power — a roughly 25 percent increase in DTE's electric load — approved by the Michigan Public Service Commission via a 19-year DTE contract on December 18–19, 2025 (Bridge Michigan; ClickOnDetroit, December 2025).³¹ Set against that load growth, PA 235 of 2023 mandates 80 percent clean energy by 2035 and 100 percent by 2040 with a 2,500-MW storage target, and repeal bills HB 4027–4028 passed the House in May 2026 but are expected to die in the Senate (MPSC; Michigan Public, 2026).³² Utility rates and interconnection timelines are now first-order feasibility variables for any power-intensive Michigan project.

Property tax: Proposal A and the pop-up

Michigan's Proposal A of 1994 caps annual taxable-value growth at the lesser of 5 percent or CPI, but taxable value uncaps and resets to State Equalized Value on sale — the pop-up — which can sharply raise a new buyer's tax bill relative to the prior owner's. The state's effective property-tax rate averages about 1.19 percent, and Detroit's historically high millage and over-assessment history remain diligence items (Tax Foundation, 2026); a Michigan pro forma must model post-sale taxable value, not the seller's frozen number.³³

Tailwinds in the sponsor's favor

Several structural factors cut the sponsor's way. Michigan carries materially lower catastrophe exposure than the coasts, with no hurricanes and minimal wildfire, a genuine insurance and debt-service advantage;² multifamily has been supply-disciplined, producing positive rent growth while the Sun Belt declined;⁵ the personal income tax is a flat 4.25 percent for 2026 with a 6 percent statewide sales tax and 6.0 percent corporate rate (Michigan Department of Treasury, April 15, 2026; Tax Foundation, 2026);³³ and the SBA raised its combined 7(a)-plus-504 ceiling to $10 million effective July 4, 2026, materially enlarging bankable deal size.²⁸

Metro Divergence

Michigan markets, distinct demand fingerprints.

Each metro carries its own economic base and its own supply position. These are the units of analysis for a Michigan study, and each anchors a dedicated market page.

Auto, EV & downtown revival

Detroit–Warren–Dearborn

Auto and EV, finance, health, and a genuine downtown revival across an MSA of 4,400,578; Detroit proper reached 645,705, growing three straight years. Multifamily is balanced at 94.8 percent occupancy, industrial is a divergent vendor read, and suburban office is oversupplied while downtown digests a flight-to-quality.¹⁴

Furniture, med device & food

Grand Rapids / West Michigan

The state's growth leader on a diversified base — office furniture, medical devices, and food processing — with Kent County up 4,800 to 675,232. Multifamily is digesting a healthy pipeline at plus 3.8 percent rent growth and 5,142 units under construction; industrial and office read balanced.²⁵

University & life science

Ann Arbor

Growing and prosperous, anchored by the University of Michigan, a tech cluster, and life sciences. Average apartment rent near $2,021 keeps multifamily undersupplied, self-storage ranks 7th nationally for demand, and office is tight — the tightest metro in the state.⁷⁸

Government & universities

Lansing–East Lansing

State government, auto, and Michigan State University anchor stable, modest growth. Multifamily and storage read balanced, and Lansing–East Lansing screens as a top-20 emerging storage market on roughly 16 percent population growth — a steadier, less cyclical demand base.⁸

Pharma & advanced mfg

Kalamazoo

Stable and anchored by pharma — Stryker and Pfizer — and Western Michigan University. Demand fundamentals are steady across asset classes, and every monitored cell reads balanced; we build these studies with primary local research on the medical and university base.

Legacy auto & manufacturing

Flint / Saginaw

Legacy auto and manufacturing markets in long-run population decline. Multifamily reads balanced but with weak demand fundamentals, and office carries structural oversupply. These are capture-rate discipline cases: growth-market absorption cannot be assumed in a shrinking submarket.²

Tourism, wine & second homes

Traverse City / Northern Michigan

A fast-growing, priced-out leisure economy of tourism, wine, and agriculture, from the Grand Traverse region to Mackinac Island. The 10-county northern region needs 30,000 more housing units by 2027; multifamily and industrial are undersupplied and hotels are seasonal and leisure-driven.²²

Tourism, timber & mining

Upper Peninsula (Marquette)

A small, slowly declining economy of tourism, timber, and mining across a heavily USDA-eligible territory. Supply is thin and data is sparse, so demand is best routed through USDA Rural Development and built with primary local research rather than statewide averages.²⁷

By Asset Class

Michigan feasibility studies by asset class.

Each asset class carries its own Michigan demand drivers, from auto and EV supplier absorption to the full Certificate of Need regime to seasonal northern leisure. Explore the analytical approach by property type.

Michigan Questions

Michigan feasibility study questions.

