Monday, October 26, 2009
You had me at "bankrupt casino"
More bad news from Detroit here. From the article:
In a crowded ballroom next to a bankrupt casino, what remains of the Detroit property market was being picked over by speculators and mostly discarded.
After five hours of calling out a drumbeat of "no bid" for properties listed in an auction book as thick as a city phone directory, the energy of the county auctioneer began to flag.
"OK," he said. "We only have 300 more pages to go."
There was tired laughter from investors ready to roll the dice on a city that has become a symbol of the collapse of the U.S. auto industry, pressures on the industrial middle-class and intractable problems for the urban poor.
On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters.
Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York's Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate.
The tax foreclosure auction by Wayne County authorities also stood as one of the most ambitious one-stop attempts to sell off urban property since the real-estate market collapse.
Despite a minimum bid of $500, less than a fifth of the Detroit land was sold after four days.
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I read somewhere that there are over 100,000 vacant lots in Detroit, 60,000 of which are owned by the city of Detroit itself. I think there's only one answer: Detroit must become America's Thunderdome.
Something like that . . . there must be people who need a cheap place to live. Too bad that a whole town or community that's living in some overcrowded city can't be airlifted and plopped down there . . . along with some jobs for them.
# posted by 
: 12:35 PM
: 12:35 PM
I would have put "five" hundred on it if I lived in Detroit. It looks like a good place for a nice, well-funded community development project
# posted by : 1:29 PM
: 1:29 PM
I read this the other day. So sad and there were legitimate buyers (as in I want to live in the house) at the auction being outbid by out of state speculators.
I still like the people who are buying lots and putting in farms.
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I still like the people who are buying lots and putting in farms.
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