There's roulette and there's skydiving. Then there's investing in Detroit and Cleveland real estate. (investment, markets)

[baystater]

America's Riskiest Real Estate Markets - Yahoo! Real Estate (broken link)

Not just yet. But I think in the near future some of these places are going to be worth investing in. You know what they say nothing ventured nothing gained. So spin those chambers with five slugs and one empty and let's play some Russian roulette.

[Bazzwell]

No, they've fallen too far to consider any serious investment in the future as I see it. There has to be some solid data that shows the local economy as it stands will maintain itself and future development looks good. I simply don't see that yet for Cleveland and frankly, never for Detroit. There's no sign that anything's coming along to indicate a sustaining industry of any kind. Nothing that will reverse the slide.

Detroit specifically tied almost everything in the past hundred years to the automotive game. Times were good, money rolled in and there were jobs for any hands willing to take a shift. There were days when you literally couldn't get a room to rent it was so busy. Then it collapsed............the cars manufacturers started to shut down plants, jobs moved elsewhere. Compatible industries that had thousands of jobs started to shut down or move to cheaper locations. Everything went with it in a non-stop domino effect.

So what happened after that? Nothing. Nothing could, it was too tied to one industry. The hardest thing those left behind have to learn is that sometimes there is no more need for what you have to offer. The miles of downtown buildings, the housing that stretched farther than you could count, the acres and acres of industrial land. No longer needed, a modern ghost town with no more gold.

No matter how much you'd buy, no matter how much you'd spend on it, nothing will change. However, if you see somebody willing to pour in a few billion promising lifetime jobs with top benefits like the days of old, call me, I'll play along.

[GregW]

Detroit has become a "bring your own job" town. When it falls far enough there will be investors taking advantage of the poverty to start something in the area. Maybe international trade will collapse and somebody will start building cars in Detroit.

FWIW -five years of unlimited submarine and anti-aircraft warfare would really change the system. This is possible because submarines carrying anti ship and aircraft missiles are relatively cheap weapons and could be used by a set of smaller countries that would not even need to declare war. They would just need to start sinking the stream of tankers and containerships heading for the US along with enough airliners to make travel way too risky.

That would really stimulate “Made in America” and reestablish American manufacturing and domestic investment.