Michael Gray's house is located in Detroit, Michigan right outside of the University District. It's around one mile from the University of Detroit.
Detroit was once home to the booming auto industry. In the 1950s, the auto industry started declining and companies started moving out of the city. By the 1960s, people were leaving Detroit in droves.
In 2013, the city filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. Now, more than five years later, more and more people are investing in the city.
Just consider entrepreneur Dan Gilbert, the billionaire founder of Quicken Loans. As Business Insider previously reported, after Gilbert moved his company to downtown Detroit in 2010, he started the real-estate firm Bedrock. Not only is Quicken Loans now one of Detroit's largest employers and taxpayers, but as of 2018, Bedrock had invested or allocated $5.6 billion in roughly 100 properties in downtown Detroit and nearby neighborhoods.
Gray documented the entire renovation process in two large photo albums, which he mailed to Business Insider.
He bought the house in 2009 for $1,500 from his nephew, Sylvester, who is a broker for Global Property Investment Group, a commercial real-estate agency.
Sylvester told Business Insider that his office buys real estate, sells real estate, renovates properties, and rents properties.
Global Property Investment Group acquires properties from a variety of different sources including asset managers, the Detroit Land Bank Authority, and the Wayne County Tax Auction, according to Sylvester. When properties don't fit into the company's business model, they are sold to independent purchasers, which is how Gray came across the house.
Gray told Business Insider that he's been living in the house since the day he bought it and that he started renovating it in April 2010.
"In Detroit, if you're not there or you don't have someone there, someone will come in and take your stuff. It's gone in a matter of 15 minutes, gone," he explained to Business Insider.
He wasn't even able to use the toilet. "The plumbing wasn't working. We were not able to use the toilet at all," he told Business Insider.
"I had been going through a rough time in my life," he explained. "I was staying with my niece and sleeping in her basement."
Even with a college degree, Gray told Business Insider that he wasn't able to find a job in Detroit.
Gray graduated from Spring Arbor University in 1986. He double-majored in English and psychology. While he was living in his niece's basement, he told Business Insider that he worked as a day laborer.
"I also began to crafting my rehab skills working as a laborer for guys who were fixing up homes to rent," he told Business Insider.
But in 2008, his life changed. While riding his bike, he was hit by a car. Using money from the settlement he received from the accident, Gray was able to purchase the house.
His wife, Cynthia, who at the time was his fiancé, was there through it all. "My wife had been with me through thick and thin and I told her that I was going to give her a house that she would be really proud to keep, live in, and show off," he said.
When describing the renovation project, Gray called it a complete rehab. "I tore everything out, all the way down to the studs," he explained.
Gray said he did around 80% of the labor himself, including the flooring and the painting. His vision was to "make it a family home forever."
He learned how to do most of the work during his time as an administrative assistant for a construction management company in Michigan.
"I was on a project in Monroe, Michigan," he explained to Business Insider. "When I was part of that renovation team, I watched the guys, I asked questions, and I said 'I can do this.'"
