17501 Hamilton Rd

[hybridy]

WOW...is this listing for real? I wonder what exterior work needs to be done...

http://www.realtor.com/realestateand...3_M47166-07802

[REL]

It's a short sale. And, it's not too far off from what a friend of mine paid on the same block not that long ago.

Keep in mind the taxes can be horrendous.

[mwilbert]

That seems like a pretty good deal, but not an absurdly low price for that house. I would think that at that price, it should be in decent shape. Most of the houses backing on the Golf Club were built later and are fairly unattractive [[some exceptions on Fairway and the private-road section of Hamilton) so if you were particularly interested in such a house, and a bigger lot than is the norm in the city, this might be a good choice.

It is not, however, obviously a better deal than this:

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/19...88179875_zpid/, although it looks like this one will be off the market soon.

[Ray1936]

Don't ever jump on a house because it's good eye candy.

Plumbing, electrical, sewage, roofing, HVAC, and [[in this case) brick repair are the items to be looked at. Not to mention water seepage and/or mold.

[DetroitDad]

Always get the property properly inspected.

[muskie1]

Always get the property properly inspected.

I agree. My last house was built in 1924 and did very well on the inspection and the HVAC was new.
One of the issues that does occur in older homes is there is no such thing as a simple project, once you start doing something the list of upgrades will get expensive A good way to look at these homes is to almost always figure pricing for a complete wiring and plumbing renovation. They can be a great adventure if you like doing home repairs.

[canuck]

Yup, and when its time to redo the roof, you have three and a half times the sq footage of a regular cottage, eeks!!! Great for home office, recording studio, etc... Man the prices in Detroit are nuts.

[jtf1972]

These homes are pretty, but I would have no clue what to do with all that room!

[ragnarok1981]

Welcome to the nightmare that our area is experiencing. Thankfully I don't own a house in the Palmer Park area but instead live in my parents home, because the homes are so undervalued right now that it makes you want to cry if you own one. In Palmer Woods I have watched house after house go for maybe a 1/5 of their actual value and to me it is criminal. There is a 3400 square foot house built in 1918 going for 88,000 and there is absolutely no reason that it should go for that price, it should be selling for 5 times that. While having a low price on these homes can make them available to people who could not normally afford them can be a good thing, more often than not it is a disaster waiting to happen. I have only seen one instance where a foreclosure sale worked in our favor where I got some of the best neighbors I could have hoped for move in nextdoor to my home. On the other hand I have seen all these people come to look at these cheap priced homes and I just want to say to them "there is no way you can afford that". I hate to come off sounding like an elitest but honestly if you have a 5000+ square foot home for sale and you see someone driving a beat up early 90's ford taurus are you really going to think they can afford to keep a home like that when they still drive a piece of junk and they themselves look like they are barely above the poverty level. Already I have seen one magestic home bought by a guy and his "baby momma" [[their own words, not mine) and since they bought the home they have let it sit and deteriorate for almost a year and they still have not moved in.
Low home prices can be either a rejuvenating factor or a death factor for an area. It can bring in young people who are committed to the area, or you can get people who see a cheap price and snatch it up before even considering the associated costs of repair work, upkeep, and taxes.

[prokopowicz]

This thread makes it seem that Detroit is on another planet from Chicago, where I live now.

Someone said that the price is not absurdly low, and that in fact for the price the house must be in pretty good shape. Only on planet Detroit! A selling price of $135,000 will not get you a classic near-mansion on a golf course in one of the best neighborhoods of Chicago. It will get a small bungalow in a borderline slum with almost no yard.

I agree with Ragnorak1981 that the natural reaction is astonishment and dismay.

[mwilbert]

Supply and demand are powerful forces.

Ragnarok1981 is absolutely right about the potential for people to buy houses which they cannot afford to maintain--you probably have to budget at least $10-15K/year for maintenance on a Palmer Woods type house if you want to keep it nice [[not that it will cost $10K every year, but there are a whole lot of pieces that can break or deteriorate.), and some of those houses already have a lot of deferred maintenance.

