Market big for foreclosed, rundown Detroit homes - Make Detroit a Tax-free Zone!

The DETROIT NEWS COVER STORY on Foreclosed and rundown homes being resold is indicative of the present status of Detroit.

However, Renters are becoming Homeowners.

The most upsetting part of the story to me is the amount of Taxes that must be paid on these rundown homes.
Newt Gingrich was right! Gingrich said, according to a report on MLive.com. "No taxes for a decade on job creation. No taxes on investments. No taxes on capital gains as long as they are in Detroit."

I say let's put moratorium on Property Taxes in Detroit. With houses being bought for $500 and $1,500 why is there a property tax?

Because it's an important source of income forthe City, it's schools and libraries?

I hear lots of discussion about this. We all know property tax rates in detroit are high [[with poor to mediocre services for them) as well as the income tax

I agree that reducing this tax burden would be very beneficial to the city. With that said, I get annoyed when I hear people propose massive cuts in taxes as a real solution for detroit when they're not considering the revenue side of the equation.

Long term the taxes could be reduced but only if expenses go down [[or some kind of massive federal subsidy etc. The only other way to make that work is to assume that a reduction in taxes would be offset by more home owners/higher home values. Unfortunately that would be tough to predict with any accuracy.

So you have no fight from me [[or anyone really) that lower taxes would be good; but this discussion needs to focus on lowering city expenses or other revenue sources to go anywhere.

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Originally Posted by SWMAP

Because it's an important source of income for the City, it's schools and libraries?

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What income?? More than 40% of Detroit households receive some type of assistance be it unemployment, Social Security or welfare.

You can't get milk from a rock. It is insane to continually increase taxes on a declining and diminishing tax base.

People who can't pay single family property taxes should not be trying to own single-family properties. They should be residing in multi-family properties in which the tax burden is shared by many renters. This is a hard truth, I agree. But people who don't pay their legitimate property taxes are adding nails to detroit's coffin.

If you can't afford to pay property taxes, you can't afford to own a home and you shouldn't try. This is true no matter where you live.