Washtenaw Living
A longer, quieter read than the City Guide email — a seasonal feature or two on the county, a real transaction, and whatever's actually worth thinking about right now. Nothing here is gated; read it whenever, share it if it's useful.
The $7 Billion Question
Washtenaw County is having a moment most residents didn't ask for: it's becoming one of the places AI data center money is landing. In June 2026, officials and tech executives broke ground in Saline Township on a multibillion-dollar campus — reported by the Wall Street Journal at over $7 billion — involving OpenAI, Oracle, and Related Digital, on roughly 250 acres. Supporters point to thousands of union construction jobs and roughly $8 million a year for Michigan schools. A separate, roughly $1.2–1.25 billion proposal from the University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory, on a 144-acre site along Textile Road in Ypsilanti Township, has drawn a much less welcoming response — township officials say they learned about the site from news reports, not from the university, and the project would need more than 100 megawatts of power and a new DTE substation. A third, roughly $1 billion, 810-acre proposal from Thor Equities (Form8tion) in Augusta Township is still working through local approval.
I wrote a whole book, The Grey, about holding two true things about AI at once instead of picking a side. This is that same tension, showing up on a map I actually work. A data center a few miles out can mean new tax revenue and jobs. It can also mean a new substation, new water and power demand, and a fight your township didn't choose to have. Neither fact cancels the other. If you're buying or selling near Saline Township, Ypsilanti Township's Textile Road corridor, or Augusta Township in the next year or two, it's worth knowing these projects exist and are still moving — not because I can tell you what it does to your specific property's value (nobody can, honestly, this early), but because "nobody mentioned it to me" is a bad way to find out. Ask me directly if you want to talk through a specific address.
Neighborhood: Saline
Saline draws buyers who want Ann Arbor-adjacent schools and a smaller-town feel without an Ann Arbor price tag — close enough to the Washtenaw/Lenawee line that some searches should extend further south than buyers initially assume. It's also, as of this year, home to one of the largest single economic development projects in Michigan history, a few miles outside town in Saline Township. Worth knowing before you assume you already know what Saline is. More on the area, schools, and how it compares to Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti is on the Saline page.
A real transaction: 19373 Saint Francis Street, Livonia
Sold in 2 days, over $20,000 over asking, more than 10 offers, cash offer accepted. The seller had done multiple deals with me before and was flipping the property. It's real proof of what attention around a listing can do — it is not a promise that any other house will see the same result. Every property and market moment is different; this is what happened once, for this seller, at this address.
Worth two minutes
$10,000 Over List Price
A quick look at one listing and what actually got it there — a different one than the Livonia story above, same idea.
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Seasonal, not frequent — a few times a year, when there's actually enough worth saying.
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