Detroit Rock Bottom: City Announces 2.5 bn Debt Default

reply to post by boymonkey74

Summers are generally in the 80sF..winters in the 15-30F range.
We have four seasons.....generally a nice spring and spectacular fall.
Most of the rain is in the spring and fall.....usually.
It can get humid...especially in the summer.
We do get snow, but not usually huge storms.
I'm talking usually....but by and large the weather is good.

Now, we have had some hot and dry summers lately.....and really had no winter for 2011-2012.

If Detroit would change their gun laws and business laws to resemble something similar to Texas (not perfect but a lot better) I would move my business in a heartbeat because of the cheap real estate. I know of at least five other small business owners that would do the same but will not because the city is a vampire to small businesses. Not to mention their unions are out of control.

I am all for a group of people getting together and striking against treatments or wages they deem unfair, but the modern United State's union system is a mess. It is a group of people who feed off union workers and in many ways are worse than the corporate fat cats they supposedly protect against.

I don't see them changing anytime soon but if they do I will be ready and willing with my arsenal and about five new job openings ready to go for the Detroit area that pays around 13-15 an hour. I would love nothing more than to buy up an old building for pennies and fix it up into an awesome business center. When Detroit leeches decide to change their laws to resemble the state I currently reside in, then and only then will the city and state rise again to it's previous status of a business hub.

I have just been looking at business places for sale and some are really cheap.

www.loopnet.com...

Yeah of course I would need money to do it up but wow!!

reply to post by boymonkey74


Good god, before anyone moves to Detroit, get on google maps and set down that 'little yellow google guy' on the map and drive around for a while. That Art Institute link I put in earlier said that there's 100,000 abandoned properties and then there's the weather. Unless you're coming from something even worse, Detroit's weather sucks. Long cold windy winters, about half the year. Then it turns into heavy rain, thunderstorms and humid buggy summers. You'll get a few weeks of nice weather in the spring and then again in the fall. It didn't become Motor City because it was nice walkin' weather, y'know.

Let's face it, the NE and Midwestern parts of the US are rustbelts with old dilapidated buildings everywhere that need demolishing and replacing, an aged infrastructure, an ensconced power elite that has screwed everything up to serve themselves, and a working population that thought back in 1960 all they had to do was get a job at one of the manufacturing facilities and the rest would take care of itself... no need to get an education or think outside of the Detroit box. The car companies simply replaced the southern plantations for all the blacks that moved up north.

Why would you want to move your company to Detroit because real estate was cheap? Who is going to buy your product? And if you can live anywhere and the job is over the internet, pick someplace rural or in another country for your own safety and security. Detroit is Ground Zero for the Excrement Hitting the Rotating Air Movement Device, in real time. It's slow motion Mad Max.

reply to post by darkbake



Detroit needs to build a few more casinos, this would surely increase tax revenues - turn Motor City into the next Las Vegas!

I don't know if anyone asked this question already, but I would like to know why Detroit has seem to hit rock bottom. I mean at a time it was the city where it was a great place to live and be successful. Now it seems it riddled with crime and depression.

Originally posted by Phoenix267
I don't know if anyone asked this question already, but I would like to know why Detroit has seem to hit rock bottom. I mean at a time it was the city where it was a great place to live and be successful. Now it seems it riddled with crime and depression.

why?...because it has too many poor minorities...and nobody wants to deal with that...we need our corporations to move to foreign countries and hire cheap labor to compete globally, or, lower people's pay here enough, that American workers can get as close as possible to subsistence living like they have in other countries

For information from natives about just about any area, city, town or state, go to City-Data.com. There's a wealth of information there I used when I was making my decisions about where to move to. Take it all with a grain of salt (the malcontents tend to have loud voices) but at least it's void of the real estate sales patter you can get in the city's PR sites themselves.

For weather info including historical averages and extremes, go to weather.com, click on 'monthly' and from there, go down to the mid-bottom of the page and click on 'averages'. You want the table design. Check off 'record highs and low's' and don't forget to look at the bottom graph for precipitation. That will tell you if you'll have year round rain or just winter rain and dry summers, etc. If you're like me, you'll want a graph that looks more like a stroll in a gently sloping park and less like a rollercoaster ride.

For real estate insights, zillow.com. There's a wealth of information there including former sales prices, tax amounts, and usually enough pictures of both the houses themselves as well as the neighborhood (use google maps to actually drive around the neighborhood to see what it looked like within the last year or two).

