Taubman College Allen Delivers Crash Course in Real Estate Investing To Detroiters
Taubman lecturer Peter Allen was recently featured on NPR, in a story by Jason Margolis. For over three decades, Allen has been teaching students of the fickle real estate industry, advising his subjects on the art of investing. His current course is taught on Saturdays in Midtown Detroit, teaching residents how to examine investing through a critical lens. The course was made possible by the University of Michigan schools of Social Work along with Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, in conjunction with Detroit’s Skillman Foundation. The NPR feature offers an inside look into Allen’s course.
From NPR:
Allen estimates that he has taught 3,500 students over 34 years in Ann Arbor. He’s now in Detroit because he says he wants to help locals revitalize their own neighborhoods through real estate investing.
“This is the best way — individual, grass-roots, entrepreneurial, house-by-house, skin-in-the-game approach — to neighborhood revitalization than any government program, or city-directed program could achieve,” he says.
It’s not a get-rich-quick class. It’s being offered with help from the University of Michigan’s Schools of Social Work and Urban Planning, along with the Skillman Foundation, a Detroit organization that helps schoolchildren.
Allen is volunteering his time and says he’d like to continue teaching in Detroit for another five to 10 years.
“I tell the students the only compensation for me is that when they’re finished fixing up a house, they invite me over for dinner,” he says.
The students in Allen’s Detroit class might be more cautious than the average home buyer. After all, they are taking a class first.
