The median home price in Detroit is $7,500. That is NOT a typo.

[Pale Blue Dot]

It may be tough to get financing for a new car these days, but in Detroit you can buy a house with a credit card.

The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service.

Not $75,000. Remove a zero—it's seven thousand five hundred dollars, substantially less than the lowest-price car on the new-car market.

Among the many dispiriting numbers that bleakly depict the decrepitude of this onetime industrial behemoth, the steep slide of housing values helps define the daunting challenge to anyone who wants to lead this shrinking, poverty-pocked city of about 800,000 people.

"We're always fighting ourselves out of a hole," said Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans.

Despite the depth of the hole, Evans is running for mayor. In fact, he is one of 15 people who have raised their hands to be mayor of Detroit and fill the remaining months in office of the former mayor who now wears a green jumpsuit and resides in Evans' spartan house of justice, the Wayne County Jail.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-detroit-housingjan29,0,5435392.story

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. They sell the homes on ebay

[MichiganVote]

2. KK is out of jail, allowed to travel to Texas for a job interview. Must be gonna work for Bush.

[bluestateguy]

3. Yes I know

Just for kicks I went looking at the Yahoo site for Detroit homes in the $130,000-$140,000. For that price you can get a mansion now.

[Jeep789]

4. I saw some listed in Dayton for $5000

Being a Californian, I was truly shocked. How can houses be cheaper than cars?

[barb162]

8. Absolutely no jobs. None.

[Fire1]

13. But they're COMING with the stimulus package!! GO GREEN!!

Go mich.gov!!! Jenny is ON IT!!!!

[stray cat]

5. too bad there are no jobs there - I could actually buy a house there

[Urban Prairie]

11. Yeah, houses are getting very cheap here

But most have been or are being stripped of their copper and anything else of value like aluminum siding, furnaces, ductwork, marble sills, crown moulding, ect.. by scrappers. Of course if you buy one of these homes and decide to restore it, you have to worry about it being stripped (on the outside) all over again if you don't intend to live there and are lucky enough to find someone willing to pay rent. There is also your neighbors, who may, or more likely, may not be giving you a house"warming" gift, other than maybe a fire next door that will leave a stinking, damaged hulk to view from your kitchen window.

Of course there is the usual shitty city services, (police fire, emergency) high city taxes, robbery, burglary, muggings, random gunfire, squatters, car jackings and drug-dealing problems common to many poor urban areas of the country, but in Detroit, with the exception of a few small parts, it involves the entire city and is now affecting most of the border suburbs.

Living in the city of Detroit in the 50s-70s was something I treasure (with the exception of the 67 riots) but after Reagan was elected, the city began to go into a much faster decline. It won't get better, there is currently nothing on the horizon that can ever replace the middle class who, along with industry and businesses, left for the suburbs or folded, and many suburbs here are now also losing businesses at a rapid clip. If the domestic auto industry dies, most of the entire metro-Detroit area will be taken down with it, IMO.

If so, I guess that those who remain could become farmers, like my ancestors were here in the 1800s.

[kestrel91316]

12. Because of all the vacant land where homes once stood, Detroit

is now apparently in the rather enviable position of having the potential ability to produce most of its food within city limits. Including livestock.

Now we just need brave souls to start up the farms or help the locals do so.

[Fire1]

14. Not goona happen. Surely you jest.

[kestrel91316]

17. It may or may not "happen", but there is talk. Most cities would kill for

open space like Detroit has. I know, it's sad and bizarre. But I would love to see urban farming take hold in communities that clearly NEED it.

[Fire1]

21. I know what you're saying, but there are 'zoning laws.'

[kestrel91316]

25. Those will be ignored when ehough people get hungry enough.

There is nothing whatsoever to stop people from planting fruit trees and all manner of crops in whatever patches of open soil they can find. I grew enough wheat in a little 3'x3' experimental patch in my yard to make a few loaves of bread a few yeaars ago..

[Bill McBlueState]

35. already is happening, to an extent

See this article, especially the last couple pages: http://docs.google.com/View?docID=a4w3qmhgdwb_252hnsgc4&revision=_latest

[RollWithIt]

22. Ummm.. have you been to Detroit?

It's not empty space. It's empty buildings. There aren't rolling pastures there, lol. It will cost billions just to clear the vacant buildings.

[kestrel91316]

26. Don't need "rolling pastures". Fruits and veggies can be planted

between the buildings. Chickens can be raised almost anywhere, as can rabbits.

