What Direction is Detroit Heading?

[papillonaquatique]

Property taxes range from $2,000 - $3,000 per year - depending on the assessed value of one's home. In addition, there is $300 solid waste fee that is added onto residential property taxes.

The average for all homeowners in the U.S. is $1,183, according to the January 2010 issue of FORBES, to put that in perspective.

Residents pay a 2.5% income tax. Non-residents pay a 1.25% version of it.

There is also a utility tax of 1.25% that gets tacked onto all utility bills.

Is there anyway to get your taxes lowered? Say if you were trying to rehab several homes and get them occupied? No wonder homes in Detroit are going for next to nothing!

[English]

The serious problems with most Detroit neighborhoods are crime and schools. Those are not being fixed, and no one relevant has proposed anything that is going to fix them.

This is the bottom line.

[Gistok]

You know things are going badly for Detroit when even one of the nicest most intact neighborhoods in the city has seen its' home values drop nearly 80% in the last 10 years. The nice brick homes around the far east side Balduck Park area [[known as Cornerstone Village)... has seen a dramatic drop in home values.

On the same 5900 [[address) block of one of the streets in that area... 10 years ago one of the houses on the block sold for $97,000. 2 years ago an even nicer house on that block sold for $65,000... and 3 months ago another nice house on this same block sold for $20,000 [[to rent out to a family that doesn't know what weed removal is). The block in question has NO missing homes... just a few boarded up ones.

Very depressing....

[Fnemecek]

Is there anyway to get your taxes lowered? Say if you were trying to rehab several homes and get them occupied? No wonder homes in Detroit are going for next to nothing!

Owning and/or rehabbing multiple homes will not lower your property taxes.

The only way of lowering one's property taxes is to contest the assessed value of your home. That can push it towards the lower end of the $2,000 - $3,000 spectrum.

Personally, I advocate in favor of Detroit focusing on its tax burden and lack of services as a way of rebuilding.

Or we can follow 40+ years of repeated failure with what BrushStart advocates above. Who knows? Maybe Albert Einstein was wrong about the definition of insanity?

[Fnemecek]

Gistok:
I have an even more depressing example for you.

3 years ago, the house across the street from me sold for $115,000. It was a solid brick bungalow in a working class neighborhood.

4 months ago, the same house sold in a foreclosure sale [[still in very good condition) for $8,000. That's a 93% drop within 3 years.