The median sale price on a house or condo in Detroit < $10,000

[ilbob]

Think what Obama's minions can do for you too.

http://freep.com/article/20081014/BUSINESS04/810140340

Metro home sales up, but prices plunge
Foreclosures fuel trend
BY GRETA GUEST • FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER • October 14, 2008


Driven down by sales of foreclosed homes, median sale prices fell 34% in metro Detroit in September compared with a year ago, dipping below $10,000 in the city of Detroit.

The median price on a house or condo sold in Detroit last month plummeted 57%, to $9,250, from $21,250 a year ago, according to figures released Monday by Realcomp, a multiple listing service based in Farmington Hills.

Foreclosures represented two-thirds of sales in Detroit in September, and they boosted sales by 81% as buyers laid claim to 1,019 homes.

For the wider metro area, the median sale price was down 34%, from $129,000 a year ago to $85,000 last month.

"There's tons of properties out there that investors are snapping up and that skews the numbers," said Joy Santiago, a Southfield-based real estate broker. "You can't say in the city of Detroit that the values are down, because many areas are strong, like Indian Village and Palmer Woods. They are a little bit more stable."

Sales are picking up, she said.

"People have to start realizing there are awesome deals out there, and it is just the time to purchase," Santiago said. "September for me, in the past 10 years, has been slow, but it was my best September ever."

Dan Elsea, president of brokerage services for Real Estate One in Southfield, said the prices are evidence of heavy investor activity in Detroit.

"We are seeing that low end of the market sell quicker. If you have a $75,000 house in the city of Detroit, there are not a lot of buyers for it," Elsea said. "But if you have an $8,500 house, it sells very quickly."

He said that if investor activity is factored out, the true price depreciation in metro Detroit, excluding the city, is at a rate of 1% a month since last September.

Realcomp reported that 5,818 sales of houses and condos in the metro area were concluded during September, up 57% from 3,703 sales in the same month a year ago. The figures consist of closed sales reported by Realtors who subscribe to the service.

More than 37% of the September sales in the metro area were foreclosures, according to Karen Kage, Realcomp president.

But have we hit bottom yet?

"It is near impossible for me to say we are near done," Kage said.

Wayne County sales were up 73%, to 2,278, from 1,320 in September 2007; Oakland County sales rose 51%, from 941 to 1,422; Macomb County sales were up 58%, from 478 to 754, and Livingston County sales were up 45%, from 138 to 200.

And pending sales in September were up 75%, to 7,832 from 4,472 in September 2007. Pending sales are those with signed purchase agreements that have not closed.

With the credit crunch and falling prices, more pending deals are falling apart at the closing table. In September, 1,265 properties went back on the market that were either pending or withdrawn from the market. That compares with 732 properties put back on the market in September 2007, Kage said.

"It's not the best news ever," Kage said of the falling sales prices. "We have said all along that until we weed out some of the inventory, we will not see prices rise."

Realcomp also reported that housing inventory in metro Detroit dropped 16%, to 63,453 homes and condominiums on the market, as compared with 75,932 listings in September 2007. That's a 10.9-month supply at the current sales pace, far above a normal market of a three- to six-month supply.

[red headed stranger]

I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with Obama.

MI tied its fortune to the auto industry and lost big.  It will be a long time for things to improve there. 

[Manedwolf]

There was a recent report on how bad it is there now.

Abandoned houses don't just get pipes stolen. People steal the fixtures, the sinks, even the WINDOW FRAMES.

We have our own Mogadishu, thanks to liberal policies.

[Jamisjockey]

I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with Obama.

 

Because Detroit is a Democratic stronghold. 

[Manedwolf]

Detroit's public school book depository.

Yes, those are are the public schools' books. No, there was no disaster.



They just abandoned it.

[MicroBalrog]

Detroit's public school book depository.

Yes, those are are the public schools' books. No, there was no disaster.



They just abandoned it.

...please elaborate on this notion. I can scarcely believe anybody would abandon a bunch of books in this fashion.

[Manedwolf]

They did.

Pallet after pallet of mid-1980s Houghton-Mifflin textbooks, still unwrapped in their original packaging, seem more telling of our failures than any vacant edifice. The floor is littered with flash cards, workbooks, art paper, pencils, scissors, maps, deflated footballs and frozen tennis balls, reel-to-reel tapes. Almost anything you can think of used in the education of a child during the 1980s is there, much of it charred or rotted beyond recognition. Mushrooms thrive in the damp ashes of workbooks. Ailanthus altissima, the "ghetto palm" grows in a soil made by thousands of books that have burned, and in the pulp of rotted English Textbooks. Everything of any real value has been looted. All that's left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential.

Detroit is a ruin. Nothing more. I have heard from vets that they'd rather do a patrol in the nastiest parts of Iraq than walk in parts of Detroit.

