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.
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.
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.
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.
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 sounds pretty bad. Most of the sales are sight-unseen, and no way for the buyer to ever visit the property. It’s telling that most of the investors that did manage to get to Detroit, unannounced, walked away as fast as they could after a taxi ride.
” The buyer said we don’t need to see the properties just pick the good ones.”
They better buy homes all in the same area and plan to defend it like a frontier fort!
Rush was talking about buying the whole town and naming it Limbaughville.
So an anonymous Chinese Investor buys 30 houses @ a song. Detroit comes back as Trade Magnet, and his 30 homes ( hopefully together ) are now a Warehouse Site and sells it for un-kubocko-bucks.
Better yet said Chinese individual is now a natural gas tycoon if they find that the "Atrim" Shale formation is bigger than previously thought and is under Detwaa....
The Chinese will literally own Detroit. They will drive out the blacks and crime. I feel sorry the people in the suburbs because crime will rise and they will decline.
The Chinese are smart.
They are the future. Many people don’t want to face that fact.
Ho lee fuk, sum ting wong with this investment strategy.
“...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....”
Or they go find a serious, aggressive realtor who is actually willing to work to sell properties.
I think they would have to buy huge swaths of land, blocks and blocks. Then demolish everything. That would help push the crime out. Knowing the Chinese, they would then reinvent the whole area, taking advantage of Detroit as the continents second largest port city. I hope they do it.