I think you'll find that the uber-cheap Detroit houses are aging shells devoid of anything valuable including plumbing and electrical, forget appliances, and for those prices you're getting a small city lot, a flag on your house saying 'somebody lives here now and replaced the wiring and the plumbing and they're sitting ducks!' and shall we say an uncooperative city management and cops afraid to come into your neighborhood. Consider everyone armed, dangerous or scared. Or both.

Frankly, I'd rather live in a besieged medieval castle than in Detroit center. Remember that there are some very expensive suburbs ringing it, and don't get your idea of locale from them... those houses will cost you 250K and upwards and you'll have to worry about the mess the city is in, in any event.

reply to post by Phoenix267


That time has long gone and passed.
Detroit 40 or 50 years ago was THE place to be.

If you are truly curious, there's a great book by Scott Martelle called Detroit, a biography.

At its mid-20th-century heyday, one in six American jobs were connected to the auto industry, its epicenter in Detroit. And then the bottom fell out.

reply to post by signalfire

Remember that there are some very expensive suburbs ringing it, and don't get your idea of locale from them... those houses will cost you 250K and upwards and you'll have to worry about the mess the city is in, in any event.

Where are these ring suburbs with real estate in that price range?
All of Michigan took a huge hit in 2008....real estate included.
Don't get me wrong, such subdivisions exist in some suburbs...40-50 miles from Detroit's center....but it is far from the norm.

Where are the billionaires and why aren't they helping? There are many business men who have tens of billions so why are they just sitting on it? 2.5 billion is nothing when you have 60 billion like bill gates.

Detroit's problems (as well as many big cities in the states) is from multiple issues. sure the loss of manufacturing was a big blow as that was Detroit's main business, especially the automotive industry. but i think there is an even bigger issue.

the fact is that due to tax rates (not sure how big an issue that is currently but it was a big factor for people to originally move out), crime, and a "better living" in the suburbs, are i believe the major issues. it seems most people that actually live in the city generally are low end wage earners, and unemployed. many people still WORK in Detroit but those that can afford it tend to live OUTSIDE the city. in fact GM still has it's head office is there. crime and gangs are a major reason for this currently, as well as nicer/newer homes with decent sized yards and being "cleaner", not to mention of course better, "safer" schools. so while the city has life during the day all those workers go "home" and pay their taxes outside of the city. that REALLY hurts the city as those higher wage earners would pay more in taxes to the city, yet all that "tax" money goes away from where it was earned. thus while people still work there, and there ARE jobs, the city does not get tax money from them.

i think the ONLY hope of changing what is wrong and to get "finances" for the city is to deal with these issues. first and foremost they need to deal with the crime and gangs that control the city at night. that of course would take a BIG infusion of money that would be needed to deal with the crime issue, for cops and such. that is a MAJOR problem at this time, but it is probably the most critical first step in trying to save the city. if they could deal with the crime/gang issue the rest could come about far more easily. the crime rate is about the biggest thing stopping both businesses and people that earn decent paychecks from moving to the city.

next they need to be sure that tax rates for both businesses and people are competitive with other areas, especially those areas closest to the city. why would anyone want to move to an area where they pay more tax? especially an area that has the reputation for crime that Detroit has. the city may need more tax money but high taxes only keep out those that would pay more taxes, while leaving mostly those who pay the least taxes, as well as those that actually TAKE tax money to live due to not having jobs (which is also a major reason for the high crime rate and gang problem).

once things are improved you need to "lure" both people and businesses back. improving the housing, schools, and other infrastructure. schools need to be improved so that people would WANT to send their kids there for an education. schools also need to be clean, in good repair and safe. most of the "safety issues" would be dealt with by cleaning up the gangs, and crime. streets need to be fixed where needed, buildings need to also be fixed up and modernized. note i did not say torn down and replaced, as old buildings are something many people like as they have "character", but by "modernizing" them people would be even more likely to want to live there. and lets face it Detroit has a lot of very nice architecture in it's buildings that should be saved. you can totally gut interiors and remodel many while keeping all the charm by rebuilding them in a style of when they were built, while at the same time improving things like apartment sizes, layout and modernizing them to what people of today tend to expect. also TRANSIT needs to be majorly improved. apparently the routing are a big issue that needs to be fixed as it tends to run on a "wagon wheel", with buses all heading towards a central area, with little in the way of "cross routes". transit needs to be both reliable and convenient. yet again money is needed to do this.