[DetroitPole]

Welcome to the nightmare that our area is experiencing. Thankfully I don't own a house in the Palmer Park area but instead live in my parents home, because the homes are so undervalued right now that it makes you want to cry if you own one. In Palmer Woods I have watched house after house go for maybe a 1/5 of their actual value and to me it is criminal. There is a 3400 square foot house built in 1918 going for 88,000 and there is absolutely no reason that it should go for that price, it should be selling for 5 times that. While having a low price on these homes can make them available to people who could not normally afford them can be a good thing, more often than not it is a disaster waiting to happen. I have only seen one instance where a foreclosure sale worked in our favor where I got some of the best neighbors I could have hoped for move in nextdoor to my home. On the other hand I have seen all these people come to look at these cheap priced homes and I just want to say to them "there is no way you can afford that". I hate to come off sounding like an elitest but honestly if you have a 5000+ square foot home for sale and you see someone driving a beat up early 90's ford taurus are you really going to think they can afford to keep a home like that when they still drive a piece of junk and they themselves look like they are barely above the poverty level. Already I have seen one magestic home bought by a guy and his "baby momma" [[their own words, not mine) and since they bought the home they have let it sit and deteriorate for almost a year and they still have not moved in.
Low home prices can be either a rejuvenating factor or a death factor for an area. It can bring in young people who are committed to the area, or you can get people who see a cheap price and snatch it up before even considering the associated costs of repair work, upkeep, and taxes.

I hear you. The house next door to me was bought by some rather unfriendly, strange people who have an impolite staring habit for under 10k...they stop by maybe once a month to do some ticky-tack repairs and put up bedsheets in the windows, and the house has been vacant for over 6 months. It is a shame such a beautiful house, but at the same time sometimes I'd rather have it vacant than have them finally move in next door...It is too bad some people with more resources to put into the place hadn't gotten a hold of it rather than some jerks who think they're hot shit moving up to fancy town for under 10k when the house needs 20k in repairs.

[EastsideQT]

This thread makes it seem that Detroit is on another planet from Chicago, where I live now.

Someone said that the price is not absurdly low, and that in fact for the price the house must be in pretty good shape. Only on planet Detroit! A selling price of $135,000 will not get you a classic near-mansion on a golf course in one of the best neighborhoods of Chicago. It will get a small bungalow in a borderline slum with almost no yard.

I agree with Ragnorak1981 that the natural reaction is astonishment and dismay.

I agree with you...If anybody watches HGTV in most major cities [[NYC, LA, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, DC, San Francisco,) $135,000 would probably get you a studio in a walk-up and you still have to pay an association fee plus from $10,000-$30,000 per year for a parking space that might not even be on the premises. For $250,000 on might get one with a bedroom. When I lived in San Francisco in the 70's my parking space at work cost more back then than my my car payment and insurance cost now and I live in Detroit!!!

[hybridy]

its absolutely stunning...the only reason i started the thread because my wife and i are house hunting in madison which never really went down in value. 135k won't even get me 1,000 sf anywhere in the city. we browse through metro detroit lisitings and utter "if only we had jobs there". her dream is to be in the university district and teach at udm. its just unfortunate as we're ideal homeowners with professional degrees and all that crap...

[Lombaowski]

That would cost about 1 million dollars where I'm moving [[D.C).

It's kind of funny because I went and looked at houses in the DC area and some of the best properties for the money were in Prince George County. I saw a lot of the same things in PG county that I saw in Detroit in the 70s and early 80s. Nice houses that had sheets hanging in the window [[I didn't even bother looking inside), people seeming desperate to sell [[realtors almost begging you to buy) and a transitional community that has saw a ton of white flight over the past ten years.

Now in Bowie a lot of affluent black families have moved in, but they are living on the golf courses and in the gated communities. Smart. Meanwhile section 8 properties are multiplying exponentially, the school system has serious issues and the county commissioner was arrested while his wife was trying to flush checks and cash down the toilet as police busted down the door.

Sound familiar? I was really hoping to find a stable, established and diverse neighborhood to live in but they are hard to find anywhere in this country. You can go from middle class mecca to ghetto in a heartbeat and then watch as places like NW and SE DC gentrify and housing prices quadruple in a matter of 30 months. It's maddening, we have a mass influx of yuppies with money to burn which pushes rents higher and the bad element out, and then the bad element goes elsewhere and ruins areas that were perfectly stable ten to 15 years ago.

I love Detroit, I would love to move back in a second but this thread and that house really exemplifies the problem with the country, not just Detroit. We have disregarded our urban areas for decades, we fix them [[Manhattan, NW DC, North Central Phila, etc) and then send the trash elsewhere to kill another neighborhood. The right wingers don't want to fund anything in urban areas, the liberals want to make everything equal and throw five section 8 houses in your neighborhood while the good upstanding tax payer either can't afford to buy in NW DC and can't afford to sell in Bowie, Maryland.

