House sold for one dollar 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."

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.

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.

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.

"I've never seen a home listed for $1," Colpaert said.

"But it's been hit hard: It's just a shell."

On Tuesday, Realtor.com listed one other single-family home, one duplex and one empty lot at $1 in Detroit.

Dollar property sales are the financial hangover from the foreclosure crisis, said Anthony Viola of Realty Corp. of America in Cleveland.

Lenders that made loans to unqualified buyers during the height of the subprime market now find themselves the owners of whole neighborhoods of vacant, deteriorating homes.

Dollar Property Sales

Wow. A flat in Salford, UK sold for £1 about ten years ago. That's around $2 now. If that house went for $1, then the property market clearly has deflated over these ten years........

Oh my god, a house selling for a dollar that too near a airport, amazing.
But, very sad to see the plight of the former owners

reply to post by peacejet


it may not sound nice to many, but the reality is that the bankers who financed these mortgages via their appointed agents and side-kicks knew very well that the so called buyers of these houses did not qualify for being mortgaged in the first place.....so the question still remains, is this the very tip of this corrupt mortgage scam ....or is there still an avalanche awaiting to crash into your living room ?



[edit on 19-8-2008 by Dubyakadubla]

Originally posted by Dubyakadubla
reply to post by peacejet

 

.....so the question still remains, is this the very tip of this corrupt mortgage scam

Nah, we're about half way through. The banks are hiding their losses until they can pay for them and they're all in it together coz none of them wants a bank run which could trigger many more.

....or is there still an avalanche awaiting to crash into your living room ?

A recession, maybe a depression in the Western World, China and India will be fine. And the balance of power shifts again.