[Riessinvestments]

From CA and looking to invest in the Flint area...

Is this a good idea? Looking for a few homes to fix up and either rent out or flip. Crime is bad?

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by Riessinvestments

From CA and looking to invest in the Flint area...

Is this a good idea? Looking for a few homes to fix up and either rent out or flip. Crime is bad?

No, try Milwaukee, far better cheaper housing stock with fully intact neighborhoods with a decently maintained tree lawn by the city.

[Riessinvestments]

I know most that I've seen there have to be owner occupied and the city wants renovation costs and scope of work. Which I totally understand that part, but CA to there is quite a trek all the time.

[Coldjensens]

There are some investment opportunities in Michigan but Flint and Pontiac are not good choices. If you pick the right parts of Detroit, you could do well. Ferndale is up and coming. Bay City, Saginaw or maybe even Port huron might be a decent bet, but not likely to see explosive growth. Midland is doing better and better. Petosky might be an ok place to do this. If you are trying to be a slumlord and flip cheap dumpy homes, then Taylor, SW Detroit, Redford, Melvindale, River rouge, Ecorse, may have some appeal.

[Riessinvestments]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

There are some investment opportunities in Michigan but Flint and Pontiac are not good choices. If you pick the right parts of Detroit, you could do well. Ferndale is up and coming. Bay City, Saginaw or maybe even Port huron might be a decent bet, but not likely to see explosive growth. Midland is doing better and better. Petosky might be an ok place to do this. If you are trying to be a slumlord and flip cheap dumpy homes, then Taylor, SW Detroit, Redford, Melvindale, River rouge, Ecorse, may have some appeal.

Well thanks for all that great info... As for slumlord, yeah I stay away from that crap. I like to fix up homes right, and I use folks to help me out in the area, this helps the community out too and keeps the money there instead of bringing my guys in.

[dustin183]

I'm from CA and was just looking at Flint too. But the population dropped 20% from 2010 to 2020.

And dropped basically in half from its peak in the 1960's to today. Very sad.

There are homes of nice architectural interest. So it's sad to see the city deteriorate. I guess that's what happens when you rely too much on a specific employer/industry. Better to be diversified.

I personally don't see how it could be a good place to invest unless it has bottomed out, which could be but is there any way to know for sure?

I think it's best to invest in places where there will be future growth, which is many parts of the country.

The story of Michigan seems to be, in a nutshell, one where when GM and Ford were growing everything was great. It trickled into all of Michigan. But then the costs got too high and it was much cheaper to produce cars in other countries so they moved a lot of that work out of Michigan and the decline began.

I don't see GM and Ford every bringing manufacturing back to Michigan in substantial numbers. And their fate is unsure due to the big paradigm shift happening in the auto industry. Probably they will survive but in a much adapted form, and who knows what that will look like.

The industry that brought Michigan wealth also brought it blight. Perhaps they just did not plan well enough for the eventual downturn. I think its not good to have blighted properties. If the population shrinks the the land should be given back to nature as it was prior.

[mjlo]

Originally Posted by dustin183

The story of Michigan seems to be, in a nutshell, one where when GM and Ford were growing everything was great. It trickled into all of Michigan. But then the costs got too high and it was much cheaper to produce cars in other countries so they moved a lot of that work out of Michigan and the decline began.

I don't see GM and Ford every bringing manufacturing back to Michigan in substantial numbers. And their fate is unsure due to the big paradigm shift happening in the auto industry. Probably they will survive but in a much adapted form, and who knows what that will look like.

The industry that brought Michigan wealth also brought it blight. Perhaps they just did not plan well enough for the eventual downturn. I think its not good to have blighted properties. If the population shrinks the the land should be given back to nature as it was prior.

WOW this take on Michigan goes right to my core. You should probably brush up on your understanding of Michigan's economic history over the last 50 years. Learn why it's core cities suffered decentralization so much worse than their peers in other states. Learn about the laws passed in the 1940s that allowed suburbs to become as powerful as the core cities. Learn about the racial strife that lead to their middle class and corporate tax bases fleeing the core cities to those suburbs, which accelerated their economic collapse. This is the take of someone who's not actually experienced Michigan, but rather has formed their impressions from 1970s-80's pop culture stereotypes only. You need to add a little bit more nuance to this opinion. Especially if you're in the business of investing in places.

