Hard times in the Motor City

[unixronin]

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."

A four-day auction of Wayne County tax-foreclosure properties pretty much flopped.  Hardly anyone has any money, and most of those that do have money to spend are investors and speculators who are only interested in the choicest properties.  Unless Detroit recovers in a big way, most of them are probably going to find that it's not 2006 any more and they can't sell their "quick flips".  Meanwhile, people trying to buy a house fit to live in because they actually want to stay in Detroit are being outbid on anything livable by the speculators.

And that "phone-book-sized" auction catalog?  That was only the properties seized in 2006.  There's a LOT more where they came from (no pun intended):

The number of Detroit properties in tax foreclosure has more than tripled since 2007 and seems certain to rise further.  The lots for sale last week represented arrears from only 2006, well before the worst of the downturn for U.S. automakers.

The Detroit Free Press estimates that the total vacant land in Detroit now adds up to an area almost the size of Boston.  How much longer, the way things are going, before it adds up to an area the size of ... well, Detroit?

Comments

[merlinpendragon]

I read yesterday that, thanks to the help of Obummer, a former GM manufacturing facility in Wilmington, Delaware, had been bought and was going to be re-fitted to manufacture new electric cars. DETROIT needed to get into that action if it had any hope of survival as a town.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Hey, Detroit-the-city (as opposed to Detroit-the-industry) was in deep shit when we lived in Ann Arbor. Which was forty years ago.

[mazianni.livejournal.com]

Detroit's been losing population steadily since the 1970s at least.

I've seen some great photo sets of nature reclaiming abandoned houses in the area.
http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2009/07/feral-houses.html

OTOH, Forbes just ranked it one of the safer cities to live.

Of the 40 cities on the list, Detroit had the worst violent crime rate, but placed fourth safest for workplace deaths, 10th safest for traffic deaths and eighth safest for risk of natural disaster. (http://www.freep.com/article/20091028/BLOG36/91027082/1001/NEWS/Forbes--Detroit-is-nation-s-12th-safest-city)

So, you won't die in a volcano, earthquake, workplace accident or traffic accident but you'll probably get shot or stabbed. ;-)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, of course the risk of death in a traffic accident in Detroit is low. Hardly anyone left there can afford to drive....





(only half joking)

[mazianni.livejournal.com]

Well, there are the compact car eating potholes...;-)

The first time I was driving in Detroit after having lived near Boston for a few years, two differences struck me. The major roads around Detroit were really in poor shape, and there were far more abandoned cars on the shoulders of the highways. All domestic...

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

"But by day I make the cars and by night I make the bars.
"If only they could read between the lines."

People took the song as an anthem . . .

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

Fourth safest for workplace deaths... but only because Detroit doesn't have a statistically significant number of people *in* workplaces.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

how can they have "no bids" and yet liveable properties are being bought?

#

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

According to the article, about a fifth of the properties up for auction sold. The rest, nobody wanted.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's going to end up like New England mill towns, after electricity. High oil prices are probably going to bring some people back from the suburbs. But the climate is bitter, and without major industry, it will be a long time before it comes back, if it ever does.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

For the New England mill towns, it's been a century . . .

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Mill towns after electricity ... Pittsburgh steel towns ... Detroit.
Next?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. On the other hand, there's U. Mich, and a lot of skilled craftspeople in Michigan. So there's something to build on there.

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

We've quadrupled our Ann Arbor office over the last 10 months and want to probably double that again in the next year. High tech companies should be flocking to that area, since you've got UMich and Eastern Mich right there churning out people who want to stay in the area.

To say that doing business in that area has been a challenge would be an understatement. Ignoring the usual bugaboos like state taxes,labor laws and the like, just getting anyone to do any work is maddening. We'd a network install take 6 months. The fiber from Cleveland to right across the street in 3 weeks. The last 100' took 5 months with an amazing litany of excuses for why it was taking so long (they finally settled on 'conduit is filled with water and frozen solid...can't do anything until it melt...'). Just getting anyone interested in leasing us a building took another 6 months. The build out of the floor took months.

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

Heck, just a few minutes ago, I was handed an invoice to approve. This was from a pretty decent electrician in Ann Arbor who did the work we needed quickly and skillfully.

Dumbass didn't put his *name* on the invoice, tho, so I can't pay him for his work.