Detroit tries unconventional approach to restoring its housing market. DETROIT — For Jazley Trouser, a 25-year-old Home Depot worker who has endured her share of hard times, the opportunity to become a homeowner was too good to pass up. With a $1,000 bid on the city’s online auction site, Trouser bought a four-bedroom Tudor plundered by thieves. A $25,000 grant from a community bank covered her renovation costs. Now she owns the 1929 home, restored to its former glory, mortgage free. “I love that this is my home,” Trouser said. “I’m creating a home for myself with longevity.” Wooing atypical buyers such as Trouser is one component of a bold new experiment designed to address a six-decades-long exodus of 1 million people who left this once-mighty city with vast swaths of decaying houses and weed-choked lots.
No American city the size of Detroit has ever endured such a prolonged structural decline of its housing stock. [Why this 24-year-old is buying up abandoned homes in Detroit] The winning bid “I was discouraged,” she said. Lending hurdles. Ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to appeal to U.S. Supreme Court. Defiant ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick isn't giving up his fight for freedom as he takes his case to highest court. The defiant ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick isn't giving up his fight for freedom, as he is now heading to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping the nation's highest court overturns his public corruption conviction that sent him to prison for 28 years. Kilpatrick's lawyer Harold Gurewitz told the Free Press this morning that he will take Kilpatrick's case to the Supreme Court following the latest legal blow from the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has rejected Kilpatrick's request to have the entire appeals bench rehear his case.
A three-judge panel in August ruled against Kilpatrick, upholding his conviction on 24 corruption crimes, including bribery, extortion and fraud. Kilpatrick then took the next step and asked for a hearing from the entire bench. In a one-paragraph decision, the justices harpooned Kilpatrick's appeal. "There are really significant issues. Anatomy of Detroit’s Decline - Interactive Feature. Mayor Coleman A. Young of Detroit at an event in 1980. Richard Sheinwald/Associated Press The financial crisis facing Detroit was decades in the making, caused in part by a trail of missteps, suspected corruption and inaction. Here is a sampling of some city leaders who trimmed too little, too late and, rather than tackling problems head on, hoped that deep-rooted structural problems would turn out to be cyclical downturns.
Charles E. Bowles, backed by the Ku Klux Klan, was in office for seven months in 1930 before people demanded his removal. Edward Jeffries, who served as mayor from 1940 to 1948, developed the Detroit Plan, which involved razing 100 blighted acres and preparing the land for redevelopment. Albert Cobo was considered a candidate of the wealthy and of the white during his tenure from 1950 to 1957. Coleman A. Kwame M. Dave Bing, a former professional basketball star, took office in 2009 pledging to solve Detroit’s fiscal problems, which by then were already overwhelming. Everything You Need to Know About Detroit's Bankruptcy - Matthew O'Brien. After decades of decline, Detroit is broke. On Thursday, the Motor City filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history on its $18 billion of debt, and faces a future where only one thing is certain: lots of people are going to get much less money than they were promised.
Now, I don't like to say that something was ever inevitable, but Detroit's Chapter 9 bankruptcy sure looks that way. Since 1950, its population has retreated from 1.8 million to 700,000 today. And, as you can see in the chart below, via Nate Cohn of The New Republic, it's shrunk 26 percent in just the last decade. That's left a small tax base to pay for the pension promises of a more populous yesteryear. But why has Detroit's decline been of the far more terminal sort than other post-industrial cities?
Bankruptcy is probably Detroit's best chance to put some kind of floor under its collapse. The Great Recession didn't cause Detroit's problems, but it did give the city its final kick. Ex-Detroit mayor Kilpatrick loses appeal of conviction. Detroit housing market remains mystery after bankruptcy | 2013-07-19 | Housingwire. With its Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing on Thursday, Detroit officially filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States. The purpose of Chapter 9 is to provide a financially distressed municipality protection from its creditors while it develops and negotiates a plan for adjusting its debts, according to data provided by the U.S. federal court system.
