A Boost in Detroit's Housing Market

[renf]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/detroits...ost-1476982801

The morning paper includes an essay with generally positive information about the city's housing market. The Detroit Land Bank and Quicken Loans are praised. I knew it was challenging to get a mortgage in Detroit but I was
surprised to see that more than 80% of home sales in the city are done with cash. The Rehabbed and Ready program has the modest accomplishment of selling just 20 homes in 13 months.

[ABetterDetroit]

A 1.9 percent increase in this market over 12 months is bad. 37k average sale price is even worse. 80 percent cash sales, horrific.

There has to be a financial incentive to maintain or fix up houses in most neighborhoods, not just the ones with choice location, or many more neccesary demolitions will still be a large part of the future for Detroit.

[mwilbert]

A 1.9 percent increase in this market over 12 months is bad. 37k average sale price is even worse. 80 percent cash sales, horrific.

There has to be a financial incentive to maintain or fix up houses in most neighborhoods, not just the ones with choice location, or many more neccesary demolitions will still be a large part of the future for Detroit.

Does anyone really think that there is any chance that there won't be tens of thousands of additional demolitions in Detroit? While there are plenty of neighborhoods where prices have risen to the point that the houses are worth maintaining, there are a vast number of houses that can't be economically renovated because fixing them would cost more than they could ever sell for. As discussed in the article, there are programs dealing with a small fraction of these, and there are some people who fix up houses even though it is uneconomic, and some additional fraction may be saved because they are in areas that eventually rise in price enough to make them worth saving before they fall down or burn down, but my guess is that leaves most of the city's housing stock still at risk.

[401don]

Detroit may be the best example of why you can't look at average price increases in cities. The increases downtown, mid-town and a few small enclaves just serve to further misrepresent how little the increases are in typical neighborhoods. The median price of $38,300 [[according to Zillow) is much more accurate.