Do you not realize that the blight in cities like Detroit and Flint almost entirely starts and stops at their borders? That they are entirely walled in by incorporated entities who hold their former residents and tax bases? You can literally cross the street into one of their suburbs and be in a diametrically opposite economic situation. If the decline in the auto industry were that black and white, the economic effects on their regions as a whole would have been more evenly distributed. Your understanding is also oblivious to the fact that when all of the manufacturing jobs were leaving Michigan, automobiles were basically crude mechanically operated machines. In the last 40 years cars have basically become smartphones on wheels. The vast majority of the development of all that technology still takes place in and around Detroit. While as many cars may not be built in Michigan now as in the 1970s. They are still developed and brought to market in Michigan. The manufacturing jobs that were lost were replaced by more educated, more economically viable STEM jobs. Almost every foreign automaker has an R&D presence in MI because of this. Both Detroit and Flint have metro populations that are still larger than when they started declining as core cities.

Not to mention Michigan is not an economic monolith. The automotive economic transition was largely contained to the I-75 corridor(Saginaw down through Detroit). Cities on the west side of Michigan were largely spared from the automotive woes of the malaise era. Grand Rapids in particular has one of the strongest economies in the Midwest, and one of the tightest housing markets in the nation. We should take care not to pigeon hole everything from Traverse City to Detroit as "has been".

While Flint has suffered quite a bit especially over the last 40 years, it does have some intact neighborhoods especially on the west side of the city near the mall, that are perfectly functional. There has also been reinvestment in the downtown area. The university especially has expanded it's presence and this has had an impact on some of the surrounding core neighborhoods. I'm not a real estate expert and I don't give financial advice, but from little I know there are opportunities for reinvestment within in the city. I would speak to more localized experts on which parts are best for that. You won't get that on city-data. I wouldn't be so quick to write it off entirely.

[Coldjensens]

If Flint has bottomed out, its "recovery" will be a trickle. There is absolutely nothing that is going to dirve a boom in Flint and no draw for investors or companies to return. Even if GM or Ford were to build a new EV or battery plant there, it would not boom, but trickle back. There is just nothing there. And GM and Ford (And Stellantis are already building their Billion dollar EV and battery plants - not in Flint. Flint has nothing at all to draw business or residents. It is not well located, does not have a population of skilled workers, it has no natural beauty or attractions, it is very polluted. It has little acrhitecture of merit, the government is broke, the place has a terrible reputation, the infrastructure is decaying and inadequate, it was never all that well laid out to begin with. It does not have a cool downtown that will draw people back in as trends change. Flint simply has nothing. THe best bet for Flint is it might move from mostly under/uemployed population to a lower end middle class suburb.At best.


Pontiac has a better chance of recovery, but Pontiac's likelihood is still pretty low. Both are poorly planned, poorly laid out, poorly governed cities with almost nothing to offer. Pontiac at least has a better location and a bit more of a downtown (although much if it is architecturally or structurally junk that needs to be removed). both cities' liabilities outweigh their assets. They are failed cities. The recent recovery and resurgence of living in cities has not helped either city art all.



Detroit, Ferndale, Parts of downriver, pats of Dearborn, Ypsilanti, New Hudson, Romulus, Bellville,Monroe are all places that might have some rational opportunity for a real estate gambler. Places where a comeback is feasible or even underway. Pontiac woudl be an extreme long shot. Flint, if something remarkable happened, you may break even. maybe .

[drro]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

If Flint has bottomed out, its "recovery" will be a trickle. There is absolutely nothing that is going to dirve a boom in Flint and no draw for investors or companies to return. Even if GM or Ford were to build a new EV or battery plant there, it would not boom, but trickle back. There is just nothing there. And GM and Ford (And Stellantis are already building their Billion dollar EV and battery plants - not in Flint. Flint has nothing at all to draw business or residents. It is not well located, does not have a population of skilled workers, it has no natural beauty or attractions, it is very polluted. It has little acrhitecture of merit, the government is broke, the place has a terrible reputation, the infrastructure is decaying and inadequate, it was never all that well laid out to begin with. It does not have a cool downtown that will draw people back in as trends change. Flint simply has nothing. THe best bet for Flint is it might move from mostly under/uemployed population to a lower end middle class suburb.At best.

This certainly seems to be the case indeed. There just is nothing there in Flint that makes it appealing in some way. You could add it has very high crime, although the number of homicides is rapidly decreasing in recent years. The only chances I see for Flint is drawing in university students and maybe people getting priced out of other cities. But it still would have to improve majorly before people would choose to live in Flint.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by dustin183

I'

I don't see GM and Ford every bringing manufacturing back to Michigan in substantial numbers. And their fate is unsure due to the big paradigm shift happening in the auto industry. Probably they will survive but in a much adapted form, and who knows what that will look like.

Both Ford and GM are building billion dollar plants in Michigan right now.



Unfortunately Michigan did not get the big Blue Oval project that landed in Tennessee, but there is growth. Unfortunately for Michigan workers, auto plants employ a fraction of the workers that they used to . Machines do most of the work now.



https://www.mlive.com/public-interes...residents.html


https://www.freep.com/story/money/ca...nt/6568465001/


Both companies have some smaller projects in Michigan as well.