Second Great Depression in Detroit
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http://www.safehaven.com/article-10420.htm
Type of Content: Article Detroit, a city of revival and depression. I've had a minor obsession with Detroit for the past year or so, ever since I learned that one could purchase a single family home there for $5,000 or less. In the world of sky high housing prices in my adopted hometown of Boston, $5,000 wouldn't be enough for even a down payment on a tiny condo. In my neighborhood, converted duplex units start at $350,000. Apparently there are people willing to pay that much for half a duplex, but I'm not one of them. Needless to say, for countless young people like myself who have been shut out of the inflated housing market, the idea of a home of my own (and several investment properties to boot) for the price of a used car was intriguing. When I told people of my Detroit obsession, nearly everyone laughed at me. "Why would you want to move there?," they asked incredulously. I took this as an encouraging sign - after all, any good investor knows that the way to riches is to find value where others simply aren't looking. Mocking laughter is an especially good sign. So it was with great optimism that when an opportunity for me to visit Detroit arose, I jumped at it. My wife and I were returning from a business trip to Taiwan, and by chance we had a stopover in Detroit. The first thing that struck me when we got off the plane in Detroit and into our rental car was the price of gas. It was well over $4.00 per gallon - shockingly higher than when we left Boston two weeks prior. Our hotel was in a Detroit suburb called Southfield, which is about 15 miles from Downtown, but jetlagged as we were, we decided to take a peek at the city before doubling back and checking in at the hotel. Speeding down the highway towards the city center, we noticed the miles of sad houses lining the freeway on either side. Many of them - the majority of them - were semi destroyed: Windows broken, roofs collapsed, paint peeling away to expose the bleached gray wood below. Some were just charred skeletons. It was an eerie feeling, zipping down a modern highway that bisected a ghost town. continue reading here Read »
Created 23 weeks 6 days ago
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very interesting article....poor Detroit. (I live just west of Ann Arbor). But it's not just the economy; Detroit has been suffering for years from bad city management. They are just incompetent. There were some promising moves like privatizing the Zoo and Institute of Arts to get them off the city's budget. But the economic decisions the city makes are pretty bad.
Should the mayor and top public school officials really be riding in limos when the school system is under threat of state takeover AGAIN??? Mayor Kilpatrick delivers a great speech but has all the wrong priorities. Great desires but lousy road map for getting there. I'm glad to see him go, but he'll probably be replaced by somebody just as bad.
That said I have a female friend who lived in Warren, just off 8 Mile, to go to Nursing school. She survived and got her degree, but I'm glad she left! She lived one block from a street where ALL the doors had metal grates on the front doors just like all the businesses do -- her house did not.
It's overwhelmingly sad about what's happened to Michigan. Detroit is probably the worst, Flint coming in a close second. Even the small town I'm from is on a slow decline. I lived 30 miles south of Grand Rapids in the twin cities. One city is called Plainwell and the other is Otsego. Both are right next to each other and they share the main road with businesses in between both cities. Plainwell had a very large papermill which closed down about a decade ago and then thier were two other very large papermills in Otsego which closed down. First was Rock 10 and then Menasha. Thousands of jobs have been lost and homes are for sale everywhere. I've lived in Michigan all my life and have been to pretty much every corner. There are many many beautiful area's in Michigan but the economy is so bad right now, people are leaving. I would have loved to stay in Michigan but I was getting taxed to death. It's my personal opinion, that most of the people in Michigan right now are very depressed and their is a sense of hopelessness there that no one talks about but nonetheless is present in everyone's face. I really hope they can turn things around. LMW
I love history like that! Thanks for that!
Yeah houses in Detroit are going dirt cheap. You can check out auction properties in Detroit at;
http://cms.williamsauction.com/auctions_list.php?ptype=r&state=MI&startR...
Most of them have a starting bid price of $1000 although the final price will probably be a few thousand dollars.
But most of those places are in very high crime areas. Of the homes which are still occupied, many have bars on the windows and the bars are there for a reason.
Buying in Detroit would be a bad investment in my opinion. You could not live there. You might be able to rent it out to people who are one step from living on the street. But you would have to pay taxes on it and protect it from thieves who steal everything from copper pipes to aluminum siding. And your life would be at risk every time you visit it.
Thanks for the writeup Ken. Unbelievable that this happens and people still need the television to tell us there's a 'recession' to understand the economy is flawed terribly. Bad things are going to happen but what happened to the America that could bounce back from anything? Long gone I'd say. Look at the wake of hurricane Katrina and the decimated neighborhoods that will never be rebuilt.
In my former town of Prince George up here in Canada, a mill just burned down causing 400+ jobs to vanish. Normally there would be a rush to rebuild and keep productivity up; now they just say sorry there isn't enough demand to bother rebuilding. Truck plants in Ontario are closing down, desperate people are on strike. It is similar here but we are slower to be hit and slower to realize the signs.
Thanks again for posting that story. All of them are important to know and understand I believe.
I, Garland, will knock you all down!