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Foreclosure fallout: Houses go for a $1
Ron French
The Detroit News
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
One dollar can get you a large soda at McDonald’s, a used VHS movie at 7-Eleven or a house in Detroit.
The fact that a home on the city’s east side was listed for $1 recently shows how depressed the real estate market has become in one of America’s poorest big cities.
And it still took 19 days to find a buyer.
The sale price of the home may be an anomaly, but illustrates both the depths of the foreclosure crisis in Detroit and the rapid scuttling of vacant homes in some of the city’s impoverished neighborhoods.
The home, at 8111 Traverse Street, a few blocks from Detroit City Airport, was the nicest house on the block when it sold for $65,000 in November 2006, said neighbor Carl Upshaw. But the home was foreclosed last summer, and it wasn’t long until “the vultures closed in,” Upshaw said. “The siding was the first to go. Then they took the fence. Then they broke in and took everything else.”
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
The company hired to manage the home and sell it, the Bearing Group, boarded up the home only to find the boards stolen and used to board up another abandoned home nearby.
Scrappers tore out the copper plumbing, the furnace and the light fixtures, taking everything of value, including the kitchen sink.
“It about doesn’t make sense to put the family out,” Upshaw said. “Once people are gone, you’re gonna lose the house in this neighborhood.”
Tuesday, the home was wide open. Doors leading into the kitchen and the basement were missing, and the front windows had been smashed. Weeds grew chest-high, and charred remains marked a spot where the garage recently burned.
Put on the market in January for $1,100, the house had no lookers other than the squatters who sometimes stayed there at night. Facing $4,000 in back taxes and a large unpaid water bill, the bank that owned the property lowered the price to $1.
$1 sale to cost bank $10,000
While it’s not unusual for $1 to be exchanged when property is transferred for legal reasons, listing a home in the Multiple Listing Service for $1 was surprising and unsettling to Kent Colpaert, the listing real estate agent for the property.
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17 Responses to “Foreclosure fallout: Houses go for a $1”
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August 13th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I have seen houses sell for a dollar, however in every case, it had problems that would cost more to correct that the property would ever be worth. Some examples were bad asbestos, sink holes, toxic waste ect.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
In Columbus OH some houses are selling for 5-10k that aren’t completely torn down like this one sounds to be. After the real estate fees, back taxes, maintenance and upkeep costs the bank is making next to no money at all.
The house I bought and am happily living in netted the bank about 7-8k dollars after taxes/fees/etc. After I got the city to readjust the tax valuation I’m even getting back most of the last year’s property tax (which the bank paid but is being returned to me instead!). Sometimes these financial disasters work out pretty well for the little guy, at least in some ways.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
The Port Authority lost money every year on the World Trade Centers I & II, but after losing a court case with insurers NOT to help with the $ 10 Billion cost of removing the asbestos, they managed to find a looney Real Estate Tycoon who gave a down payment of about 100.000 million dollars for a 100 year lease on the towers. It was “Lucky Larry”, who also had the foresight to take a never heard of insurance policy, that netted him $ 7 Billion from the strange disintegration of the buildings that happened 2 months after he signed his insurance contract…
August 13th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
real gem. read the article. $3900 taxes on a dollar house!!!
August 13th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Plus, let me add. It’s in Detriot. sic.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
at some point the economy will come back and that area may become a boom town. Someone will make $ there
August 13th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
They want this to happen, gets more on the street and in easier to control situations, plus the area can now be raised for grading work , seems most high end foreclosures are happening on the supposedly transcendent highway projected areas.
August 13th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
If a bank is going to throw away their investment( the house and the land) that they worked so hard to cheat the original morgage holders out of then they should have forgeven the debt to the original homowner. After all they were defrauded by the bank in the first place.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:45 am
america seems to be the cheapest place on earth to get a house for $1….
even in 3rd world country’s, the land is worth more….
iF only all houses cost $1… then we would own our home and not work for the bank our whole life…
August 14th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Buy The House Have A Drug Dealer Sell Out Of It And Have Him Pay Rent To You For Sellin Out Your House Than You Dont Have To Say To Fix Anything On The House
August 14th, 2008 at 6:33 am
Do you mean to tell me that the mighty NWO bank had to retreat with tail between stick legs? who caused the Chesters to sell the house for one federal reserve note? the people. the people wore their stick-legged NWO realestate bankers out. forget that the house is in the slum. think of it as a cross-section diagram on how things happen. when it comes down to it,if most of the people in a region are of like mind,no matter if they are poor or not,they have great power. like when Gandhi told the Brits that a few thousand “chesters” could never control 900 million Indians who did not want to cooperate. watch “Ring of Power” on red ice creations. it will enlighten you like nothing else.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:56 am
So which Rockefellor mafia member bought the house?
August 14th, 2008 at 7:58 am
who loses? The bank.
Who gains? A bigger bank.
August 14th, 2008 at 9:26 am
$1 – I’ll take them all
August 14th, 2008 at 11:03 am
To live in Detroit they’d have to give me the dollar! No, I wouldn’t live in the states if they did give me the house and the dollar. Sorry Detroit, your city sucks…sorry Amerikkka your country sucks. I love your land and your ideals, but morally and spiritually you guys are bankrupt…funny too, I mean with so many people claiming religion there…do you think that maybe there is a link…no, couldn’t be could there? Right…RELIGION IS SPIRITUAL BANKRUPCY. KKKristians are amoral…just listen to ‘em. And the ones who say they aren’t, are…they just lie, and bold faced at that.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
@MAR
You are right about America and Xians.
The only thing we care about here is money.
That is why the people who have money here are not willing to share it, especially Xians.
If a war in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran means that it will stimulate our economy, then the fake Xians here in America will support it. Who cares if millions of people die, they don’t look like us, and we need the money.
Xianity is simply another form of government mind control and oppression here in America.
The Xians are extremely hostile towards any other belief system besides their own, and they will stamp out any of your own personal spirituality by condemning it as secular, or pagan, or “not of God”, evil etc.
Xians have destroyed this country with their reckless ignorance. They live in a cartoon dream world, easy manipulated by our politicians, and George W. is their God.
August 15th, 2008 at 12:32 am
What was the estate agent’s fee? It’s usually 1-2% of the sale price in Britain.