[El Tejon]

My father in the 1970s called Detroit "America's window to the future".

I'm very glad he was not transferred there.

[MicroBalrog]

So, people reverted to the notion of buying their own textbooks?

Or at least, do people raid the wreckage for free books for their children? I assume some of the books are salvageable, or at least were at some point.

[El Tejon]

1.  Kids went without books, and,

2.  Books were ordered that were unneeded to derive kickbacks to public school administrators from book companies.

[Manedwolf]

So, people reverted to the notion of buying their own textbooks?

Or at least, do people raid the wreckage for free books for their children? I assume some of the books are salvageable, or at least were at some point.

No. The public school system doesn't even have enough books for their kids. They're not even allowed to take them home with them to do homework.

Meanwhile, this Democrat, now going to jail, perhaps:



was having parties at the mayoral mansion, complete with strippers, and was sharing city funds with his thug friends.

[MicroBalrog]

2.  Books were ordered that were unneeded to derive kickbacks to public school administrators from book companies.

In America? No. That can't be.

I demand links to a respectable media source of this story. I refuse, refuse, refuse to believe this. This is some form of political allegation by some interest party. It can't be true.

[roo_ster]

As a bibliophile, those images are horrifying.

I get a thrill from ordering classic math books.

That is vile.  They could have given them away for free, at the very least.

[Manedwolf]

Some more of Detroit. Their idea of a good use for a grand old theater. First, as it was in 1927.



Smash a hole in a wall:



and park cars in the crumbling corpse. Yes, those are still the rotted curtains hanging. They didn't even take them down.

[El Tejon]

Robocop wasn't a movie; it was a documentary.

[MicroBalrog]

Wait, wait, wait.

You now tell me that an American official received bribes from book publishers to order hundreds of thousands of unneeded books, that these books were then abandoned en masse with the building they were stored in (because, according to this story, in America even middle-class children do not buy their own schoolbooks), even as the local public school system suffered a shortage of books?

I'm sorry, but that is seriously not very believable. There's just so many ways in which this doesn't make sense.

[mtnbkr]

Welcome to America MicroBalrog.

That's how it goes down in larger, more corrupt locales...

Oh, and no, schoolchildren, at least those in public schools, don't buy their books.  They might buy paperback copies of novels used in classwork (Tom Sawyer for example), but the regular textbooks are provided.  I didn't buy any schoolbooks till I was in college.

Chris

[lupinus]

I've never heard of any child in public school (or well, their parents, but you get the idea) having to buy their own books.  Whether it be text books or novels for class.  Aside for course from notebooks and the like.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

In America? No. That can't be.

I demand links to a respectable media source of this story. I refuse, refuse, refuse to believe this. This is some form of political allegation by some interest party. It can't be true.

not quite as bad but dc is very similar   and dc spends more per kid than fairfax

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

Most private schools purchase the kid's schoolbooks, too, IME.

[MicroBalrog]

Oh, and no, schoolchildren, at least those in public schools, don't buy their books.  They might buy paperback copies of novels used in classwork (Tom Sawyer for example), but the regular textbooks are provided.  I didn't buy any schoolbooks till I was in college.

In Israel, children in public schools buy their own books. The private school I went to was different, of course.

[Perd Hapley]

I doubt most American parents would know where to find school books for their kids.  (Well, maybe these days, with internet sites like Amazon.)  It's just expected that the public school will provide them, because they always do.  Except some schools in Detroit or other American ghettos, apparently.  And in neighborhoods like that, you're lucky if the parent even knows or cares whether their children have any school books.   

[Manedwolf]

I doubt most American parents would know where to find school books for their kids.  (Well, maybe these days, with internet sites like Amazon.)  It's just expected that the public school will provide them, because they always do.  Except some schools in Detroit or other American ghettos, apparently.  And in neighborhoods like that, you're lucky if the parent even knows or cares whether their children have any school books.   

If the school hasn't been burned as well.

[Balog]

Wait, wait, wait.

You now tell me that an American official received bribes from book publishers to order hundreds of thousands of unneeded books, that these books were then abandoned en masse with the building they were stored in (because, according to this story, in America even middle-class children do not buy their own schoolbooks), even as the local public school system suffered a shortage of books?

I'm sorry, but that is seriously not very believable. There's just so many ways in which this doesn't make sense.

Your trouble believing widely known facts demonstrates the danger of basing all of one's world view on theoretical concepts and selective reporting. This naivety is also why so many of the people on here tend to point out your youth and inexperience as limiting factors in the validity of your opinions.

[taurusowner]

I have also never heard of any K-12 student buying textbooks.  And the idea of that kind of corruption and bribery is totally believable in Detroit.