Detroit foreclosure meltdown
Foreclosure fallout: Houses go for a $1
Excerpt:
The home, at 8111 Traverse Street, a few blocks from Detroit City Airport, was the nicest house on the block when it sold for $65,000 in November 2006, said neighbor Carl Upshaw. But the home was foreclosed last summer, and it wasn't long until "the vultures closed in," Upshaw said. "The siding was the first to go. Then they took the fence. Then they broke in and took everything else."
The company hired to manage the home and sell it, the Bearing Group, boarded up the home only to find the boards stolen and used to board up another abandoned home nearby.
Scrappers tore out the copper plumbing, the furnace and the light fixtures, taking everything of value, including the kitchen sink.
"It about doesn't make sense to put the family out," Upshaw said. "Once people are gone, you're gonna lose the house in this neighborhood."
Tuesday, the home was wide open. Doors leading into the kitchen and the basement were missing, and the front windows had been smashed. Weeds grew chest-high, and charred remains marked a spot where the garage recently burned.
Put on the market in January for $1,100, the house had no lookers other than the squatters who sometimes stayed there at night. Facing $4,000 in back taxes and a large unpaid water bill, the bank that owned the property lowered the price to $1.
$1 sale to cost bank $10,000
While it's not unusual for $1 to be exchanged when property is transferred for legal reasons, listing a home in the Multiple Listing Service for $1 was surprising and unsettling to Kent Colpaert, the listing real estate agent for the property.
"I've never seen a home listed for $1," Colpaert said.
"But it's been hit hard: It's just a shell."
On Tuesday, Realtor.com listed one other single-family home, one duplex and one empty lot at $1 in Detroit.
Dollar property sales are the financial hangover from the foreclosure crisis, said Anthony Viola of Realty Corp. of America in Cleveland.
Comment: Find other deals here: www.realtor.com. I found others for $ 1. Many others for under $ 1000.
When I read that article, I thought "$1 is too much for that home," sad to say.
ReplyDelete(Detroit seriously needs to fire a mayor and his cronies, and hire some cops, before I'd be willing to own property there)
Fire the major! That's a given!
ReplyDeleteDetroit used be a great city! It really did.
Wiki: Detroit
in 2007, Detroit ranked as the United States' eleventh most populous city, with 916,952 residents. At its peak, the city was the fourth largest in the country, but since 1950 the city has seen a major shift in its population to the suburbs.
I don't have all the answers, but I think these were factors in its dramatic decline:
* 1967 Riots
* Court ordered busing
* Corruption
* Democratic politics
* Perhaps the decline of the American auto industry (but I would place this last!)
Years ago, my kids had a PC game called SimCity. One of the default scenarios was to rebuild Detroit after the riots. In SimCity you could raise or lower taxes, build infrastructure (highways, etc) and police stations (of course all had to be paid for by taxes!). I could never get Detroit to grow in SimCity. I could make it a virtual police-state with a police station on every other block, but I when I raised taxes to pay for the police stations businesses fled! That's what's basically happened - why have a business in a place with high crime and high taxes.
Should be "fire the mayor"! (previous post)
ReplyDelete