Rather than blindly shooting down an idea, maybe you should read up on it: urban agriculture. Google is your friend.

[snooper2]

31. I let the kids walking home from school eat peaches off the tree

between the sidewalk and the house...


I could imagine what would happen if you had rabbits and chickes and onions and brussel sprouts all ( living/growing )between buildings.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I guess you wouldn't have to go outside the city proper to find worms for fishing, nightcrawlers love rabbit shit :)

[Fireweed247]

32. I love your idea

I wish good people with money, like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie would buy up some properties and get this type of new green city going. People say there are no jobs, well if your house was all paid for and you were growing your own food, perhaps a person wouldn't need such a high paying job to get by. Maybe the people in the city could create their own barter system to get by.

[kestrel91316]

33. Finally - someone who GETS it. Growing one's own food is very liberating.

[spindrifter]

6. I have wanted Microsoft and/or some other

companies to start colonizing Detroit. Send the jobs there and have enough employees to make the start-up a go, while training local, jobless people.

[KillCapitalism]

10. Yeah, like that will ever happen.

Microsoft would much rather do some big hiring in Bangalore I think.

[pleah]

7. I have always told people that you can still buy a house cheaper than a car.

[tangent90]

9. Actually my house is worth less than my car and less than my airplane too.

I guess it's a matter of priorities...to me a house is just somewhere to sleep and stay warm and dry, it's pretty basic. :D

[Ishoutandscream2]

15. Jesus Freakin' Christ

Unreal...

[JackRiddler]

16. Detroit sounds like an ideal place for experimenting with new societal forms...

A great deal must still be standing and salvageable, both in infrastructure and buildings. Urban farming and compost, a light surface-rail network, communal living arrangements, labor-based community currency, lots devoted to capturing solar energy, pedestrian zones - all that's possible for a fairly low per-capita initial investment, considering you'd be remaking a whole city. If you say it can never happen, and you're probably right, remember that's because of the threat not of failure, but of a good example.

[KittyWampus]

18. that's what I thought, too. Why not rip down X amount and have Common Greens?

Goats or sheep?

[Motown_Johnny]

19. first we need jobs, thanks for the thought though

[JackRiddler]

23. A green conversion means jobs.

I do mean the capital should be put up from public funds to start an experiment in urban sustainability. People would have to build the light surface-rail and solar lots and pedestrian zones and street covers, convert the buildings for energy efficiency and communal uses, receive training and equipment subsidies for the urban farming and compost, etc. Jobs to create a backbone of sustainability, how could this not be good?

[Motown_Johnny]

20. When a foreclosed house does not sell at auction it reverts to the bank for $1000.00

and this is what is listed as the selling price

That draws down the average.


Livable houses go for more like 10K and small livable houses in the north east suburbs are as low as 20K

[madiba]

24. Is that the ghetto....?

how much are the prices in the nicer neighborhoods?

[RB TexLa]

27. Here

In probability theory and statistics, a median is described as the number separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one. If there is an even number of observations, the median is not unique, so one often takes the mean of the two middle values. At most half the population have values less than the median and at most half have values greater than the median. If both groups contain less than half the population, then some of the population is exactly equal to the median. For example, if a < b < c, then the median of the list {a, b, c} is b, and if a < b < c < d, then the median of the list {a, b, c, d} is the mean of b and c, i.e. it is (b + c)/2.



Understand, now? Of course there are houses with values over the median as there are houses with values under the median.

[TwilightGardener]

28. That is absolutely insane. I can't even imagine that. What a wasteland that area must be now.

Where does revenue come from to support schools, police, etc.?

[Dawgs]

29. Kind of misleading. According to the loss in value, the median price was around $9,900 in 2000.

"One-third of the population lives in poverty, and almost 50 percent of children are in poverty, according to data from the Detroit-Area Community Indicators System. Median household income has dropped 24 percent since 2000, according to the Census Bureau."

[Eryemil]

30. Now the trick is finding someone that would want to live there

I would rather pitch a tent at Wreck Beach.

[blockhead]

34. I have friends with more money in their ice fishing houses.

[crimsonblue]

36. Looks like a great time to buy a lot of land and build a factory

It will be very cheap to build a factory and man it in Detroit. With high unemployment, finding willing, dedicated workers could never be easier. Both the State and feds would contribute a lot of incentives. Damn, if i had money and an idea, I would totally move to Detroit and get rich!