there is also a need to provide things like drug abuse programs, and things like getting the people already there educated and able to work. as well of course as getting businesses in to hire these people at good wages that would be able to provide more tax money while keeping tax rates low. having say a bunch of "low income jobs" come in will NOT help the situation at all, people need to make more than say minimum wage, or the crime and drug problems will creep back in. bringing back manufacturing would be a big help, but any well paying businesses would do the same.

the problem is that this would all take MONEY. money from both from the private AND public sectors is needed to be invested. yet the private sector would not want to invest until these things under the "public sector" are greatly improved, so that people would WANT to live there and businesses WANT to operate there. the "public sector", is WAY beyond BROKE, due to DECADES of neglect and mismanagement. sadly what Detroit NEEDS and dosen't have is the MONEY needed to fix it. so where would it come from?

reply to post by generik


Interesting post....but you do know that non-residents wh owork in the city DO pay income taxes??
www.detroitmi.gov...

City of Detroit 2013 Income Tax Rates

Income tax rates for the calendar year 2013 and subsequent years are as follows, unless otherwise notified:

Resident Individuals: 2.4%
Non-Resident Individuals: 1.2%
Corporations: 2.00%
This affects 2013 employer withholding account filings and estimated income tax filers.

Originally posted by DontTreadOnMe
reply to post by signalfire

 

Remember that there are some very expensive suburbs ringing it, and don't get your idea of locale from them... those houses will cost you 250K and upwards and you'll have to worry about the mess the city is in, in any event.

Where are these ring suburbs with real estate in that price range?
All of Michigan took a huge hit in 2008....real estate included.
Don't get me wrong, such subdivisions exist in some suburbs...40-50 miles from Detroit's center....but it is far from the norm.

Yes, by 'ringing the city' I meant the areas like Bloomfield, which is about 25 miles from Detroit center. My brother was a high level executive at Ford for years and lives there still, although I have no clue as to why. I doubt he could sell his house for what he paid for it but he would barely blink at a 100K loss.

Yes, if you go on Zillow you can see that the vast majority of the country's real estate is down by 1/3 from the height and in the more hotted-up RE areas like Southern California, the hit was 2/3 off the heights and only starting to recover now. A friend in SoCal who works in real estate said that the majority of houses being sold are to brokers who are speculating on foreclosure properties.

reply to post by signalfire

Good god, before anyone moves to Detroit, get on google maps and set down that 'little yellow google guy' on the map and drive around for a while.

Thanks, I'm going to go do that.

reply to post by boymonkey74


Hey Boymonkey! I scouted out that business for ya.



And check it out... only a bit of graffiti to fix up...



And you lucked out! It is near some residences.



But someone... didn't use a trash can.

There was a story a while back about 3 guys who bought a square block and fenced it in and built 3 huge homes and made basically a private resort a few blocks from downtown. They have great jobs downtown and figured why drive.

I watch a documentary about Detroit called Detroitopia. I haven't been there since the 80's, its gone down soo bad. From the show, it sounded like most of the jobs had gone overseas, due to cost. Detroit had always been a union town, so doesnt make for good competition. Apparently the city counsel has had corruption issues for a long time.
Well, the mayor had a plan to "help" the people. He suggested to consolidate the city into a smaller more managible area. You could go to some areas and see maybe one or two houses on a block. The empty houses would be torn down and replace with community farmland. According to the response that didn't go down too well.

My vision for Detroit is as follows: when it finally goes belly up, it will be absorbed into Warren County as an unincorparated area. It then becomes county property. The state of Michigan would have to pony up some cash for basic services as well. That's what I see anyway.
BTW, its true about the cops refusing to go into some areas.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
reply to post by DontTreadOnMe

 

Whats the weather like there btw? Iam honestly thinking of moving there.
Also nightlife any good? any weird rules I should know about?

Ya never know, it might inspire a book, screen play, or something.

Originally posted by signalfire
reply to post by boymonkey74

 

Let's face it, the NE and Midwestern parts of the US are rustbelts with old dilapidated buildings everywhere that need demolishing and replacing, an aged infrastructure, an ensconced power elite that has screwed everything up to serve themselves, and a working population that thought back in 1960 all they had to do was get a job at one of the manufacturing facilities and the rest would take care of itself... no need to get an education or think outside of the Detroit box. The car companies simply replaced the southern plantations for all the blacks that moved up north.

I honestly laughed out loud when I read your stellar review of the NE and Midwest. Tell me how that same review cant be given to the entire nation of California, as I am fairly certain they currently lead the tally of actual cities, where the big bankruptcy bucks are to be had.

Obviously the whole 'get an education or think outside of the Detroit box' ideology isn't wholly owned by the bread belt.

www.governing.com...