God dammit this pisses me off.

[canuck]

There should definitely be ways of making section 8 housing in Alcatraz-like settings. These would be gated communities for the imprisoned low-life families; they would be fooled into believing this ersatz of the good life. Make them think they are winners, only you make sure the good upstanding taxpayers keep or throw away the key. Ass what I think.

[reddog289]

Crazy as it is, I never really looked at houses in my hometown of Wayne till I met my wife.When I was single living with the parents it was Detroit and later Carleton. Hearing of a house in Palmer Woods with an asking price of $88 grand, Was unheard of when I was house hunting.
I admit my vehicles might be too old for that area, Yet I would have treated it like I do with my own house here in Wayne.If not better. just shake my head at the way things have gone round here with houses.Yet the thought of the kids going to DPS scared me away then as now.
$50 GRAND LESS AND 2400 MORE SF. Sounds alot better now then then.

[ragnarok1981]

I was not trying to bash people who don't have a lot of money. When I said that I would see people with an an old beat up car that was barely even street worthy and they themselves look like they were a step above living on the street, I meant that as a way of saying that if you don't have the money to spend on having a more modern car or at least fixing it, and looking half way decent, then you probably are not going to be able to afford one of these homes. I know it is the American dream to make it big and move up in the world, but I think some people need to think a little more before attempting it. Sure a 5000 square foot home might sell for 150k or less and you might be able to get a mortgage for that, but can you afford the upkeep on a home like that? A majority of homes in the Palmer Park area are at least 60+ years old and many have not been retrofitted with modern windows or insulation. Our utility bills in the winter can easily be over 1000 a month just because of the bad windows and poor insulation [[don't ask me why they have not been replaced, I have been on my parents to do that for years). Generally I think you can tell a lot about a person by how they dress, drive, and act, unless they are really good at acting. I am not trying to sound like I am superior to anyone because of financial status because afterall I don't own the house I am living in, my parents do, and that is because I could not afford a place like that except in my dreams. What I am saying is that I have a pretty good understanding of what it takes to have a house in this area and what it takes to maintain it. I really do understand the desire to live somewhere nice but at the same time I also understand that you really need to look at it from all angles before going for it. Also I know this will get some flak for saying this but I feel I have to say it. Our area is not a gated community where they dictate how a home must look and all those other nonsense rules, but with that said I think there is a general consensus that if you are going to live in the area you should at least try to act like the people in the neighborhood [[having some education, manners, and an understanding of your surroundings). I say this because back when the housing bubble was at its peak we had a "techno musician" move in across the street from us. He would have late night parties going till at least 4am with people being frisked at the door and women going in who certainly looked like prostitutes. That kind of situation irked a lot of us and thankfully the idiot quickly got foreclosed on, but then unfortunately some whacky religious group moved in for a while until they were given the boot too. So what I am trying to get at is that there are I guess what you could call expectations that neighborhoods like these have of the residents who move in. If a person does not like that then they should not move there, but it is those expectations and the rest of the neighborhood meeting them that makes the area so desireable to begin with.

[Richard]

I guess it is how one approaches "old" homes as to how efficient they are or can be reasonably,the first thing to go is the windows,spend thousands of dollars to replace windows that will not last 10 years,ever read the disclaimer on the double paned argon filled high efficient windows?

Once the window is installed the warranty is null and void , maintenance is not a big factor if one does a bit of research , I could point you to thousands of old house home owners with homes 100 plus years old and they are just as efficient if not more by spending 1/2 the costs.

[English]

That would cost about 1 million dollars where I'm moving [[D.C).

It's kind of funny because I went and looked at houses in the DC area and some of the best properties for the money were in Prince George County. I saw a lot of the same things in PG county that I saw in Detroit in the 70s and early 80s. Nice houses that had sheets hanging in the window [[I didn't even bother looking inside), people seeming desperate to sell [[realtors almost begging you to buy) and a transitional community that has saw a ton of white flight over the past ten years.

Now in Bowie a lot of affluent black families have moved in, but they are living on the golf courses and in the gated communities. Smart. Meanwhile section 8 properties are multiplying exponentially, the school system has serious issues and the county commissioner was arrested while his wife was trying to flush checks and cash down the toilet as police busted down the door.