The city's downfall began as early as the turn of the century. From 2000 to 2010, the city population fell from 951,270 residents to 713,777, according to Census data from 2000, 2010 and the American Community Survey. During the housing crisis, Detroit struggled more than most housing markets. In fact, just a little over a year ago, foreclosure sales in Detroit made up 64% of total sales. However, toward the beginning of 2013, Detroit housing started to make a turnaround. In the first month of the year, all multiple-listing service sales rose by 9.4% from a year earlier, data from Realcomp revealed. Volume of abandoned homes 'absolutely terrifying' Detroit — Detroit has had more homes foreclosed in the past 10 years than the total number of houses in several suburbs — or all of Buffalo, New York. Since 2005, more than 1-in-3 Detroit properties — 139,699 of 384,672 — have been foreclosed because of mortgage defaults or unpaid taxes, property records show.
The vast majority are houses, and the tally is so huge it shocked even those who spent years working on foreclosure in Detroit. "When you see it on a map, it's absolutely terrifying," said Chris Uhl, a vice president of the Skillman Foundation that is working to prevent foreclosures. To get a sense of the loss, consider all the houses in Warren, Livonia, Royal Oak, Southfield and Allen Park. Empty them. "Even if you are deeply involved, you can't help but be staggered by these numbers," said Steve Tobocman, a former state representative who served as co-director of the Michigan Foreclosure Task Force. > Explore a database and map of tax-foreclosed homes in Detroit "I'm hysterical. Housing deals boost Midtown's revival in Detroit.
Five years after the launch of an incentive program to encourage people to move into areas in and around Detroit's Midtown, organizers of the effort say it has been a success at bringing a diverse mix of people into the neighborhood — so much that the incentives will likely keep going even after the pilot project comes to an end. The Live Midtown program was designed as a five-year deal to offer rental assistance and help employees of businesses in the area purchase homes, condos and lofts as Detroit and the nation emerged from the worst of the recession. It’s funded by three major employers — Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center and Henry Ford Health System — that, along with the Hudson-Webber and Kresge foundations, have spent about $1 million a year on the incentives.
The goal: to encourage workers to move in and stay in the neighborhood — and in their jobs. He's happy with his decision to stay. How the incentives worked The good and bad about Midtown What’s great … Detroit: Real Estate and Market Trends. Last updated Thursday - June 18, 2015 As the largest city ever to seek bankruptcy protection, Detroit may serve as a testament to the strength United States’ economy. No more than a year ago, Detroit represented a beleaguered metropolis in decline for the better part of a half a century. However, having made significant improvements over the course of a year, Detroit is poised to make a remarkable economic resurgence. That is great news for anyone that has already invested in the Detroit housing market, and should encourage others to do the same.
As of July 2013, Detroit held a debt estimated to be between $18-20 billion. The impact was felt in nearly every sector. The median sale price within the greater Detroit area was just over $115,000 earlier this year, up from $85,000 the previous year, according to data from the Realcomp multiple-listing service, which doesn’t account for sales of a private nature. Detroit Housing Market Summary: Detroit Housing Market Q1 Update: Detroit home values finally on the rise. Home values in Detroit neighborhoods are finally experiencing some upward momentum after years of rock-bottom prices. Still among the cheapest places in the nation to buy a house, Detroit neighborhoods are seeing prices inch up on most residential blocks with substantial gains in the strongest areas. A Free Press analysis of land records shows the median sale price of any home in the city was $30,000 last month, more than four times the $7,000 median in 2009, an especially dark year for the economy and real estate.
To be sure, there are still plenty of houses in Detroit selling for $1,000 or less because of their poor physical condition and the still-deteriorating neighborhoods. And occasionally, a $1 house will hit the market when a bank or other owner wants to rid itself of the liability of ownership. "Are prices going up? Yes. Let's say three years ago it was $3,000, now it's $12,000," said Albert Hakim, owner of City Management Group, which sells dozens of Detroit houses a month.