Does Michigan require a feasibility study for an SBA loan?

Under SBA SOP 50 10 8, a feasibility study is discretionary rather than universally mandated, and lenders commonly require one for special-purpose properties and startup or ground-up projects that lack operating history. Michigan carries heavy concentrations of special-purpose and manufacturing collateral, from hotels and self-storage to auto-supplier and battery facilities, so feasibility analysis is frequently expected on Michigan SBA credits.

Does Michigan have a Certificate of Need law?

Yes. Michigan is a full Certificate of Need state. The program is administered by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services through an 11-member CON Commission under the Public Health Code, Act 368 of 1978, Part 222, MCL 333.22101 et seq. CON approval is required for hospital beds, nursing-home and HLTCU beds under a bed-need formula, major medical equipment such as MRI, CT, PET, and linear accelerators, cardiac catheterization, and surgical services and ASCs. Competitors who state that Michigan has no CON are catastrophically wrong; healthcare supply is heavily gated, so oversupply risk is low and the CON application is itself a gating deliverable.

Which Michigan real estate markets are oversupplied right now?

Michigan is markedly more supply-disciplined than the Sun Belt. As of Q2 2026 most metro and asset cells read balanced or undersupplied: Detroit multifamily ran about 94.8 percent occupancy with 2.2 percent rent growth, West Michigan posted 3.8 percent rent growth, and Ann Arbor is undersupplied. The clearest oversupply pockets are suburban Detroit office near 22.2 percent vacancy and the office markets of long-declining Flint and Saginaw. Detroit industrial is a divergent, vendor-dependent read from about 3.3 percent vacancy at CBRE to 5.2 percent at Savills, driven by auto and EV uncertainty.

What is the auto and EV megaproject risk in a Michigan feasibility study?

Auto and EV megaproject whiplash is the defining Michigan underwriting hazard of 2024 to 2026. Ford's BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall was cut from 2,500 to 1,700 jobs and Michigan slashed over $625 million in incentives; GM delayed Orion Assembly's EV pickup from 2024 to late 2025 to mid-2026, exited the Ultium Cells Lansing joint venture, and reversed the Lansing Grand River EV conversion for a $1.25 billion gas-Cadillac retool; and the Gotion plant near Big Rapids was terminated by the state in October 2025. Underwriting workforce housing, retail, or supplier absorption to peak announced megaproject employment has repeatedly been invalidated within 12 to 24 months.

Who funds SBA and USDA loans in Michigan?

A single SBA Michigan District Office in the McNamara Building in Detroit serves the entire state, with a Grand Rapids alternate work site. Huntington National Bank is the number-one SBA 7(a) lender by volume nationally and in Michigan and was named the district's FY2024 Lender of the Year. On the 504 side, the Michigan Certified Development Corporation in East Lansing is the leading statewide CDC, with projects in roughly 90 percent of Michigan counties. USDA Business and Industry guaranteed loans route through the Michigan Rural Development state office in East Lansing, which covers the heavily rural-eligible north and Upper Peninsula.

How is a Michigan feasibility study different from a national one?

Michigan is not one market but at least five diverging ones: auto-and-EV metro Detroit, fast-growing Grand Rapids and West Michigan, knowledge-economy Ann Arbor, declining Flint and Saginaw, and the seasonal north and Upper Peninsula. The same asset class reads oppositely across them, so a statewide average misprices nearly every deal. A defensible Michigan study is built region-by-region against the current supply pipeline, the funding channel, and Michigan-specific factors most studies miss: the full Certificate of Need regime, the auto and EV megaproject whiplash, and Michigan's relative multifamily supply discipline and low catastrophe exposure as positive differentiators.

Sources

Data sources and dates.

Every figure on this page traces to a named authority. Real-estate readings are point-in-time and vendor-dependent; where vendors disagree, the range is shown and each is attributed at its point of use.

