Posted on 04/27/2007 11:46:15 PM PDT by B-Chan
The mortgage crisis in America has deepened so much that family homes can now be bought for less than £15,200 - the price of a new car.
A four-bedroom home near the original Motown recording studio in Detroit recently sold for £3,700 ($7,000), less than most used cars. A boarded-up bungalow fetched £685, and a three-bedroom house listed for £276,000 attracted just £69,000.
Detroit, which made its fortune on the back of the car industry, now holds a more dubious distinction: the capital of home repossessions.
The decline of its main industry has seen Detroit suffer more than other areas from a crisis that is sweeping the United States and has sent a big chill through the whole economy and global stock markets.
Up to 1.5 million Americans could lose their homes in the next two years, while repossessions rose by 42 per cent in 2006. The vast majority of those at risk are borrowers hit by the sharply rising costs of "sub-prime" mortgages offered to low income buyers, often with bad credit ratings.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
And of course the city infrastructure is no good, so you'd have unreliable sewage, power, water, and street maintenance to deal with on top of everything else.
A once-great American city goes to seed...
That is because you can escape from Detroit in a car!
Detroit committed suicide decades ago...the city corpse just hasn’t stopped shaking quite yet.
No reason to live there with so many better options most *everywhere* else.
Detroit has been on the decline since the ‘67 riots.
The riots on Belle Isle were in 66. I was there just after, on leave prior to going overseas for my buddie’s sister’s wedding.
How sad. Detroit once had two million people.
Detroit had riots in 67 as well.
7K for a 4 BR??
Must be a nice neighborhood. That Invisible Hand of the Market, though, makes Motown a bit tempting.
Too bad the weather is terrible.
Nah, I’ll stick the cash in the bank.
First: That $30,000 car is many more rungs higher on the car ladder, than those houses are on the house ladder.
Second: Location, location, location! The car’s price is independent (mostly) of location; the house’s isn’t.
Third: The house is stuck in Detroit; the car, if properly defended, can get you out of town.
This says a lot more about Detroit than about the “mortgage crisis”. It also says a lot about the cost of a “bad culture”.
Reminds me of “The House at Pooh Corner” from the original books. ( Try to wipe Disney from your mind. ) Pooh et al. decide to build Eeyore a house, and after finding a pile of sticks on one side of the forest, they take them and use them to build a house on the other side of the forest. Eeyore complains that someone moved his house from one side of the forest to the other for no apparent reason.
Not sure how that fits with the Detroit story, but it does remind me of it!
Detroit should be turned back into a natural forest so we can harvest something of value in that area of the country.
Don’t know how familiar you are with the Gospel, but one wonderful and practical way for Christians to spread it is to move into these neighborhoods, in droves, and start pouring value into the community. Not spending for themselves, but giving and volunteering and meeting the community’s needs.
Heck, makes me think about retiring in one of these places, one day long from now.
1. There is no “mortgage crisis”.
2. Even if there was, Detroit’s decline has nothing to do with it.
3. Limeys suck.
Is that weird, or what? Karl Jung, where are you?
Maybe if we offer to buy the entire city, we’ll get a deep discount. Then populate the whole place with young conservatives. In 20 years, Michigan will be to the right of Utah.
In a free-market economy, things sell for what they are worth. These properties are almost worthless, therefore the selling prices...
Isn’t Michigan run by Democrats throughout the state? Aren’t they the only state in the union not to feel the benefits of the economy the last 5 years.
Why do these citizens keep voting those turds back in office.
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