Detroit's dollar houses (sale, real estate, 2014)

[Montezia]

So, I watched a short, legit clip of houses apparently going for a dollar or few dollars in Detroit where people would buy them and then turn around and sell for scrap. Now the video was from 2014. Is this an actual thing? Seems that the city is literally on the verge of extinction.

[Coldjensens]

That video was out of date in 2014. However there are derelect houses you can buy for $14,000.

[Retroit]

The City of Detroit is selling vacant homes for $1000. http://auctions.buildingdetroit.org/BuyNow/Home Used to be $500, but I guess there is such a huge demand, they upped the price. I suppose private sellers could sell for $1, though. The cheapest I see is for $8200, although you can buy a burnt down one for $4750. https://www.trulia.com/

[Montezia]

Oh OK. Well, that's still pretty darn cheap. I don't currently know of another place offering houses for that low. But I do trust there are neighborhoods full of abandoned homes and abandoned communities.

[animatedmartian]

It was then. Nowadays, I don't think you can find dollar houses unless it's like a land transfer thing that usually happens when developers buy land from the city. However, there are still plenty of properties under $10,000 that are in dilapidated conditions.

Interestingly, since 2014, Detroit's average sale prices have risen about 25+%, though any increase from $1 to a more normal market value will seem like a big increase. The only part of Detroit that saw falling real estate values in that time frame is the neighborhoods in Southwest Detroit near the Marathon Oil Refinery.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by Montezia

Oh OK. Well, that's still pretty darn cheap. I don't currently know of another place offering houses for that low. But I do trust there are neighborhoods full of abandoned homes and abandoned communities.

Not many and that is the problem. The abadoned homes are scattered in amongst occupied homes. If there were entire communities empy, they could actually abandon them and that would be better for the City. Detroit was nealy 2 million people and is now less thna 700,000 so if you figure an average of 3 per household, you are looking at 400,000 empty residences.. That is a lot. More people have left Detroit than there are people in most cities. A lot has been torn down.. Some has been rebuilt, some is still empty. Some areas will never likely be repopulated, not all 135 miles of it. In additioan to homes and apartments there are scores of abandoned stores, churches, schools, factories, libraries, police stations, you name it.

You can still buy any of these things pretty cheap, but not like it was. My broher and I looked at a 100,000 s.f. warehouse with a 3 acre parking lot for $20,000 We thought heck we could just go play in it. But upkeep - heat, taxes, maintenance, keeping up the fence, , , ,

[Montezia]

It's still sad what became of the community. Anyone think that Detroit could actually become a ghost town altogether?

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by Montezia

It's still sad what became of the community. Anyone think that Detroit could actually become a ghost town altogether?

No. It has turned around completely. The core of the city is being repopulated. It is a really cool city now and filled with opportunity unlike anywhere else in the US that I know of. It will build formthe core outward just like it was formed. However the outer areas I cannot see it repopulating fully.

Keep in mind Detroit was the most beautiful city in the USA (not the biggest, but widely recognized as the most beautiful). It was wildly popular and grew like mad. That is not likely to happen again, although some of its former beauty still survives and much is being restored and re-purposed.

There may still be a net population loss because people are still leaving the outlying areas, but the core is becoming repopulated and every week brings some new and exciting business or feature downtown.

If the abandonment were all on the fringes, the city could just hunker down and shed the outlying area entirely, but it is not like that in very many places. Instead you have blocks with 6-12 our of 20 homes unoccupied, collapsing, burned out, boarded up or just gone. The problem is the City must try to take care of the scattered people and also deal with the abandoned places. That is why a lot of the seemingly simple solutions are not workable. You cannot just shut an area down, turn it over to Syrian refugees and see what they can do with it, bulldoze a hundred acres at a time, etc. There are people there and many of them have lived there for generations and will not leave.

One idea was to concentrate people by giving them city owned houses in populated areas in trade for their homes in unpopulated areas. However you cannot force them to leave and sometimes if the house belonged to grandma, and great grandpa, and great great grandpa - they will be extremely stubborn about staying.

For now the repopulation is young people, hipsters, dinks, and those near retirement. It is not a great place to raise a family. Could be a while before that changes. The depends on whether the current yong uns choose to stay and set up private schools, or leave to the suburbs with good public schools and get replaced by new young uns.

[Montezia]

Oh OK. That's pretty interesting.

[Retroit]

The plight of Detroit is a direct result of the success of Detroit. Detroit always had one of the highest standards of living (income/expenses), so people have been constantly moving out of their smaller homes in Detroit to bigger homes in the suburbs. And the kids that grew up in the suburbs move out to bigger homes further out. Incomes are higher here due to the auto industry and unions. Houses are cheaper here due to greater a ailability of skilled construction workers and cheap land. It surprises me when I travel to older cities and see older neighborhoods packed with people. The row houses in the northeast especially. Detroiters would never settle for this type of living.