5 ms·

Lower your burn, move to Detroit and buy a house for 2-3 months SF rent.

by RWilson 18y ago

randallsquared 18y ago
Problem is, the houses are that cheap for good reason.
- wallflower 18y ago
  ""It can be dangerous and it's definitely exciting," said McIlvaine, who had served as a sergeant in U.S. Air Force and started his retail career in security. "Your adrenaline is flowing as you are checking the house. You don't know what to expect." Once the home is vacated and the locks are changed, McIlvaine can spend thousands of dollars cleaning it up. He leaves it to the sheriff to dispose of what's deemed the homeowner's personal property, while hiring contractors to haul out the trash. He never ever opens the refrigerator, a lesson he learned the hard way after looking in a freezer filled with rotten fish." http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/mcilvaine/?postversion=2008061111 http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/mcilvaine/?post...
- patio11 18y ago
  Supply for them exceeds demand. That would depress the price of flawless diamonds. Here's an anecdote for you: in Nagoya, you can pay $700 a month for a one-room apartment. Not an awesomely located fully-furnished palatial one room apartment, just your generic twenty-something sleeping quarters which is about the size of many Americans' closet. In my town, I pay $450 a month for a three-room apartment. It was so clean when I moved in that I suspected they had put artificial sparkle on the walls. The whole of the reason it is cheap and Nagoya is not is that my town, sort of like Detroit, has some systemic economic issues which discourage young people from living there. Accordingly, after graduation they move to Nagoya to work, pushing the price of real estate there even higher and making landlords in my town even more desperate to offload inventory.
  - randallsquared 18y ago
    > Supply for them exceeds demand. No argument, but my statement was shorthand for "supply exceeds demand for good reason", since "supply exceeds demand" is usually the same as "prices are low". Now, it could be that there's just too few people in Detroit for the property, but from other stories, it would appear that these low cost houses may come without wiring or piping, that having been stolen to sell as scrap or the like, and other forms of vandalism seem likely, too. I'm not saying that there aren't some that are worth it; I'm considering buying a house or two at these prices, myself. :)
    - nostrademons 18y ago
      I think the bigger issue is crime. No price is a good deal if you get shot. And you can't rent out a house for any decent amount if the tenants could just buy the house next door for $7500 (and then get shot for it). I've heard similar things happened in East Boston during the '91 real estate bust. It had been a recently gentrifying area, but when the economy fell, the yuppies moved out, property values fell, and the crime moved in. That made house prices fall farther, so that by the end of the bust, condos that had been selling for $200k were going for $40k.
  - ghshephard 18y ago
    Without getting into a "mine is bigger than yours" game - I'd just like to note that I have a 600 square foot bachelor-suite (no bedroom), in a very, very old apartment building overlooking (complete with sound) the 101 freeway in a low income (and un-walkable) neighborhood of Redwood City and pay $1210/month + $65 water/sewer/garbage. On the flip side, I used to fly out to Detroit and was interested in some of these $10,000 houses, but we could never work up the nerve to actually go into the neighborhoods out near 8 mile that had them, and I can't imagine living there. Has anyone on HN been out to Detroit recently? There are many parts of that city that are like a war zone in terms of building/lot damage, and others that I would not go without armed escort. I guess this is just another way of saying the "absolute value" of property is pretty low in Detroit as well. It's kind of like the "Anti-Paul-Graham-Geographic-Recipe-for-a-successful-startup-community" type of environment.
blackguardx 18y ago
I thought a lot of those sales came with stipulations that the house be fixed up in a certain amount of time. If not, it is a pretty good price. You would think that the materials cost more than that.
- jerf 18y ago
  Expect the valuable materials to be gone. For example, http://www.michronicleonline.com/articlelive/articles/2440/1/Copper-theft-still-an-issue-in-Detroit/Page1.html http://www.michronicleonline.com/articlelive/articles/2440/1... .
  - ojbyrne 18y ago
    Like all things, the price of copper is down significantly. It's 25% of what it was when that article was published. Not saying the problem is completely solved by that, but it's got to be mitigated somewhat.
- rajat 18y ago
  Yeah, but then you're stuck with the property taxes until you can find another buyer.

