1st Michigan Realty is a local and independent real estate brokerage firm specializing in residential properties in the metro Detroit and Ann Arbor areas. We decided to form 1st Michigan Realty after years of working with a national real estate franchise. We saw that by going independent, we could become more flexible, effective and responsive to our customers' needs. Affiliation (also called franchising) may provide some benefits for the real estate agent, such as brand recognition, but it actually does not provide much value to our customer - YOU. In fact, in many cases, franchising costs the customer more.