Sound familiar? I was really hoping to find a stable, established and diverse neighborhood to live in but they are hard to find anywhere in this country. You can go from middle class mecca to ghetto in a heartbeat and then watch as places like NW and SE DC gentrify and housing prices quadruple in a matter of 30 months. It's maddening, we have a mass influx of yuppies with money to burn which pushes rents higher and the bad element out, and then the bad element goes elsewhere and ruins areas that were perfectly stable ten to 15 years ago.

I love Detroit, I would love to move back in a second but this thread and that house really exemplifies the problem with the country, not just Detroit. We have disregarded our urban areas for decades, we fix them [[Manhattan, NW DC, North Central Phila, etc) and then send the trash elsewhere to kill another neighborhood. The right wingers don't want to fund anything in urban areas, the liberals want to make everything equal and throw five section 8 houses in your neighborhood while the good upstanding tax payer either can't afford to buy in NW DC and can't afford to sell in Bowie, Maryland.

My best friend from college is from a comfortable and educated black military family and grew up in PG County. She and her fiance have just fled to Virginia, and she walked away from her job in a PC County high school after stress landed her on medical leave. It all got to be too much, and she's no chick from Southeast DC or Anacostia. From all accounts, she is much happier now.

I also like your assessment about how liberals AND conservatives have made poor choices about urban policy.

Someone told me I am dreaming on that thread about Detroit turning a corner, but we have been much further down the road that some of the places in America are just beginning to face. No solutions... these are difficult issues and we are the epicenter for thinking through them.

[Richard]

The stage is being set , Couple of years back I viewed a house "online" over by the Cadiliac plant
1920s with over 6000 sqft $65,000 I still have a sore foot from kicking myself for not taking the time to buy it .

[roblinn]

It looks like that house might cost more than you think: the owner skipped paying taxes for two years. Moreover, according to the Wayne County Treasurer [[http://www.waynecounty.com/treasurer_payonline.htm) the taxes are over 10k/year.

[rid0617]

Wow, down here if the house is in foreclosure the bank is required to pay all taxes and bring them current prior to the sale. Don't they do that up there? Was snickering about the old Taurus in front of the mansion. Got me laughing when we move up there we'll hit BE with one of the cars being a 1989 Ford Crown Vic. But in my defense it does only have 69,000 miles and is showroom condition

[econ expat]

"You can't have it all"
Some choose to have the most expensive homes, some the luxury cars, others the designer furniture, clothing, etc.
I have seen many [[formerly) expensive homes in Bloomfield, Birmingham, and Rochester that had barely any furniture, and nondescript old sedans in the garage, always been that way.
Then, in some poorer areas/cities , you'll see some shacks with fine furniture inside or luxury cars outside.
All a matter of choices or priorities.

[ragnarok1981]

Ok in my defense again I have to say it is not just the car etc that tells you if someone can really afford a home in one of these neighborhoods. It is a whole bunch of factors that I would look at and I have yet to find that I have been wrong in any circumstance where I saw someone interested in a home and I said they could not afford it and still they went and bought it and indeed lost it. One of the most famous examples is the former Romney house that was torn down last year. I happened to be walking my dogs by the home when I saw the people who were buying it and I said to my mother that there was no way these people could afford to buy that house and renovate it to make it liveable and I was right. They got enormous loans to "fix" it and barely even touched the place before running with the rest of the money. Yes there may be people who have different priorities but in general I think most would agree that if you are driving something like an old chrysler sedan that seems to have its shocks worn out, muffler is making a ton of noise, and is painted in different colors in different areas of the car, that they probably cannot afford to live in a 5-6k ft2 house.
I really dont like saying that it takes a certain kind of person to live in these neighborhoods, but it really does. When someone who is radically different from the usual kind of residents moves in they stand out and neighbor relations generally tend to be rather poor and that just ruins a community. I don't want to advocate having communities of all like minded people because that would just be boring, but on the other hand it is kind of hard to imagine why some people would move into an area where no one is like them and might even be the bane of the community. One last example is a home that is apparently being rented by some tea party members in Palmer Woods. The husband drives a car with a huge bumper sticker on it saying "Obama is a racist and a marxist". They have made no attempt at getting to know the neighbors and the neighbors dont want to know them either. Most residents are infuriated that these people are living in the neighborhood and have expressed their anger with some rather choice words etc. It is hard to believe that even with the reputation that Palmer Woods has that anyone who is an active tea party member who thinks Detroit is like a warzone would honestly move there.