Posted on 11/22/2014 6:01:32 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Bankrupt Detroits thousands of empty buildings are being flogged at rock-bottom prices and Chinese investors are answering the siren call of unbeatable deals.
With family homes regularly selling for around $10,000, the beleaguered Motor City is now the number-four destination for Chinese housing investors in the U.S. Bigger spenders have already snapped up some of Detroits most iconic commercial buildings.
There are factories, commercial real estate and upscale areas around Detroit with proximity to good schools that are worth investing in, said Wang Ning, deputy manager in charge of international business at China online real estate agency SouFun.
The firm, which lists hundreds of photos of abandoned Detroit homes on its website, says it received more than 1,000 telephone inquiries the week after the city claimed the dubious distinction of having filed the country's largest municipal bankruptcy in July 2013.
Chinese interest picked up steam after a TV report claimed that homes in Detroit could be bought for the price of a pair of shoes.
After the program one user posted on Twitter-like Weibo: 700,000 people, quiet, clean air, no pollution, democracy what are you waiting for? The comment generated millions of responses.
The influx of cash is welcome in Detroit. Earlier this month, a bankruptcy court ruling approved a complex restructuring of the city's $18 billion in accumulated debt to end a costly and contentious chapter of the city's long-running financial decline. Once among the greatest manufacturing cities in the world with the highest per capita income in the United States, many of its homes and office buildings now sit empty and derelict. Its officials are looking to China help salvage the gutted city.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on Wednesday embarked on a week-long trip to the country, his fourth visit since 2011.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
For a couple million dollars, someone could buy an area large enough for their own city.
Wait a minute!! Does that mean the Chinese are going to STOP buying the $1.5 million fixer-uppers in Palo Alto? Or are the poor Chinese headed to Detroit?
Same 1950 $10k rancher in Palo Alto now goes for $1.5 million.
Location, location, location.
Is there a business base there to justify all that investment?
More civilized, perhaps, but lookout for the DWAs!
He said he had to drive into Detroit one day for a meeting, and had to park pretty far from where the meeting was. He asked a cop who happened to be where he parked, how long it would take to walk to where the meeting was, and the cop said, "I don't know, no one's ever made it."
The Chinese have already bought a big piece of countryside outside Detroit. But that will require new infrastructure. Detroit has infrastructure but maybe it needs to be largely rebuilt. And Detroit has other super- sized problems the Chinese probably can’t overcome — ? It will be interesting to see what happens ——
During World War II, some United States soldiers in the Pacific theater used the word lollapalooza as a shibboleth to challenge unidentified persons, on the premise that Japanese people often pronounce the letter L as R or confuse Rs with Ls; the word is also an American colloquialism that even a foreign person fairly well-versed in American English would probably mispronounce or be unfamiliar with. In George Stimpson's A Book about a Thousand Things, the author notes that, in the war, Japanese spies would often approach checkpoints posing as American or Filipino military personnel. A shibboleth such as "lollapalooza" would be used by the sentry, who, if the first two syllables come back as rorra, would "open fire without waiting to hear the remainder".
I like those ROE.
I can’t type hanzi on my phone; I knew that the second one meant “special” and the third one meant “rule”; the first must be simplified, I have a scroll with “foundation” kanji and it is much more complex.
Rotsa ruck Detloit bracks.
Perhaps the Chinese will send in a few triads and put all the homies on their asses, then get them one way tickets out of Detroit. That would be a good thing for the city.
Then send the triads to Flint.
There is a growing Tech sector in Michigan. Its also right next to the heart of the Canadian manufacturing region. Also, Detroit is the second busiest freight crossing on the north American continent. Quicken HQ is there, JP Morgan has a regional HQ there, Ernst & Young has a regional HQ there. Compuware HQ is there.
Take a look at downtown Detroit with Google Street view sometime. The city is looking good. Forbes recently named the Detroit riverfront the best in the USA.
As far as residential is concerned, some neighborhoods are very bad still but others aren’t bad at all. Mexicantown is looking better all the time, Corktown is looking pretty good as well.
And now the Chinese are the latest to step onto the stage with their investments, this time in the neighborhoods, the last frontier of Detroit that has always been the toughest nut to crack. Until they clean up the crime, drugs, gangs, mindset of the people, and their dependency on government for their subsistence, that part of the equation of the comeback of Detroit will be a failure. Personally, I don't see it happening. But if it is to happen, the good people of Detroit have to step up and clean up the human debris in their own neighborhoods. Work with the police, work with the schools, raise intact families and stop encouraging their sons and daughters to procreate outside of marriage. And the sooner, the better because the generation that has any values at all are aging and being eliminated through attrition.
Then they rewrote the books to remove the stereotypes, and dumbed them down as well, making them a lot less entertaining.
Correct...I worked with an associate who actually adopted one of the girls to get her out of the country...was a long and wild ride but she got here after all. Cute kid.
Still their population has grown....even prior to that and was one of the reason’s they had the “one child” rule ...to get the population under control...too many to feed etc. Girls were seen as baby producers so elimination of them inured by many of the parents because having a girl was senn as “the problem”.
Even with the one child law...and the girls being knocked off...they still are having children...and prior to that law their population grew mightily...they had their kids they didn’t abort them....we’ve been doing that since the 70’s til now it’s simply a means of birth control period...
First, they are absolutely NOT dumb....but they do talk that way.
Knew a Chinese national, I had a friend named Laura. He tried and tried to say her name, Rolla...Roara...finally....Larry.
He was so proud.
Verwee interwesting.
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