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  #61  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 3:13 AM
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Would you invest in Detroit?
Invest how? Effort to make it a better place, or money so you can make a quick buck? Do clarify.
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  #62  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 3:24 AM
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Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
I believe the entire block (between the freeway service drive, Ellery, and Holborn) is for sale, but that's $50k asking price for both houses.

I think the vacant lot on the NW corner of Ellery and Holborn belongs to 3569 Holborn, but I'm not sure. (Does Detroit have public property records? That would answer the question.)

Zillow link showing the properties
https://data.detroitmi.gov/Property-...-Map/fxkw-udwf

The vacant lot is separate and owned by the city. The other two properties are owned by the same guy. He also seems to own several other homes on the same street. Which honestly is the best route if you're going to invest - you're better off doing multiple properties in an concentrated area.

If anything, Detroit is a good place to learn real estate and, if you can afford it, won't lose much if things don't work out. That said, I have seen stories of people getting frustrated from underestimating the challenges of trying to rehab a house while also trying to make a living. Obviously if houses could just print money for people, the city's poverty rate would probably drop pretty fast.
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  #63  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 12:21 PM
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Originally Posted by suburbanite View Post
What's stopping a household with full replacement value income (who presumably hold little mortgage debt) from moving into the next tier of neighbourhoods with better schools and safety?
Racism and redlining, historically. Blacks were unwelcome in most suburbs, and especially the ones with the highest housing appreciation. The places where they were most welcome (places like Southfield and Oak Park) had the same white flight and resulting stagnant housing values.

Even today, while there are AAs scattered about in wealthier suburbs, the same stagnation cycle repeats where they're most concentrated (see West Bloomfield, a rich suburb with flat home values and some initial white flight).

Look at the change in demographics at West Bloomfield High. Again, this is an affluent area, almost all professionals, lots of country clubs, lakeside million dollar homes. As the black population grows, home values stagnate:
https://www.schooldigger.com/go/MI/s...81/school.aspx

And the suburbs with the fastest home prices appreciation are almost entirely white. Just a few miles from West Bloomfield, my sister lives in a neighborhood where property values have doubled in recent years, and her neighborhood has racial-religious covenants (illegal for 50 years, and unenforceable, but still has a rep. as being hostile to everyone but WASPs).

Her neighborhood is basically entirely WASP and Catholic. If a black family moved in, there would be no hostility (it's politically moderate and cosmopolitan for Michigan standards) but people generally don't want to live where they aren't welcomed.
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  #64  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 12:54 PM
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That's a pretty serious barrier to generational wealth accumulation based on a racial divide that planted its seeds over 70 years ago. At the risk of sounding facetious, it sounds like real estate appreciation in Detroit is literally white privilege.

I guess I'm surprised race is still a bigger divide than income and class. Is this unique to Detroit? I could be wrong but I get the feeling a professional AA in Chicago wouldnt have the same experience moving to a north side neighborhood.
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  #65  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 4:11 PM
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Originally Posted by RCDC View Post
Invest how? Effort to make it a better place, or money so you can make a quick buck? Do clarify.
Doesn't both of these things happen usually? If you fix up a building and make a profit from it, good. If that building now doesn't blight the neighborhood, good. Right?
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  #66  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 5:17 PM
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Originally Posted by jtown,man View Post
Doesn't both of these things happen usually? If you fix up a building and make a profit from it, good. If that building now doesn't blight the neighborhood, good. Right?
Not always. What makes money may not necessarily benefit the neighborhood.

For example, locals are pretty anti-Olympia development because of their proliferation of parking lots around LCA and the northwest side of Downtown. On the one hand, these parking lots generate revenue and Olympia pays taxes on land that otherwise was vacant or had a dilapidated/vacant structure. On the other hand, it's a parking lot and is only used 30% of the time and doesn't contribute anything to the neighborhood. Certainly for Olympia and any private company, a parking lot is often a guaranteed and secured way of making a profit for an indefinite amount of time.
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  #67  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 7:39 PM
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Originally Posted by animatedmartian View Post
Not always. What makes money may not necessarily benefit the neighborhood.

For example, locals are pretty anti-Olympia development because of their proliferation of parking lots around LCA and the northwest side of Downtown. On the one hand, these parking lots generate revenue and Olympia pays taxes on land that otherwise was vacant or had a dilapidated/vacant structure. On the other hand, it's a parking lot and is only used 30% of the time and doesn't contribute anything to the neighborhood. Certainly for Olympia and any private company, a parking lot is often a guaranteed and secured way of making a profit for an indefinite amount of time.
I mean, parking lots are parking lots. They are useful and at the same time a nuisance to an urban area.

What we are talking about is investing in Detroit, which I assume means in residential housing. An occupied house will ALWAYS be better than a vacant one. This is true for the landlord, the city, and the neighbors.
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  #68  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 7:44 PM
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Originally Posted by jtown,man View Post
I mean, parking lots are parking lots. They are useful and at the same time a nuisance to an urban area.

