Detroit Distressed Property & Blight Leads (blight tickets, vacant properties, sales)

Pull fresh Detroit blight tickets with unpaid balances, vacant-property registrations, recorded property sales, Detroit Land Bank listings and the city demolition pipeline as clean, filterable data. Every run reads the City of Detroit's official open-data services, which the city updates daily. No login, no proxies, no scraping of private sites.

Use it to find motivated sellers in Detroit, build distressed-property lead lists, price deals against recent sales comps, and watch the Land Bank and demolition lists.

Who it is for

• Real estate investors, wholesalers and rehabbers looking for owners with unpaid code-violation fines or newly registered vacant properties.
• Agents and appraisers who need recent arm's-length sales by ZIP code or neighborhood.
• Contractors and boarding, cleanup and demolition companies targeting properties with active violations.
• Analysts and journalists tracking blight enforcement and property transfers across Detroit.
• AI agents and automations that need Detroit property data through an API.

Example inputs

Tickets with at least $500 still unpaid in the last 90 days, for ZIP 48205:

{ "datasets": ["blight"], "daysBack": 90, "zipCodes": ["48205"], "minBalanceDue": 500 }

Overgrown-lot and dumping tickets in the last 60 days:

{ "datasets": ["blight"], "daysBack": 60, "violationKeyword": "weeds" }

Arm's-length residential sales between $20,000 and $120,000 in the last 30 days (comps):

{ "datasets": ["sales"], "daysBack": 30, "minSalePrice": 20000, "maxSalePrice": 120000, "armsLengthOnly": true }

New vacant-property registrations and the Land Bank's current listings:

{ "datasets": ["vacant", "dlba"], "daysBack": 14 }

Datasets and filters

Dataset	What it holds	Useful filters
blight	Code-violation tickets: violation, fine, judgment, balance due, payment status, owner and mailing address	days back, ZIP, neighborhood, violation keyword, minimum balance due
vacant	Vacant-property registrations with owner name	days back, ZIP, neighborhood
sales	Recorded sales: date, price, seller, buyer, term of sale, property class	days back, ZIP, neighborhood, min and max price, arm's-length only
dlba	Detroit Land Bank properties currently listed (current list, ignores dates)	neighborhood
demolition	Demolition pipeline (current list, ignores dates)	ZIP, neighborhood

Every row carries dataset, address, zipCode, neighborhood, parcelId and coordinates where the city provides them.

Real sample rows (October 2026, owner names left out)

Dataset	Date	Address	Detail
blight	2026-10-14	19401 Stout	Failure to obtain certificate of registration for rental property, $280 balance due, no payment applied
blight	2026-10-14	12854 Bentler	Failure to obtain certificate of compliance, residential rental, $280 balance due
vacant	2026-10-13	19758 Prairie St	New vacant-property registration, ZIP 48221
sales	2026-10-13	15544 Normandy	$86,000, arm's-length, residential

Output

{
  "dataset": "blight",
  "address": "19401 STOUT",
  "zipCode": "48219",
  "recordId": "26078537DAH",
  "date": "2026-10-14",
  "violation": "Failure to obtain certificate of registration for rental property",
  "fine": 250,
  "balanceDue": 280,
  "paymentStatus": "NO PAYMENT APPLIED",
  "ownerName": "...",
  "ownerMailingAddress": "..."
}

Pricing

Pay per result: $5.00 per 1,000 records. A 30-day blight pull for the whole city is a few thousand rows, so a typical run costs a few dollars. Use Max results to cap spending.

Good to know

• Covers the City of Detroit only.
• The data is published by the city and is only as accurate as the city's records. Fields can be blank, and the city's files contain some typo dates (such as years far in the future); date filters exclude them.
• Owner names and mailing addresses come from the city's public records. Use them lawfully: follow rules such as CAN-SPAM for email and TCPA for calls and texts, do not harass anyone, and do not use this data to decide credit, employment, insurance or housing eligibility.
• A ticket is an allegation or a city charge, not proof the property is in distress. Verify before you act.
• Related Actor: Detroit Building Permits & Contractor Leads.