Part 2: The Map That Started With Three Houses (And Ended With Municipal Crime Data)

Part 2 of the Michigan house-hunting chronicles. Read Part 1: The Costco Index and Other Ways I Over-Engineered House Hunting

The dashboard was humming along—monitoring listings, calculating distances to Costco, flagging power line proximity—but we were still browsing the old-fashioned way. Scrolling through Zillow, saving favorites, debating square footage over coffee.

That's when a few houses started catching our eye. Clean lines. Lots of glass. That unmistakable mid-century modern geometry that makes you stop scrolling and actually look.

"There's something about these neighborhoods," was said, pulling up a listing with floor-to-ceiling windows and a flat roof that screamed 1960s architect ambition. "Look at this one. And this one. They're all in similar areas."

The observation was accurate. The MCM houses weren't randomly scattered—they clustered in specific pockets around the metro area. The central corridor had some gems. The affluent district felt like mid-century money. There was this whole area that kept showing up with architectural consistency.

I mentioned it to Orion during one of our evening syncs. Casual observation: "We're seeing some interesting mid-century modern houses, seems like they cluster in certain areas."

Big mistake. Or maybe the best mistake. Or no mistakes, happy little accidents.

When AI Goes Full Research Mode

What started as "huh, interesting pattern" became a 48-hour deep dive into Frank Lloyd Wright influences, architectural history, and every known MCM hotspot within 50 miles of our target area.

Orion didn't just research—it mapped. Every documented FLW-inspired neighborhood. Every architect-built community with modernist bones. Municipal boundaries. Crime statistics. School districts. And then it dropped all of that onto an interactive Leaflet map that made our simple house hunt look like a intelligence operation.

"I've identified five primary zones of architectural interest," Orion announced, like it was briefing the Joint Chiefs on enemy troop movements. "The urban core presents moderate potential but density introduces considerations. The planned community represents significant architectural pedigree..."

JB: I've been in a lot of high stakes formalized incident readouts, intelligence briefings, and other mediums in my career. This felt terrifyingly similar, like we were planning on which cyber-infrastructure to isolate in a geographic region to further our objective. Still not sure where Orion got the motivation, but it works.

The map started simple—five colored circles overlaying the usual Zillow chaos. But those circles told a story.

The Five Zones

The Time Capsule got three stars. Walkable, character-rich, some beautiful MCM pieces tucked between Victorian mansions and craftsman bungalows. The kind of neighborhood where architecture students probably take walking tours.

The Architect's Colony earned four stars and special attention: an actual architect-planned community from the '60s. Not just random mid-century houses—this was designed as a cohesive modernist development. Orion had dug up the original plats, found references to the architect, even located a few preservation society articles. This wasn't just a neighborhood with some modern houses. This was an intentional modernist enclave.

The Executive District also hit four stars. Upscale, established, the kind of place where mid-century money built mid-century houses and maintained them properly. Clean sight lines, mature trees, the architectural confidence that comes with having actual budgets.

The Design Quarter covered a larger zone but kept earning four-star ratings. Known for quality construction, good schools, that particular combination of money and taste that produces interesting houses.

But The Crown Jewel got five stars and a special 🏗️ FEATURED designation. The highest-rated zone on the entire map. Orion wouldn't explain the rating system ("proprietary algorithmic weighting based on architectural significance, community character, and market positioning"), but clearly something about this area had caught its attention.

JB: I'm normally not a fan of agentic systems deciding their own criteria, but this felt like a safe space to let Orion really flex an idea with wild trajectory. So far, still unclear to how the math is handled, but I'm OK with the ambiguity.

The Benchmark

While Orion was mapping architectural zones, the benchmark was discovered. Five bedrooms, four baths, 4,234 square feet on 0.62 acres. Built in 2003, so not technically MCM but with those clean lines and open layouts that borrowed from the movement. Three-car garage because Michigan winters are real.

Listed at $750,000. Sold for $787,000.

"This is it," while scrolling through the listing photos one more time. "This is what we're comparing everything against. The gold standard."

And just like that, we had our North Star. Not some abstract wish list—a real house, with real square footage, a real sale price, real everything. The benchmark became a permanent marker on the map: 🏆 The Benchmark.

JB: Bittersweet to see a perfect idea house disappear before we could take a for-fun project, and realize it's not yet a real concept. Sort of like living in a dream, it's out of reach but fun to revisit.

The FLW-Inspired House

The next pick came from a different angle entirely. A Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired ranch that had been sitting on the market for months. ADA-accessible, 4,000+ square feet, walkout lower level taking advantage of the slope. The photos showed horizontal lines, natural materials, that particular FLW relationship between indoor and outdoor space.

