Posted on 07/28/2013 9:16:43 AM PDT by kevcol
Sina Finance reports that since the bankruptcy on July 18 was announced, the Chinese website Sina Weibo has been all abuzz about how properties can be picked up for a pittance. Caroline Chen, a real estate broker in Troy, Michigan, claims to have received numerous calls from people in China. Chen says that some people have called and said they want to buy 100 to 200 properties. She said that a colleague recently sold 30 properties to a Chinese buyer. The buyer said we don't need to see the properties just pick the good ones.
(Excerpt) Read more at digitaljournal.com ...
Some Chinese investors fly to Detroit without notice and phone Chen from the airport. She recommends that they hire a taxi to drive them through downtown Detroit. She says most of them do not call her back. Once they see the areas where the properties are, they give up.
Meanwhile Americans are prohibited from buying property in Mexico.
Funny how open borders work.
It is all about In-State Tuition @ University of Michigan, plain and simple...
MI ping.
If the Chinese can do some good with those properties, more power to the Chinese.
Hahaha - just pick the good ones!
Chinese view property through the very different lenses of the Chinese property market. While they have poor neighborhoods for sure, they have no concept of random street crime and violence in places like Detroit. They also are utterly clueless about the racial politics of places like Detroit and how crippling that is in American politics and economy.
Finally, they do not know property taxes, which, as of yet, do not exist in china.
2022 is the Year of the Tiger.
I'm perplexed as to how the Chinese "can do some good with these properties." Who will live in them? The Chinese? Or do they expect other outsiders to move into this crime infested illiterate, orrupt city?
If you go on Zillow, you’ll see that the price of nearly every foreclosed home has risen this summer. Still can get nice places, 4B/2B for under $15K. Perhaps the chinese know something - like obama will NEVER let Detroit go under.
While you’re on Zillow change the address to one of the suburbs just north of the city limits. Prices go from $15K to $150K as you cross that invisible line. Fun stuff.
They’ll pay the taxes and if they decide to build a factory, they’ll have land bought at rock bottom prices. As it is, companies are choosing to do more here due to transportation costs and China is no different.
Anyone buying any property in Detroit is a FOOL!
Those houses that are dirt cheap are not worth what one months property taxes are.
You can’t fix em up and resell at a profit..LOL
It’s a huge dead zone...Detroit, the city where zombies fear to tread.
If this is the case, what Detroit needs to do is immediately hire a team of civil servants to promote properties in run down areas, using floor plan drawings instead of actual photos, and give rewards to employees for each property sold.
And then employees can count these bonuses as part of their calculations for retirement benefits, and count every paper cut as a 1% disability.
There has got to be a way to milk every purchase into going entirely into the union employee’s pocket and continue the bankruptcy and eventual bail out of the city.
Because the one solution that will never actually be considered is reducing costs, especially costs generated by promises made by previous government employees and elected officials, groups that have no legal say in any current budget - or would have no say in a sane world.
Its the LAND. When all else fails there is always the land Katie Scarlet.
I have a Chinese friend who apparently saw this Chinese news story and was asking me about buying houses in Detroit. It took me two days to talk her out of it. She kept thinking things will turn around eventually. Its very hard to describe Detroit and the political situation, and the crime, to someone who is not an American.
Anything bought inside the city limits of Detroit will have a clouded title for 30 years.
“The buyer said we don’t need to see the properties just pick the good ones.”
Very trusting these Chinese. I’ve purchased and sold a number of houses in my lifetime and have yet to find a real estate agent I would trust to “pick the good ones”.
It’s the taxes and the fact that they would bleed any new industry dry to pay for welfare and union pensions.
It would be cheaper to buy desert land out west and start a new city.
Well, every property in America, whether in a nice area or in a ghetto, has a market value. The market will determine how much these places in Detroit are worth.
Are these abandoned houses which the city has taken possession of? If so, wouldn’t they be part of city property sold off during the bankruptcy?
Anyway, though none of us want to live there, these places do have some market value. Let investors pay whatever the market price ends up being.
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