Detroit revival

[Von Paulus]

In the May 2015 issue (Dutch edition) of National Geographic there is a story about the revival of Detroit and its housing market.
It would seem a lot of people return to Detroit in an attempt to make it a better place.
One example given is Alex Badasci Lindmeier who skipped a Hong Kong appartment of USD 300,000.- in favor of a 90 year old house in Detroit for USD 24,000.- which he will renovate,he says crime is not a real issue.
Another example is Aamir Farooqi,a retired gentleman from Singapore,who bought 150 houses in Detroit,some for USD 500.- only.
Interesting article.

[Dragline]

Yes, although Detroit is the #1 example, there are lots of old industrial cities in the US, or parts thereof, that have inexpensive housing and are waiting for or in the midst of some kind of revival. It's actually an exciting time in many places, as the designs are focused on more human-friendly proportions and features instead of the auto-centric ones of the second half of the 20th Century.

Re-purposing old railways is also popular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Line_ ... rk_City%29

[Von Paulus]

Be careful!

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/03/12 ... 50416.html

[Von Paulus]

I have read the article in a bit more detail.
Lindmeier (36) paid USD 8,600.- for the run down house,and threw in another USD 15,000.- for professional renovation,as such total was rounded to USD 24,000.-.
He also bought the lot next to the house,and another 4 houses and 4 appartments.
Total investment for everything was USD 150,000.-.

[Kriegsspiel]

I can't remember if I read about this online or if it came out of my brain, but I seem to recall that Detroit was experiencing people who were buying houses/lots, and using them for urban agriculture. I'm not sure how zoning would work as is, but I'd think the Detroit zoning board would be agreeable to people paying taxes on those abandoned lots. Seems like a cool idea, especially since one of the big digs against Detroit was its food deserts.

[tommytebco]

forum member , 7wannabe5, is part of the Detroit movement, lives there, and has posted about buying abandon properties.

[7Wannabe5]

Right. I currently live in a small impoverished city within the city of Detroit during the week and with my SO in a nearby affluent college town on the weekends. I bought 3 vacant lots for a total of $800 last fall (they were immediately appraised up to $5000 for tax purposes) and I am planning on using them for gardening. I just planted my first tree on one of the properties last week. If it survives (I am only semi-confident about the water-wicking system I engineered), it might yield enough sour cherries in approximately 3 to 5 years to provide approximately 1/9 of my yearly caloric/nutritional needs. There are at least 5 other urban gardens within walking distance of mine. The government is being supportive. In fact, the woman who is gardening across the street from me told me that the fire department fills her 250 gallon water reservoir. There are also several non-profit groups that are offering everything from free seminars to free seeds to citizen farmers. They are also encouraging guerilla gardening of annual plantings on abandoned properties.

My maternal grandmother was born to Polish immigrant parents in a house a few blocks away from the properties I purchased and my paternal great-grand-father was actually Treasurer of the City of Detroit. So, I guess I feel like investing and helping to clean up the mess (literally-litter everywhere!) a bit is a reasonable job to own with my post-empty-nest energy. I also substitute teach in the neighborhood and I intend to set up a Free Books for Kids box on my property as one of my next projects.

[Von Paulus]

As we say in Holland: Goed bezig! (Well done!).

[Sclass]

That's a really courageous thing to do. I hope it works out. The best payouts come from the last places people want to speculate on.

Having done years of service runs to the car manufacturers over the last 25yrs it has been really depressing watching the steady decline. It has gone on longer than the slide of the nikkei.

I used to dream about running a small manufacturing biz there. so many nice industrial buildings for good prices.

[7Wannabe5]

Eh, courageous isn't the right word for me. More the case that at the age of 50 I am still the same girl who hitchhiked to the roller skating rink at age 15 (IOW, the dysfunctional opposite of risk-averse.) Also, I am at the phase of extended midlife crisis where I have only recently let go of the rope of "still pretty" and grabbed on to the rope of "still useful." Also, gardening exists right on the cusp of science and art where I am most likely to want to get my creative ya-yas out in a fit of pure self-interest. One of my lots is right next to a very sad, rotting and trashed condemned house and I hope I have the energy to create and grow something very gay and colorful and orderly in contrast. Clearly, there are some dangerous types nearby but most of the people in the neighborhood, as everywhere, are quite nice and friendly and helpful, especially if you have the appearance of harmless eccentricity conveyed by wearing a giant straw sunhat and droopy overalls while pulling a wagon containing a tree and a push-mower through the city streets.

[thrifty++]

7wannabe5 awesome that you live in Detroit! I cant believe the crazy price you bought land for. Peanuts! So you are planning to use some for gardening but where are you actually living? Are you living in a caravan on one of the sites? Or in a house? Abandoned house? Or are you renting somewhere? Is it cheap to rent in Detroit?

I have long thought I would like to live in Detroit. I only have a Canadian passport though. Do you happen to know much about how easy/hard it is for Canadians to live there? I might need to work for a while longer. Do you know much about Canadians living in Detroit and working in Windsor?

[7Wannabe5]

Unfortunately, I don't know much about crossing the border to Canada besides the fact that if you are a US citizen you can do it with just an enhanced driver's license rather than a passport and it is done all the time by some people for work or casino purposes.

I currently live in a rental bottom 2 bedroom spacious duplex with my sister. The rent is $550 plus utilities, but I only pay $300 total because she has 3 dogs. Since the tenancy law is 2 people per bedroom plus 1couch surfer, in theory you could provide yourself with shelter/utilities for less than $150/month. It is my intention to commence an experiment in living on the property where I am currently constructing my geodesic dome greenhouse at dawn on the summer solstice. I may also choose to purchase and renovate the abandoned house which is on the lot next to my other property.