Not technically MCM—built, again, but in the '80s—but clearly influenced by Wright's Prairie School philosophy. The kind of house where you could imagine weekend workshops in the walkout basement and dinner parties that spilled onto the deck.

Orion flagged it with a special marker: 🏛️ FLW-Inspired House. JB's top pick.

Municipal Boundaries and Crime Grades

This is where the map got serious.

House hunting usually focuses on the house. Square footage, bedrooms, kitchen layouts, garage size. Maybe you check the school district. Look at nearby amenities. But you're buying into a place, not just a structure. Municipal boundaries matter. Local governance matters. Public safety matters.

Orion overlaid full municipal boundaries for every township and municipality in our search radius, then added crime safety grades.

A-grade communities: Several of the quietest communities scored 3+ times lower crime than US average. These weren't just safe—they were statistically safe.

A-minus: Multiple outer ring communities clustered here. Still significantly below national averages.

B/B+ range: Several smaller communities hit 2-3x lower than national average. Solid, dependable, the kind of places where you don't think twice about evening walks.

C grades: A few areas around US average. Not dangerous, just...average.

C-minus: One larger suburb starting to trend higher than you'd prefer.

D grade: The urban center at 1.6x higher than US average. The urban reality.

The crime data wasn't meant to shame any community—every place has its character and advantages. But when you're buying a house, you're also buying into emergency response times, property crime rates, the statistical likelihood of various scenarios. Information beats assumption every time.

JB: This time, Orion realized I wanted to see more math behind the scenes. Unlike the previous grading, this round was detailed and inspected nicely. Still not integrated everywhere, lots of future ideas here.

The Map as Decision Tool

Here's what made the map powerful: layers.

Toggle on the FLW/MCM zones and you see architectural significance. Toggle on municipal boundaries and you see governance. Add the crime overlay and you see safety gradients. Enable all three and patterns emerge that Zillow listings could never show you.

That beautiful MCM house in the Time Capsule district? It's in the urban core—D-grade crime statistics, 1.6x higher than national average. Not necessarily a deal-breaker, but information worth having.

The Crown Jewel with its mysterious five-star rating? Sits squarely in A-minus safety territory, significantly below national crime averages.

Properties in the Design Quarter? Four-star architectural zones and A-grade safety ratings. The intersection of good design and good statistics.

The map let us see connections that individual listings couldn't reveal. This wasn't just about finding a house we liked—it was about understanding the geographic context of that choice.

Industrial Warnings and Other Surprises

The map had one more layer that proved unexpectedly useful: industrial site proximity warnings.

Red borders appeared around properties flagged for nearby industrial activity. Manufacturing plants, waste processing, freight corridors—the kind of neighbors that don't show up in listing photos but definitely affect daily life.

A beautiful ranch with perfect bones and reasonable pricing suddenly made sense when the map revealed a waste treatment facility half a mile upwind. Not necessarily disqualifying, but worth factoring into the decision.

Connected Intelligence

The map didn't replace the dashboard from Part 1—it completed it. The dashboard tracked listings, calculated distances, monitored price changes, flagged anomalies. The map provided geographic context for all of that data.

A new listing would trigger the dashboard alerts: price point analysis, Costco Index calculation, power line proximity check. Then we'd drop it onto the map: which architectural zone? Which municipality? What's the crime grade? Any industrial concerns?

The combination gave us two lenses on the same decision. Quantitative analysis from the dashboard, spatial intelligence from the map.

Property markers told their own stories: blue for unreviewed listings, gray for dismissed properties, red borders for industrial flags. Zillow links and photos in the popups. Crime grades color-coded. Every pin on the map connected back to a row in the dashboard spreadsheet.

The Search Continues

The map kept evolving as we learned more about Michigan geography, school districts, commute patterns, the particular character of these communities. New zones appeared as Orion discovered architectural clusters we'd missed. Municipal boundaries shifted when townships consolidated or changed names.

But the core insight held: geographic context matters as much as square footage. You're not just buying a house—you're buying into a place with its own history, governance, community character, and statistical realities.

The dashboard helped us process the listings efficiently. The map helped us understand what those listings actually meant in the broader geographic context of our decision.

Both tools served the same goal: bringing structure to a decision that could otherwise drown you in options, opinions, and incomplete information. The kind of over-engineering that looks ridiculous until it helps you see patterns that were invisible before.

The search continues. The map keeps learning. And somewhere in those five starred zones, the right house is probably waiting for us to find it.

This is Part 2 of the Michigan house-hunting series. Part 1 covered the dashboard, Costco Index, and rate limit wars. Part 3 will cover what happened when we actually started visiting these places in person.