Research · Grand Rapids Real Estate Co.
Every Old Neighborhood in Grand Rapids Has at Least Doubled in Ten Years
We pulled ten years of recorded sales for sixteen Grand Rapids neighborhoods — the ones seeded into this fall’s Neighborhood Madness bracket — and the pattern is the same everywhere. Not one of them gained less than +112% over the decade. The typical one is up +166%. The single biggest gain belongs to the cheapest neighborhood on the list.
Published by Atlas — Grand Rapids Real Estate · analysis by Jon Hazeltine, Broker Associate (MI #6502432782) · August 2026
The cheapest neighborhood gained the most
Roosevelt Park has the lowest median sale price of the sixteen at $210,000. It also has the largest ten-year gain: +251%, from a median of $59,900 a decade ago. That combination is the whole story of the last ten years in Grand Rapids — the neighborhoods that started cheapest moved the furthest, in percentage terms, and they are still the cheapest.
At the other end, Ottawa Hills carries the highest median at $692,500 — 3.3× the cheapest neighborhood on the list, inside the same city. Both of those medians rest on thin annual volume (see the note below the table), so read them as the direction of a market rather than a precise price.
Speed says more than price right now
A median sale price tells you what a neighborhood costs. Days on market tells you how badly people want in. The typical home in Creston goes under contract in 5 days — and Creston had more recorded sales than any other neighborhood on the list, so that is a real market moving fast, not a handful of lucky listings. Ottawa Hills sits at the other end at 49 days, which is what happens when the housing stock is expensive and no two houses are alike.
In 8 of the sixteen, the typical home still closes at or above its asking price. Ten years into a run, that is the number that says the run has not ended.
Price per square foot rearranges the whole list
Rank the sixteen by price per finished square foot instead of by sale price and Belknap Lookout comes out on top at $302 per square foot — ahead of Ottawa Hills, whose median sale price is more than twice as high. Small houses on small lots close to downtown carry the highest per-foot price in the city. If you are only watching sale prices, you miss it entirely.
Every one of them is an old neighborhood
The newest housing stock on this list has a median build year of 1959. The oldest is 1900. These are pre-war and immediately post-war neighborhoods — the original city — and they are the ones that doubled.
The sixteen, by the numbers
Sorted by ten-year gain. Sale counts are the trailing 12 months (Aug 2025 – Jul 2026).
| Neighborhood | Median | Sales | 5 yr | 10 yr | Days | $/sq ft |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roosevelt Park * | $210,000 | 7 | +62% | +251% | 43 | $168 |
| Ottawa Hills * | $692,500 | 6 | +57% | +195% | 49 | $249 |
| Southeast End | $278,750 | 177 | +47% | +191% | 8 | $182 |
| East Hills | $390,000 | 32 | +55% | +186% | 10 | $203 |
| Garfield Park | $275,000 | 171 | +49% | +179% | 6 | $188 |
| West Grand | $265,000 | 157 | +48% | +171% | 14 | $195 |
| John Ball Park | $282,500 | 109 | +38% | +170% | 6 | $202 |
| Eastown | $413,250 | 37 | +59% | +168% | 8 | $239 |
| Highland Park | $262,000 | 61 | +46% | +163% | 6 | $195 |
| Creston | $275,000 | 193 | +39% | +159% | 5 | $202 |
| Northeast | $341,450 | 115 | +54% | +149% | 8 | $203 |
| Alger Heights | $290,000 | 117 | +42% | +144% | 10 | $187 |
| Midtown | $290,625 | 47 | +32% | +132% | 9 | $226 |
| Shawmut Hills | $321,500 | 122 | +45% | +125% | 10 | $194 |
| Belknap Lookout | $299,825 | 55 | +43% | +121% | 32 | $302 |
| Heritage Hill | $415,000 | 39 | +89% | +112% | 30 | $238 |
* Roosevelt Park and Ottawa Hills record few enough sales in a year that their medians swing from one year to the next. Their sale counts are printed above so you can weigh them yourself.
How this was computed
Every figure comes from recorded sales, aggregated by month for each neighborhood boundary and reported as a sales-weighted median. The current window is the trailing 12 months (Aug 2025 – Jul 2026); the five- and ten-year comparisons use the same twelve-month window centered five and ten years earlier. Boundaries are Atlas neighborhood polygons, so a “neighborhood” here is a mapped area, not a ZIP code. Sale counts are published on every row.
Journalists: the underlying figures, additional cuts, and interviews are available on request — see the press room, or call Jon Hazeltine directly at (616) 308-7946.
The bracket
Neighborhood Madness 2026 — vote for your neighborhood →These sixteen neighborhoods are the field. Voting opens September 15.