Got $100? Welcome to your new Detroit home

If an e-mail popped up in your inbox promising a house for $100, you'd expect to see it sent from guy in Nigeria asking you to wire him several thousand dollars first.

But this depressed housing market dream is real. And Detroit, Michigan, artist Jon Brumit and his wife Sarah are living it.

The couple never counted on owning a home.

"It's not that we have a little money," Jon Brumit said, laughing. "I'm saying we have no money."

But the couple began entertaining the idea of a permanent nest when their friends Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert, also artists, started taking advantage of foreclosures in the city, where the average home price dipped to $11,533 in April, according to the Detroit Association of Realtors.

Dragging down the average are homes are long abandoned or foreclosed on that are selling for pennies on the dollar. Detroit already had the lowest market value houses in Michigan before the latest rounds of job losses at GM and other huge employers, market analysts say.

www.cnn.com...

Wow, so the banks kicked out people who couldn't pay and are now selling those same homes (plus abandoned etc) for as little as $100.

At that price you could buy entire neighborhoods!

Let's pool some cash and buy a few thousand homes and neighborhoods to start an ATS city.

haha wouldn't that be something



[edit on 17-6-2009 by warrenb]

The original owners could have bought the house for $100! What a sham.

But how about the neighborhoods, where this inexpensive houses are located.

Are they good neighborhoods. I wonder.

that's almost an insult to the people whom got kicked out.
what a shame.

and an ATS city would be a really great place to live, albeit a bit paranoid.

I would say if you are in the city limits of Detroit no neighborhood is a "good" neighborhood. One may be good compared to another, but Detroit did just recently regain its status as murder capital of the U.S. for a reason.

It would be nice to get a fund that if people wanted to contribute to they can.
How cool would it be to get these people their homes back.
I would be more then willing to buy a few for the original owners.
Very sad that bankers play with peoples lives like this....I laugh when one kills themselves for going broke.(banker)

Originally posted by DrumsRfun
It would be nice to get a fund that if people wanted to contribute to they can.
How cool would it be to get these people their homes back.
I would be more then willing to buy a few for the original owners.
Very sad that bankers play with peoples lives like this....I laugh when one kills themselves for going broke.(banker)

While a nice idea, if you read the article carefully (or just take a drive through Detroit) you will see that most of these homes have been abandoned for years, stripped of everything salvagable, and tracking down original ownership has been tricky at best.

reply to post by larphillips


I like the idea just because we can screw the banks and give the people their homes back.
In theory I realize it is too flawed to actually work but it would be nice to actually win one for the little guy for a change.

I like the idea of buying these cheap homes and giving them to the homeless or using them as a ATS village of some sort.

Of course if anyone losses there home they could go to the village. A peaceful village. Where we could have everyone ranked buy forum points. And "protected" by floating balloons