Grand Rapids is more than a market. It’s a map of great neighborhoods.

Fact sheet

What it is

A four-week, March-Madness-style bracket in which Grand Rapids residents vote for their own neighborhood, round by round, until one is crowned champion.

The field

16 Grand Rapids neighborhoods, seeded into four regions — East Side, West Side, North Side and South Side.

Who votes

Anyone. Voting is free, takes one tap, and requires no login and no purchase. One vote per matchup.

What the winning neighborhood gets

A sponsored block party in the champion neighborhood.

What an individual can win

$500 in gift cards to local businesses, for the sharpest bracket — predict every matchup before voting opens.

Who is behind it

Grand Rapids Real Estate Co., a local brokerage. Each neighborhood in the field has a local agent as its champion, and neighborhood businesses sign on as boosters to rally their own blocks.

Where it runs

On grandrapids.realestate. The official vote lives on the site; social channels drive turnout.

Schedule

The field

Each links to that neighborhood’s page, with its own housing data.

Alger Heights · Belknap Lookout · Creston · East Hills · Eastown · Garfield Park · Heritage Hill · Highland Park · John Ball Park · Midtown · Northeast · Ottawa Hills · Roosevelt Park · Shawmut Hills · Southeast End · West Grand

Original data

We compute our own figures from recorded sales, assessor parcels and public datasets across 13 West Michigan counties. These are free to cite with attribution to Grand Rapids Real Estate Co. Underlying figures and additional cuts are available on request — including cuts we haven’t published.

• Every old neighborhood in Grand Rapids has at least doubled in ten years →

  Ten years of recorded sales across the 16 bracket neighborhoods. Smallest ten-year gain +112%, typical gain +166%, computed over 1,445 recent recorded sales.

• All published studies →

  Including the West Michigan lakefront premium — what the water actually costs, by price band.

Assets for coverage

• Live bracket Standings, vote counts and a social-ready share card.
• Official rules Eligibility, voting limits and how the winner is decided.
• Leaderboard Who’s ahead, updated as votes come in.
• Photography & interviewsNeighborhood photos, business owners and neighborhood champions are available for coverage.

About us

Grand Rapids Real Estate Co. is a West Michigan real estate and software company built around places rather than listings. We maintain mapped, data-backed pages for roughly 15,900 neighborhoods, cities, townships, lakes and districts across 13 counties — computing walkability, drive times, schools, housing stock and price history from public records and our own analysis. The premise is that most people pick a place before they pick a house.