Southgate, Michigan.
Typical home $193,254 (+2.2% in a year), asking rent $1,446 (+6.6%). Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$553 (+120%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $4,115 +2%
- $189,139$193,254 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $39,649 +26%
- $153,605$193,254 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Southgate$1,014
- Michigan$1,384
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Southgate, MI rose 2.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Southgate, MI rose 6.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Southgate runs $37/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $160 in Oct 2023.
That is $1,483 a month against $1,446 rent: a $1,014 mortgage payment, plus $262 property tax and $207 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Southgate
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$1,483
- Renting$1,446
- Mortgage only$1,014
Property tax · $262/mo 1.63% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Wayne County, MI
Insurance & upkeep · $207/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Southgate, Wayne County, Michigan
Southgate is a city of 30,014 people in Wayne County. Half its households earn more than $66,118 a year and half less, against $60,539 across Wayne County; 9% of its people live below the poverty line. 67% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 33% are rented. Unemployment in Southgate was 4.1% in August 2026, and Wayne County had 0.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Southgate is a city in Wayne County where most homes are lived in by their owners, and household incomes run a little above the county's. Fewer residents live below the poverty line than you might expect in a city this close to Detroit, and the population is of middle age. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and a good deal of snow, while July brings warm summer highs and rain fills out the rest of the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, professional and business services, and shops close behind. In Southgate itself, the largest workplaces include the Southgate Community School District, Walmart and AJM Packaging, which makes paper plates. Unemployment has edged up over the past year, and across Wayne County there are slightly fewer jobs than there were a year earlier.
Things to do. The Automotive Hall of Fame and The Henry Ford, both museums, are a short drive away and tell the story of the car and American industry. A longer drive brings you to the Detroit Institute of Arts, a museum, and Belle Isle Park, a botanical garden on the Detroit River. For ball games, Comerica Park is a stadium a longer drive off.
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- 12,553households
- 22%of adults have a degree
- 9%below the poverty line
- 24 mintypical commute
- 12%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Wayne County had 721,389 jobs in 2025, 0.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 32° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 64°. About 45 inches of snow and 34 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Detroit Metro Airport weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Southgate
- AJM Packaging - SouthgatePaper plates made from purchased paper or paperboard504
- Southgate Community School DistrictSchool district406FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters381
- MeijerRetail248
- Sam's ClubWarehouse clubs and supercenters227
- Kroger Michigan KMASupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores197
- Frito-LayConfectionery merchant wholesalers138
- Lowe's Companies, INCHomecenter137
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 18 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,409 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Cold wavesrelatively high in parts of SouthgateRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Southgate’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very low. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Wayne County and the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI metro.
Southgate home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Southgate$193,254
- Michigan$263,760
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Southgate listings, and the typical home goes pending in 9 days — the market is roughly in balance.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Southgate24.07%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Southgate9
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Southgate60
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Southgate30
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Southgate$217,045
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Southgate100.55%
Zip codes with a Southgate address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Southgate — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.