Things are looking pretty bleak in parts of Detroit these days. In fact, you can get a house for $1. Yes, that’s right. A house.
Even at the low, low price of a double cheeseburger at McDonald’s, it took 19 days to find a buyer for a gutted house on Detroit’s east side, says the Detroit News. The house in question used to be the nicest house around. After foreclosure, however, vandals stripped the property of everything valuable from the wiring to the kitchen sink.
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.”
…
“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.”
Empty houses are becoming more and more of a problem in Detroit and other cities hard hit by the foreclosure crisis. Banks are so desperate to rid themselves of these properties that they’re willing to pay $10,000 to sell a house for $1.
So desperate was the bank owner of 8111 Traverse Street to unload the property that it agreed to pay $2,500 in sales commission and another $1,000 bonus for closing the $1 sale; the bank also will pay $500 of the buyer’s closing costs. Throw in back taxes and a water bill, and unloading the house will cost the bank about $10,000.
“It doesn’t make sense in some neighborhoods to keep paying costs and costs,” Colpaert said. “It can make more financial sense to give it away.”
While a $1 house is certainly unusual, even for Detroit, houses can be had for as little as a few hundred dollars these days.
“My 14-year-old son could buy a block of Detroit property,” said Ann Laciura, senior servicing specialist for the Bearing Group.
Foreclosure Fallout: Houses Go For $1 [Detroit News]
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@u1itn0w2day: Junkies will steal anything they think they can sell.
There are two extremes – in Detroit, stuff gets stolen and people don’t care because the house is abandoned. In Portland, stuff gets stolen and people don’t care because they’re insured.
In either case, the problem is the price of metal (thanks, oil speculators, for driving other commodity prices up!), and either crooked or lazy scrap metal dealers. Portland (and other areas of Oregon) have had tweakers stealing bronze statues and selling them for scrap.
Detroit is the logical end point of hald-core leftist policy at the state and city levels, combined with a rusted out economy and massive white flight.
@varro: good point but they’ll get off because it was a ‘drug’ CRIME
And the scrap dealers,I’m starting to see reports where these junk yards have been taking things like manhole covers not only creating a danger but taking what is obviously somebody else’s property.
And the banks probably don’t want to get into any sort of property management.I guess they figured they already lost enough but there should be enough local ordinances though where they should at least have to board up an open window or cut the lawn.
Hey as a homeowner living in a house there are places where they’ll fine YOU for things like an uncut lawn so why aren’t the banks getting fined on these properties.If I was a code inspector I would look for commercially held real estate because that’s an easy target for violations/vandalism.I can’t stand big brother but when businesses in the form of a bank can get away with more than me as owner of property that’s not right.
all the whining lot of “artists” and such that complain about gentrification of places like san fran and such driving prices out of their reach have options it seems.
MOVE!!
lol:)
@Secret Agent Man: I see someone has already asked and it appears that I assumed right – you’re not from the Midwest.
Within 200 miles of Detroit are …
Windsor, Ontario – great little city, safe and walkable
Grosse Pointe – ritzy and wealthy
Ann Arbor – my overrated but still pretty nice hometown with plenty to do and a traditionally low violent crime rate
Frankenmuth – where you’re Wilkommen to have a good time at Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland and the Cheese Haus!
Chelsea – home to Jeff Daniel’s great Purple Rose Theater
Kalamazoo – another nice university town with an old-fashioned downtown
Mason – lovely period houses, small town feel
Toledo, Ohio – city of glass, but it’s got a nice Art Museum, you know?
E. Lansing – home to MSU, great college town
Not to mention Stratford, Ontario – where you could once see William Shatner do Shakespeare in the flesh.
Most of us who grow up in this area feel bad about what’s happened to the city proper but it’s difficult to hear people (who have never been there) talk about our entire metropolitan area or our whole state like it’s a war zone. The reality is quite different. Yes, I have a few scary downtown Detroit stories, but I also had a relatively idyllic upbringing in Ann Arbor where I could walk anywhere.
(Oh, and by the way – Eminem is NOT from Detroit. He is from Warren, which is in Maccomb County. It has some rough neighborhoods. I think people outside Detroit give Eminem more street cred because they assume he comes from a black neighborhood in downtown Detroit. He does, however, come from a tough white neighborhood a la Boston’s Southie.)
The issues with Detroit are VERY longstanding and tensions between whites and blacks are key. They go back before Coleman Young, who was mayor throughout my childhood and until I became old enough to vote. It has to do with white flight after the mid-60s riots, and the elimination of manufacturing jobs. Things got much worse under Coleman Young, due to the corruption and his bad relationship with the suburbs; that’s when Devils Night started making the national news.
Dennis Archer actually tried to do something for the city. What is needed is for the entire city to become an Enterprise Zone, so that more businesses will relocate there. The federal government could also station some regional offices there. It comes down to good jobs. Good jobs would bring a major supermarket back to Detroit.
Failing that, maybe residents could get a tax credit to relocate while something dramatic is done to the city (build a new spaceport!). I’m against eminent domain in most cases, but Detroit has been dying a long death for years.
@Dennis: A block to the east there are some decent cars (more than 10k) and a few not horrible houses as well.