Alumni Spotlight: Abbey Waterman
By: Serena Maria Daniels
Abbey Waterman didn’t follow a traditional path into real estate development. Her entry point was more Detroit than that—rooted in conviction, community, and a belief that someone needed to show up for the people too often left out of housing conversations. She traces the spark back to her church, during readings of the Old Testament story of Nehemiah. It wasn’t a call to rebuild walls; it was a call to pay attention. Something changed. Not for herself, but for her city.
“Nehemiah felt the burden to go back to Jerusalem and build up the walls again, but it was completely desecrated,” she says of her church’s sermons. “I felt convicted to do that for my city.”
Before Waterman knew anything about construction, pro formas, or land contracts, she was already experimenting with what ownership could look like. She and her husband discovered an $82,000 retirement account he had from a previous employer. That windfall became the seed capital for her first three properties, each purchased for no more than $2,200. They used the remaining funds to renovate two of them. Those early steps might not have been strategic in the formal sense, but they revealed the developer she would become: instinct-driven, purpose-led, and grounded in the needs of the people around her.
Around this time in 2019, Waterman learned about Building Community Value. She entered the program unsure of what she could absorb but quickly realized she had underestimated herself.
“Every single class, every chapter I read, was mesmerizing,” Waterman says. The course didn’t just offer technical literacy; it expanded her imagination. “I'm not a big dreamer at all. I'm so practical. My response to [having dreams] is always, ‘I don't have time for that. I'm a doer. I don't have time to sit around and dream.’ Through BCV, I started to dream. I started to see things that didn't seem possible.”
That shift shaped everything that followed. Waterman renovated two of her tax-foreclosed properties while still in the program, turning her coursework into a live practicum. She later sold one home in Brightmoor to a family through an affordable land contract and continues to manage the other properties. Under her firm, Waterman Holdings LLC, she has since acquired two more.
What sets Waterman apart is her tenant-centered approach — an approach not typical in traditional property management. She was particularly moved by the program’s section on “affordable housing” and the gap between technical affordability and lived reality. Affordability is calculated using Area Median Income, or AMI, a benchmark that allows a unit to qualify as “affordable” even when families with the lowest wages still cannot qualify. In practice, landlords may lean toward tenants who appear financially low-risk: the single renter making $40,000 or $50,000 a year rather than the larger family earning less. It isn’t always malicious, but the outcome is predictable: the households most in need are the ones least likely to clear screening.
That insight sharpened her purpose. Waterman set out to build housing that truly works for families at the margins — the ones who rarely get selected even when the rent is technically within reach.
“I don't just create leases indiscriminately. I sit down with the family, we have an interview, they fill out a budget. I want to see how much money they make, and then we tailor-make a lease agreement to their needs and my company's needs,” she says.
Today, Waterman also serves as the housing director at Hesed Community Church, expanding her reach and allowing her to design housing programs shaped by compassion, practicality, and lived wisdom. Her role includes land acquisition, sales, property management, and the creation of housing initiatives that meet residents where they are.
“Not every person that I serve in the communities that I work in are even ready for a house, and I have to be discerning about that,” she says. When a household needs deeper support, she prays through the decision. “That’s where my faith comes in. I pray about those decisions.”
Her work is strengthened by partnership, particularly with her husband, who may prefer to stay out of the day-to-day but remains one of her greatest supporters. “‘From your little ROI sheet, you can provide more income than this ever could,’” he once told her, before choosing to invest part of his retirement savings into her projects. His only directive was that she follow her calling without hesitation.
Waterman’s development practice isn’t flashy and doesn’t rely on sweeping gestures. It’s Detroit work: steady, rooted, disciplined, and full of heart. And in every renovated house, every tailored lease, every family that moves from tenant to homeowner, you can see the shape of the city she’s helping build—one household at a time.
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