patrick.net

Land can be very valuable, or it can be perfectly useless.

Depends on the people and capital around it and the resources under it.

Cheaper land for future mfg. sites dont you think ?
Maybe even cheaper than chinese tech parks

Taxes... taxes... taxes...

Detroit... 211 houses for $125K...? That's less than $600 per house! Sounds good until you factor in $20K for each rehab. And you might need to rehab some of them more than once before you rent them seeing as copper thieves, and furnace thieves, and air conditioner thieves, and cabinet thieves, water heater thieves, etc will take what you put in over and over. Have you ever tried to get hazard insurance on a Detroit property? If you can get it, I imagine vandalism and thievery would be excluded or pretty high. Then you have squatters. And hopefully the squatters or the neighbors aren't stealing electricity. DTE will strong arm you (the landlord) into paying for that stolen electricity. And I hear Section 8 is pulling back... good luck getting it rented when you finally do have the property in presentable shape. Rent it or not... Rehab it or not... whether your tenants actually pay their rent or not... guess what? Taxes to the tune of $3000 per year or so will be due. The only thing for sure with a Detroit property is that TAXES WILL BE DUE!! It sounds like someone bought 211 headaches... I don't think I'd take them for free. If you paid me $5000 to $10,000 each, I think it might be worth it. Rehab... squatters... stolen electricity... stolen housing components... renters that don't pay... Section 8 that flakes out... property management fees... insurance that is likely both expensive and hard to get... routine maintenance... hmmm... Nope, I wouldn't take one of those houses even if you paid me $10,000. If you don't pay property taxes on a property, will it hurt your credit? Can they go after you (put a lien on another house or attach your wages or anything)? If the tax liability ends with the house and it doesn't affect anything else, then maybe I'd take one if you paid me $10,000. Then I'd only be using $10,000 of my own money for the rehab. I still don't know... it sounds like a headache.

Tony1971 says

And you might need to rehab some of them more than once before you rent them seeing as copper thieves, and furnace thieves, and air conditioner thieves, and cabinet thieves, water heater thieves, etc will take what you put in over and over.

Thieves in Detroit? Say it isn't so.

I was doing some work (IT) for Henry Ford Healthcare back in the mid 90's. Nice people to work with but no way I would want to live there.

Tony1971 says

... the only thing for sure with a Detroit property is that TAXES WILL BE DUE!! It sounds like someone bought 211 headaches... I don't think I'd take them for free...

I agree, even if he plan for demolish all of the houses for the land value, I highly doubt all of the houses are on the same area. Even if they are, there will be other houses he doesn't own the area that would break the land from being one big lot. 211 is way too many to manage, I say he's planned to knock them down for the land, or he believes there is more than $500 worth of building materials in each house to be worth the breakup value.

If your careful how you take a building down, the old bricks are worth money to places that reuse bricks. The wood from hardwood floors can be reclaimed, assuming there is copper plumbing and wiring in the house and aluminum siding, not to mention lumber. Some of those roof and floor beams are quite long and very expensive. I'm confident that you could salvage several thousands of dollars of materials from a house, you would be left with a certain amount of trash that isn't recyclable, but that the cities problem. When you don't bother to pay the taxes on the 211 properties, and the city forecloses, they will be left with 211 half ripped apart houses that are not worth anything.

A friend of mine left to Detroit and bought an apt building there. I haven't heard from him in a while.

I heard about RE investors buying large blocks or numbers of homes at a time, it will be interesting to hear later on what becomes of these endeavors.