Lower your burn, move to Detroit and buy a house for 2-3 months SF rent.

by RWilson 18y ago

Lower your burn, move to Detroit and buy a house for 2-3 months SF rent.

randallsquared 18y ago

Problem is, the houses are that cheap for good reason.

wallflower 18y ago
""It can be dangerous and it's definitely exciting," said McIlvaine, who had served as a sergeant in U.S. Air Force and started his retail career in security. "Your adrenaline is flowing as you are checking the house. You don't know what to expect." Once the home is vacated and the locks are changed, McIlvaine can spend thousands of dollars cleaning it up. He leaves it to the sheriff to dispose of what's deemed the homeowner's personal property, while hiring contractors to haul out the trash. He never ever opens the refrigerator, a lesson he learned the hard way after looking in a freezer filled with rotten fish." http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/mcilvaine/?postversion=2008061111 http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/mcilvaine/?post...
patio11 18y ago
Supply for them exceeds demand. That would depress the price of flawless diamonds. Here's an anecdote for you: in Nagoya, you can pay $700 a month for a one-room apartment. Not an awesomely located fully-furnished palatial one room apartment, just your generic twenty-something sleeping quarters which is about the size of many Americans' closet. In my town, I pay $450 a month for a three-room apartment. It was so clean when I moved in that I suspected they had put artificial sparkle on the walls. The whole of the reason it is cheap and Nagoya is not is that my town, sort of like Detroit, has some systemic economic issues which discourage young people from living there. Accordingly, after graduation they move to Nagoya to work, pushing the price of real estate there even higher and making landlords in my town even more desperate to offload inventory.
- randallsquared 18y ago
  > Supply for them exceeds demand. No argument, but my statement was shorthand for "supply exceeds demand for good reason", since "supply exceeds demand" is usually the same as "prices are low". Now, it could be that there's just too few people in Detroit for the property, but from other stories, it would appear that these low cost houses may come without wiring or piping, that having been stolen to sell as scrap or the like, and other forms of vandalism seem likely, too. I'm not saying that there aren't some that are worth it; I'm considering buying a house or two at these prices, myself. :)
  - nostrademons 18y ago
    I think the bigger issue is crime. No price is a good deal if you get shot. And you can't rent out a house for any decent amount if the tenants could just buy the house next door for $7500 (and then get shot for it). I've heard similar things happened in East Boston during the '91 real estate bust. It had been a recently gentrifying area, but when the economy fell, the yuppies moved out, property values fell, and the crime moved in. That made house prices fall farther, so that by the end of the bust, condos that had been selling for $200k were going for $40k.
- ghshephard 18y ago
  Without getting into a "mine is bigger than yours" game - I'd just like to note that I have a 600 square foot bachelor-suite (no bedroom), in a very, very old apartment building overlooking (complete with sound) the 101 freeway in a low income (and un-walkable) neighborhood of Redwood City and pay $1210/month + $65 water/sewer/garbage. On the flip side, I used to fly out to Detroit and was interested in some of these $10,000 houses, but we could never work up the nerve to actually go into the neighborhoods out near 8 mile that had them, and I can't imagine living there. Has anyone on HN been out to Detroit recently? There are many parts of that city that are like a war zone in terms of building/lot damage, and others that I would not go without armed escort. I guess this is just another way of saying the "absolute value" of property is pretty low in Detroit as well. It's kind of like the "Anti-Paul-Graham-Geographic-Recipe-for-a-successful-startup-community" type of environment.

blackguardx 18y ago

I thought a lot of those sales came with stipulations that the house be fixed up in a certain amount of time. If not, it is a pretty good price. You would think that the materials cost more than that.

jerf 18y ago
Expect the valuable materials to be gone. For example, http://www.michronicleonline.com/articlelive/articles/2440/1/Copper-theft-still-an-issue-in-Detroit/Page1.html http://www.michronicleonline.com/articlelive/articles/2440/1... .
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  Like all things, the price of copper is down significantly. It's 25% of what it was when that article was published. Not saying the problem is completely solved by that, but it's got to be mitigated somewhat.
rajat 18y ago
Yeah, but then you're stuck with the property taxes until you can find another buyer.