What we are talking about is investing in Detroit, which I assume means in residential housing. An occupied house will ALWAYS be better than a vacant one. This is true for the landlord, the city, and the neighbors.
The problem is that in a city like Detroit, rental houses are often the first ones that become vacant houses.
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  #69  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 10:06 PM
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Originally Posted by suburbanite View Post
At the risk of sounding facetious, it sounds like real estate appreciation in Detroit is literally white privilege.
that's definitely not just a detroit thing. the inability of many working and middle class black families to build generational wealth through home ownership at the same rates as whites, all because areas that are majority black are simply perceived as less valuable by the "infallible" market, is one of the most stubborn and pernicious aspects of continued structural racism in american society today.
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  #70  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 10:11 PM
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Last edited by SFBruin; Aug 14, 2019 at 10:58 PM.
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  #71  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 10:11 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
that's definitely not just a detroit thing. the inability of many working and middle class black families to build generational wealth through home ownership at the same rates as whites, all because areas that are majority black are simply perceived as less valuable by the "infallible" market, is one of the most stubborn and pernicious aspects of continued structural racism in american society today.
Hush, you. We can't talk about that.
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  #72  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 10:16 PM
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  #73  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 10:45 PM
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Wish I’d invested in this Detroit house: check out the Zillow estimate history.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...88103858_zpid/
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  #74  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 10:45 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
that's definitely not just a detroit thing. the inability of many working and middle class black families to build generational wealth through home ownership at the same rates as whites, all because areas that are majority black are simply perceived as less valuable by the "infallible" market, is one of the most stubborn and pernicious aspects of continued structural racism in american society today.
Correct me if I'm wrong but... whenever the opposite happens, it's also considered bad because then the local blacks don't have access anymore to the cheap housing that comes with depressed real estate values, and many end up displaced.

If black neighborhoods are cheap, it's bad; if black neighborhoods aren't cheap anymore, it's also bad. What would be your solution to this? To tell the vocal anti-gentrification protesters to shut up...? (That's the one I'm leaning towards, all things considered.)
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  #75  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 10:47 PM
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Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
Correct me if I'm wrong but... whenever the opposite happens, it's also considered bad because then the local blacks don't have access anymore to the cheap housing that comes with depressed real estate values, and many end up displaced.

If black neighborhoods are cheap, it's bad; if black neighborhoods aren't cheap anymore, it's also bad. What would be your solution to this? To tell the vocal anti-gentrification protesters to shut up...? (That's the one I'm leaning towards, all things considered.)
i don't know much about that.

black neighborhoods in chicago don't really gentrify, they tend to just slowly decay into social dysfunction, and then abandonment.

the gentrification wars of chicago are primarily fought in the predominately latino hoods of the west and northwest sides. they're much less violent.
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  #76  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 11:44 PM
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i don't know much about that.

black neighborhoods in chicago don't really gentrify, they tend to just slowly decay into social dysfunction, and then abandonment.

the gentrification wars of chicago are primarily fought in the predominately latino hoods of the west and northwest sides. they're much less violent.
I helped "gentrify" a neighborhood in my neck of the woods in Florida over the past few years, and while we mostly got praise for what we did, some idiots accused us of causing gentrification. Basically my reply was "yes, we made this neighborhood nicer, guilty as charged, now shut up and let me continue."

In the worst neighborhoods of Detroit, there are free houses right now. If someone steps in and changes that, by having a vision and pouring their time and money into it, and turns it into a living neighborhood again, and someone complains that houses aren't free anymore, well... that person is a total idiot.
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  #77  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 11:53 PM
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Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
Correct me if I'm wrong but... whenever the opposite happens, it's also considered bad because then the local blacks don't have access anymore to the cheap housing that comes with depressed real estate values, and many end up displaced.

If black neighborhoods are cheap, it's bad; if black neighborhoods aren't cheap anymore, it's also bad. What would be your solution to this? To tell the vocal anti-gentrification protesters to shut up...? (That's the one I'm leaning towards, all things considered.)
If the homes were owned by local African-American families then I guess there would be no problem with gentrification as those local families would benefit from rising prices, if they are all rented by African-American families from absentee landlords however then rising rents from gentrification will be something that is complained about.
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  #78  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 11:55 PM
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Originally Posted by lio45 View Post
Hahaha. Try it (especially in a bombed-out Detroit 'hood!) and get back to me (and this thread) in a few years.

Meanwhile I'm posting this right away for your benefit:
Told you so.
Can you explain the "told you so" part of your post?

Are you saying No to just the bombed out neighborhoods of Detroit, or just No in general to the idea?
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  #79  
Old Posted Aug 14, 2019, 11:57 PM
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Originally Posted by RCDC View Post
Invest how? Effort to make it a better place, or money so you can make a quick buck? Do clarify.
The obvious answer is to invest to make money, like everybody else does, otherwise, why? Why take the time to work and lose money?
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  #80  
Old Posted Aug 15, 2019, 1:03 AM
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fyi, southfield, detroits most successful majority black suburb is doing pretty good right now. homes are expected to appreciate nearly 5% over the next year. mega white portland prices are expected to drop nearly 3%. stuff is just cyclical.
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