U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 and Vintage 2025 Population Estimates (Michigan ~10.1 million; Detroit–Warren–Dearborn MSA 4,400,578 and Detroit city 645,705 as of July 1, 2024), via the Michigan Center for Data & Analytics and Bridge Michigan (2024–2025).
Bridge Michigan, Michigan and county population-change analyses, including international-migration, natural-decrease, and county gain/loss data, plus Great Lakes flooding and utility-load reporting (2025); Michigan Center for Data & Analytics population projections to 2050 (2025).
Yardi Matrix, national and Detroit multifamily market reports (December 2025).
Yardi Matrix via Lument, Detroit multifamily market report and Bedrock downtown-investment commentary (Q3 2025); MSCI Real Capital Analytics cap-rate data (2025).
Colliers, West Michigan (Grand Rapids) multifamily market report (Q3 2025).
Grand Valley State University, Seidman Business Review, West Michigan housing review, Kent and Ottawa counties (2026).
RentCafe analysis of Yardi Matrix data, Ann Arbor apartment market report (January 2026).
StorageCafe self-storage inventory review (2026); Multi-Housing News citing Yardi Matrix self-storage per-capita and Top-30 metro data (December 2025); RentCafe high-demand storage-market rankings (2025).
CBRE, Detroit industrial market report and 2026 Midwest occupier-expansion outlook (Q1 2026).
Cushman & Wakefield, Detroit industrial and office market reports (Q1 2026).
Newmark, Detroit industrial and office market reports (Q1 2026).
Savills, Detroit industrial market report (Q3 2025).
Bridge Michigan, Ford BlueOval Battery Park incentive reductions (2024); Marshall Ad-Visor & Chronicle (2025–2026); The Center Square (2025); Michigan Capitol Confidential citing Crain's (2024).
Autobody News citing GM Q2 2025 earnings call, Orion Assembly delay to mid-2026 (July 2025); CNBC, GM Orion Assembly delay (October 2023).
Bridge Michigan, GM sale of its Ultium Cells Lansing stake to LG Energy Solution (December 2024); GM Authority (March 2025).
Detroit Free Press and WLNS, GM Lansing Grand River gas-Cadillac CT5 retooling (October 2025).
WOOD TV8 and Michigan Public, Gotion Green Charter Township abandonment and termination (October 2025).
NIC MAP Vision, senior housing occupancy (October 2, 2025 release, 88.7% in Q3 2025; Q4 2025 update at 89.1%).
Visit Detroit and the Detroit Sports Commission, 2024 NFL Draft economic-impact study by Dr. Patrick Rishe, director of the Sports Business Program, Washington University in St. Louis (released July 11, 2024).
Axios Detroit and Crain's Detroit Business, downtown Detroit hotel-pipeline reporting, including the JW Marriott Detroit Water Square and The Detroit EDITION (2026).
Jeff Burke & Associates, Grand Rapids lodging and Acrisure Amphitheater commentary (2025).
Bridge Michigan, northern Michigan housing-shortage reporting, 10-county region (2025).
U.S. Small Business Administration, Michigan District Office directory, McNamara Building, Detroit, with Grand Rapids alternate work site (SBA.gov, 2026).
Huntington National Bank and SBA, FY2024 7(a) lender data (#1 nationally and in Michigan); Detroit Regional Chamber, SBA Michigan District Office FY2024 lender awards (2024).
Michigan Certified Development Corporation (MCDC), 504 program disclosures, projects in ~90% of Michigan counties and Premier (PCLP) status (2025); SBA 504 CDC data via data.sba.gov.
SBA fiscal-2025 lender data via GoSBA (Live Oak Bank, $2.68 billion, calendar 2025) (2026).
USDA Rural Development, Michigan state office, East Lansing (State Director Dominic Restuccia; area offices in Gladstone, Sault Ste. Marie, Traverse City, West Branch, Caro, Grand Rapids, and Mason) (2026).
SBA Policy Notice 5000-879058 (dated May 18, 2026; effective July 4, 2026), decoupled 7(a) and 504 caps for $10 million combined; SBA FY2024–FY2025 7(a) and 504 activity reports via Bankrate (2025).
Michigan Legislature, Public Health Code, Act 368 of 1978, Part 222, MCL 333.22101 et seq. and MCL 333.22211; MDHHS Certificate of Need program; Michigan Health & Hospital Association (2025).
MDHHS, CON Review Standards for Nursing Home and HLTCU Beds (CON-217), approved December 10, 2020, effective March 19, 2021; 2026 CON Commission Work Plan approved December 4, 2025; capital-expenditure threshold $4,002,500 effective January 1, 2024.
Michigan enterprise data-center sales/use-tax exemption, SB 237 / HB 4906, signed December 31, 2024 (Crain's and Data Center Dynamics, December 2024); Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency cost estimate; Related Digital “Stargate” reporting via Bridge Michigan and ClickOnDetroit and the Michigan Public Service Commission DTE-contract approval (December 18–19, 2025).
Michigan Public Service Commission, Clean Energy and Jobs Act, PA 235 of 2023 (80% clean by 2035, 100% by 2040, 2,500-MW storage target); repeal bills HB 4027–4028 via Michigan Public (2026).
Michigan Department of Treasury income-tax guidance, flat 4.25% for 2026 (April 15, 2026); Tax Foundation Michigan tax data, effective property-tax rate ~1.19% and 6.0% corporate rate (2026); Michigan Proposal A of 1994 (taxable-value cap and uncapping on sale).