Me too. I'm actually in Europe, only lived in Canada, but I was inspired by this guy: http://www.buzzfeed.com/drewphilp/why-i-bought-a-house-in-detroit-for-500

Me too. I'm actually in Europe, only lived in Canada, but I was inspired by this guy: http://www.buzzfeed.com/drewphilp/why-i-bought-a-house-in-detroit-for-500 http://www.buzzfeed.com/drewphilp/why-i-bought-a-house-in-de... So I looked around a bit... the problem is you can often get a cheap house, but only if you take over taxes on the property, which are often multiples of the value of the house as they accumulated over the years. And then there's annual property tax which are really high. I don't exactly know why... But I've seen houses which get taxed on a value that's 5-10x the value of the house. And beyond that, the tax rate is often 3x higher than other cities. So you might have a house that's worth just $20k, but then it's valued-for-tax at $100k, and you pay 4% on that. So you're paying $4k in taxes or 20% of the house's value every year. It's insane. And it's keeping people out. I for one am not interested in paying $10k in old taxes for a cheap home I have to completely newbuild, and then pay taxes on it as if I was paying rent on top of a mortgage. But it's probably a goldmine for any company with a 50-year vision who can get economies of scale on things like construction, and can negotiate huge tax-relief deals, e.g. waive old taxes and waive taxes the first 5 years etc.