There have been several news articles recently about how bad Detroit has become. Crumbling infrastructure, failing schools, high crime, etc. People are hiring private security guards to protect their homes. But the fact that bowled me over is (quoted from a Time Magazine article) “The median sale price of homes in Detroit has plunged… to $8,000”
$8000? You can’t buy a car for that much! So I looked at Realtor.com and found hundreds of homes listed for UNDER $1000. Like this home “Charming 4 bedroom home featuring new roof, windows, doors and carpet. hardwood floors in family room and bedrooms, large master bedroom with bonus 4th bed or office” is listed for $950! Detroit, MI Real Estate - Detroit Homes for Sale | realtor.com®
Dopers who live there, is it really that bad? They make it sound like some third world hell hole… is it?
Supposedly this past week’s auction of foreclosed homes, a second attempt after they didn’t sell in September failed pretty miserably with minimum starting bids of $500.
I do not know much about Detroit…but I remember watching a couple podcasts of Detroit politicians (City Council?) who seemed extremely racist and seemed to expect someone to come along and bail them out because…well…for some reason.
The guy who runs a real estate investment club near me told a story about how he arranged the sale of a house in Detroit to one club attendee for $100 (One Hundred Dollars, to be clear), after he was talking about how price alone doesn’t make a “deal.” She insisted on buying the $100 house. Soon after closing, she got bills from the City of Detroit for taxes, fees, etc. totaling thousands of dollars.
That was part of the issue with the auction I listed in my previous post, that back taxes were still due - but in a city with a better reputation, I would think many more houses would be considered worth the investment.
Unless there were a shitload of unpaid liens on the property when she bought it that she assumed responsibility for by her purchase, I’m just not seeing how this could be so.
Presumably any property taxes and transfer taxes would be a fixed percentage of the value of the property, which would be $100. There might also be some recordation fees and stuff like that, but those tend to be two or low three figures. I’m having a hard time imagining what else there would be.
On edit, I see that Ferret Herder points out that back taxes are due on many such places.
Well it kind of is, it’s probably worse than you think in some areas, better in some. But the thing People kind of picture wrong in their minds is the scale of Detroit. Some people picture vast wastelands of decrepitude The whole White-flight, suburban migration thing hit really bad, but they settled just outside the borders a couple miles away. And pretty much just went along with what they were doing before.The edge of Detroit hits at 8 mile, and right on the other side are perfectly nice middle class cities like Ferndale, Southfield and Oak Park. For the people who live in the Detroit metro area, they just never think about the city itself anymore. Right on the river there is a nice area that was recently rebuild. Ren center area, and Greektown which never got too bad. People from the suburbs just drive the interstate the 6 or seven miles from the suburb to those city centers, and never have any relation to the main city in between itself. Two miles away is a world away.
I’ve mentioned before that you can find similar sized areas of no-go-zone in a lot of cities, Chicago, Houston, L.A. It’s just that the bad areas of Detroit cover nearly all of the actual Detroit city limits.
How does that work with back taxes? Say the annual is something crazy like $12,000/year and 4 years worth is owed. Does the city really expect the new buyer to pay the $48k? Because that sounds like an excellent way to turn a city in distress into a ghost town.
Alternatively, if they wiaved the back-debts then they’d at least get the homes inhabited and productive again. Just get a bunch of friends together, buy a block of $100-$1,000 homes and start a commune. Even better if everyone telecommutes, that way there’s always some that can pull neighborhood guard duty.
I sort of kind of maybe saw a headline in a local paper this morning that said that the abandoned part of Detroit is larger than the entire square milage of Boston. Could this be true?
I can’t seem to find it now, but New York Times magazine had a piece about a year back that really clarified it for me (almost as much as that linked picture above – what a hopeless scroll). Not only do taxes come with that property, it’s likely been raided multiple times by people tearing out copper, appliances, even fixtures. It also comes without the security of living in a neighborhood with any sense of community, where your entire row may be abandoned, or occupied by squatters. The article mentioned one spot where a guy had set up a convenience store, a little place selling the very basics, presenting it as a beacon of hope (and the guy as a bit of a naïf for making a go at it).
What is up with the horrible splicing in that photo? Ugh. It’s like someone took a photo of each individual house but did not know how to use Photoshop at all.
And honestly that pic reminded me of North City in St. Louis/East St. Louis around here - although more vacant lots here on any block in those areas more likely, but the houses look the same.
Hmm . . . now I’m thinking about all those Iraqi refugees we never found any room for. What if the government bought up some streets, found some stimulus money to rebuild houses or replace them with apartments, and gave some folks a visa and subsidized housing as an apology for blowing up their country? Some Iraqis get a better life, Detroit gets a lot of construction jobs, and the city get another chance to grow again. No matter how bad unemployment is, it still beats Baghdad or a refugee camp, and the most dangerous criminals in the city would look like pansies compared to suicide bombers and people who behead other people for fun. Not only that, I heard somewhere that Dearborn has a large Arab community already, so it might be easier for them to acclimate.
[quote=Inigo Montoya;11705479Alternatively, if they wiaved the back-debts then they’d at least get the homes inhabited and productive again. Just get a bunch of friends together, buy a block of $100-$1,000 homes and start a commune. Even better if everyone telecommutes, that way there’s always some that can pull neighborhood guard duty.[/QUOTE]
If you also got a few stores and the appropriate, umm, landscaping, you might do all right. As long as your people don’t have to leave the [del]FOB[/del] neighborhood too often.
I heard that seriously proposed once, very quietly. It was utterly shot-down on the basis of Homeland security, and creating recruiting ground for terrorists inside the country, given the misery of Dewtroit.
I would also like an answer to this. I don’t know how big Detroit is compared to Boston, but it sounds like a made-up statistic. If its true, it is kind of horrifying
