Detroit's largest home headed to auction

The Bishop Mansion, believed to be the largest single residence in Detroit, will head to an auction process next month. 

After a year on the market without a sale, the property in Detroit’s exclusive Palmer Woods neighborhood that’s been home to leading religious figures and pro basketball stars has been pulled from the open market and will instead seek sealed bids due June 10, according to marketing materials announcing the auction.

The auction process in this case — as opposed to the more traditional approach of listing and marketing a property on multiple listing services and third-party listing sites such as Zillow — has the advantage of putting “a deadline” on interested buyers, said Luke Schrader, broker with Schrader Real Estate and Auction Co. Inc. based in Columbia City, Ind., who is managing the auction. 

“The sellers want to put some urgency into transitioning this to the next person,”  Schrader said. “The auction (process) kind of gives a deadline that if people are interested, then they need to submit something by this date.”

 

The more than 31,000-square-foot home is owned by California-based 104 Investments LLC. The name of the owner is unknown, but they are a Fresno, Calif.-area businessperson and philanthropist who bought it in 2017 for an undisclosed price.

At more than 100 years old, the 68-room mansion was built for Bishop Michael Gallagher, who headed the Catholic diocese in Detroit from 1918 until his death in 1937. Since then, the property has been used for a variety of uses, including as the home of former Detroit Piston star John Salley, who lived there in the 1980s and 1990s.

Situated on more than 2 acres, the Bishop Mansion features a chapel that past owners have used as a theater, as well as multiple original fireplaces, Pewabic tile and a master suite of about 2,000 square feet.

Considerable exterior work has been done on the home, including a new roof, windows and updated utilities to run modern appliances. Much landscaping work has been completed, as has a roughly 2,000-square-foot guest house.

A new owner will need to complete interior work. Metamora-based Design Ideology has been extensively involved in the renovation work and would be available to assist a new owner in the completion, according to the auction marketing materials. 

Initially listed last May at $9 million, the home sat idle and underwent a handful of price drops, as low as $6 million in late March before being removed from the multiple listing service earlier this week.

Given the dearth of comparable homes in the area, Schrader said that while his company has a good history selling such properties using the auction process, coming up with an estimate of a final sale price makes for a difficult task. 

“I have no idea what this house is worth,” Schrader said. “There’s no other property like it. There’s no comparable.”

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