I would also note that opportunities for picking up cheap property are not limited to Detroit proper. Many of the surrounding inner-ring communities are similarly depressed. I met a moderately early retired couple who purchased a condo right across the street from the river (which is actually quite lovely these days) for $40,000, and they are able to dock their boat at a nearby abandoned industrial site for next to nothing.

[thrifty++]

Wow the opportunities are quite exciting. I wonder if there are many squatting possibilities that are safe and comfortable. I remember reading about a squatting community in the UK where the place was actually really nice, some big castle or grand old place, and the squatters all turned it into a mini village with gardens and a cafe and all sorts of stuff

[7Wannabe5]

Safe might be a stretch. I met somebody for coffee recently who got car-jacked in his own driveway. I live in a relatively safe neighborhood, and I don't own much of value, and I live with 3 dogs.

[tsch]

Bumping this after seeing 7Wannabe5's reply in the tiny house thread. I'd like to understand more about Detroit and what the possibilities are, esp. for 50+ folks.

I have a big concern is coming in as an outsider (though I grew up in rural NW Ohio, listening to WJR-Detroit and cheering for the Tigers—so it feels familiar in many ways and certainly I know what to expect wrt climate). I feel like I can weigh pros and cons pretty easily between here (Northern CA) and there, except when it comes to social aspects.

Fitting into the existing community seems to me to be a big mitigating factor on safety concerns, but more than that, I dislike the idea of descending on a place like a vulture (or being seen as that). The idea of being part of—or helping to foster—a radically resilient community is really exciting.

[workathome]

Detroit also charges a 2.4% tax rate, on top of Michigan's 4.35%. Seems a lot to pay for living a literal shithole.

[7Wannabe5]

tsch said: Fitting into the existing community seems to me to be a big mitigating factor on safety concerns, but more than that, I dislike the idea of descending on a place like a vulture (or being seen as that). The idea of being part of—or helping to foster—a radically resilient community is really exciting.

I would say that my experience has been that I am seen as something more like a dodo bird than a vulture-lol. It is really hard to describe what the situation is like here now. There is so much abandoned property, it is more like a giant ghost city than anybody's stereotype of a scary crowded urban scene. As reference, my sister said she felt much more threatened living in the Mission district in San Francisco in the 90s than she does living here now. I feel like help is really needed and opportunities are also present, because this is actually a very valuable area of the world in terms of natural resources, especially potable water, and it is at risk. For instance,even though I have never been much of a political activist, I felt compelled to join the task force in opposition to proposed ten-fold increase in processing frack waste with effluent to end up in the river, a mile away from the school where I teach children who are mostly recent immigrants or very poor. Nobody living in the nearby suburbs even knows this is happening. There are so few people with anything resembling a college level education who speak English fluently living in my zip code, we could all be working on some sort of critical project all day, every day. So, when I am out at my lot which is in the most dangerous neighborhood of the 3 in which I garden, and I chit-chat with the wife of the elderly gardener next door, and she learns that I am sometimes teaching at the school her great-nephew attends, I get offered assistance from her son-in-law with mowing and all the grapes I want from their vines and information about where the criminal element of the neighborhood resides.

Some of the most affluent suburbs are located directly north and adjoining the city, so there is an increasing trickle of people with money to spend coming into the city for cultural events and other activities. It's like there are these little islands of gentrification/revival, but they aren't connected together yet, and it would be somewhat ridiculous for anybody to be protesting them, since they are surrounded by acres and acres of blight and decay. The Eastern Market is the giant 4.5 acre, really wonderful, 150 year old farmer's market located near downtown and within close biking distance to me. One of the young for-profit urban farmers I met on the greenhouse tour, said that the affluent suburbanites who come into the market on the weekend, are eager to pay top price for the fresh greens she is bringing to market early now that she has her hoop house in place. These kids are able to pick up their houses and land for next to nothing at auction or from the land bank, and they are also able to get farming grants from various government entities, so their start-up costs are quite minimal. They seem to have quite enjoyable lifestyles. Lots of evidence of time for relaxation, music, art, other creative projects, chickens, bees, woodworking, newborn baby in front-pack, bikes, friends who have started micro-breweries or roasteries coming over to help fill the compost pile, etc. etc.

[Laura Ingalls]

Not having spent any time in Detroit since the early 1990s isn't the property taxes part of the issue?

In the depths of the great recession there were lots of stories about houses that cost less to buy than what one year of property tax liability would be. If you are not just speculating wouldnt you just be better buying a small house in the middle of nowhere MO, NE, IA, or SD? It would seem like a 40k house with $100 or less per month in property taxes would be cheaper long term than a 6k house with $500 property taxes?

[7Wannabe5]

If the SEV was only $6000, the monthly property tax would be about $33 (or likely less if owner-occupied.) The SEV would have to be jacked up to around 20X purchase price to approach anything like $500/month in property taxes. When you buy a house at auction you usually are hoping to get it for less than the back property tax accumulation that the previous owner defaulted on, but that is generally 4 years worth of unpaid taxes and penalties and those taxes were based on appraisal at time of high market. So, for instance house in moderate market was valued at $50K in good repair, then owner took out second mortgage during market high based on appraised value of $80k. 4 years back taxes and penalties on $80k add up to $20K. House has been abandoned and deteriorated, sold at auction for $6k, SEV jacked up to $12K, property taxes are $66/month until repairs are made and then SEV is jacked up to $24K and taxes are $132. If the SEV is jacked up beyond fair market you can protest increase. If fair market has increased to that level, then you can always choose to sell and pocket a tidy profit.

[Laura Ingalls]

What about this house?http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/157-C ... ePage=true

Listed at 25k
Taxes over 4k