$21,000 buys a home? That's just crazy. Let's see what we can find for that price...got one.
11490 Balfour Rd., Detroit, MI, a 3 BR 1 BA detached home for $20,900. Built in 1943. Here's the neighborhood from Google Earth.
OK, I guess. The raw materials in the house must be worth $10K. Detroit must be in total free fall if home prices are this low.
H/T: Carpe Diem.
Forgotten Detroit and The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit have some interesting photos and stories about the once-great city.
That's believable. Up where I live, the housing crash came back in the 1960s when the last copper mines closed down, and most of the population moved away, selling their houses for what they could get. You can still buy serviceable houses here for around $30,000 (we have one that we use as a rental property that cost a bit less than that).
ReplyDeleteOf course, if you want a nice house, it costs about as much to build one here as it does anywhere else, so there is a big jump in price going from the older houses to the newer ones.
KT, if I were you, I'd check with Dale Price over at the Dyspeptic Mutterings blog before moving to the Motor City. Dale lives there, and if I read him right, the place has been going down the toilet for a long time. So yeah, not only can you get a cheap house, but you also get high unemployment, industrial decay, crime, and political corruption to go with it. Such a deal! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment and concern, Niall. This post was written in jest. I won't be lieaving San Diego for quite some time.
ReplyDeleteThese problems aren't unique to just Detroit (although it is sort of a poster "child" for this). The same thing is happenning to some of the areas near where I'm from back in Ohio.
ReplyDeleteThere is a reason it's called the rust belt.
Wow! That Ruins of Detroit site is amazing.
ReplyDeleteI used to live in Michigan and drove to Detroit on a regular basis. It's very, very depressing.
ReplyDeleteGoogle Maps also has Street View (to which I'm too lazy to link) that you can get a ground view of the entire metro area.
Detroit has one thing going for it and that's the Detroit Red Wings. :)
Thanks for the comment and concern, Niall. This post was written in jest.
ReplyDeleteI figured as much :).
I see each lot has the requisite street trees, but there is no landscaping to speak of on any of the lots in that picture - Looks like they almost all have detached garages.
ReplyDeleteDespite all the negatives, isn't this an area that could be ripe for revitalization? - with internet you can work all over the world.