Note to homesellers. If you'd like to sell your house, especially one on the market for two years, there's one thing, one really really important thing you're now going to have to do (sorry to say):
Lower the damn price. Especially if you're trying to sell a house near the hellhole of Detroit, where nobody wants to live.
What a mess. I really do feel sorry for 'em.
SIGNS OF SAGGING DEMAND: Houses everywhere, but few buyers to close sale
Overabundance of unsold homes in the region creates a burden on owners, market
In Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties, there were 37,393 homes on the market as of March 1, compared with 11,078 at the same time in 2001, a 238% increase, according to real estate statistics supplied by Realcomp II Ltd., the region's largest multiple listing service.
"It's a mystery to us why we haven't been able to sell the house, even though the economy is suffering," said retiree Nancy Cunningham, 59, a West Bloomfield resident with a 4,263-square-foot home on Pine Lake that has been on the market for 2 1/2 years. "We've done just about everything we could in an effort to sell it."
"Unfortunately, a year or two on the market is not a big deal anymore because of the large number of properties available," said Jane Denning, a broker with RE/MAX On The Boulevard in Grosse Ile. Of the 146 homes on the market in Grosse Ile, for example, 31 have been listed for at least a year.
March 12, 2006
Detroit: "Unfortunately, a year or two on the market is not a big deal anymore"
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14 comments:
The story is similar in many of the Great Lakes cities... Erie, Akron, Gary, Toledo... You can buy houses fot $25000 all day long in the inner city.
Declining population and lack of jobs makes this possible. Houses can sell for less than land value. Even for less than demolition value.
A lot of sellers are going to start talking about the "mystery" of why their homes won't sell in the next few months, and not just in Detroit.
I use to live in Grand Rapids. a three story victorian in the happening part of town was going for $80,000 in 2001. They might be selling for $83,000 now.
If instead of saying what can you afford. The buyer seeks out how cheap he can go. You can buy a house in Michigan and pay it off within 10 years.
No matter what the enviroment is. When the house is paid off in 10 years. You come out the winner.
This is no Sh*t. I live in Macomb county and we're awash in houses for sale. And I don't think these numbers tell the story because I've seen for sale signs disappear with the thought that the house sold only to see the sign popping up again on the same house 6, 9, 11 months later. And state values are absolutely a joke!! Me and my neighbor laugh that if we could get what the state says its worth, we'd sell in a nanosecond. Its at least 10-12% higher than market. I recieved my assessment last week and incredibly the state raised the value 1%. It should have dropped 5% for a start from the sale prices I've seen around me. I've lived here a long time so I'm protected from our state law upping the assessment 3% or inflation each year, whichever is less, but if I bought in 2001, I would be fighting the state value.
And if you think the residential arena is bad, you should see the industrial side. With the collapse of manufacturing , the area is flooded with vacant industrial buildings. Go down any industrial corridor, industrial park or onclave and you'll see 30-40% vacancy. Buyers have their choice and many have been vacant for years now since the collapse began in 2000. I feel sorry for the owners who still have to cough up the property taxes even as their building deteriorates in the still quietness of Michigan.
The NY times has an article about house flippers buying cheap houses in Buffalo NY over ebay.
It turns out the owners are actually giving these houses away to fraudsters just to get their names off of the title. The owners are liable in Buffalo for not only taxes, but any tear down or repair costs, even if unoccupied.
The fraudsters just keep selling the houses to dumber and dumber money till the last person holding is really hurt since they are now liable for the costs from the city.
Dogcrap-
You can't buy anything more than an runned-down crack house in Grand Rapids for K...try againg chap.
The Midwest is ground zero in the economic holocaust...only places that aren't dead are Chicago and some of the communities around the Big 10 Schools...very sad.
Chicago is riding a HUGE REAL ESTATE BUBBLE! Chicago is the rust belt capital of America. The whole Chicago suburban area has been awash a massive overbuilding of condos and single family cookie cutter homes. This building boom has been the main economic engine in the area while the rest of the engines have declined like manufacturing.
In the city there is has been mass overbuilding of condos. A friend with a great condo with a view of the lake can't sell it! He said that the whole market was glutted with over production and riddled with SPECULATORS. His condo has been on the market for over a year. The condo flywheel engine is running overtime with 9600 more set to come on line. Big banners on the Chicago condos offer give away extras.
The condo developments along the tracks are in trouble with low occupancy and some are empty. YET more are being built.
Most high end areas like Lake Forest, Highland Park, Bannockburn, Hinsdale, Oak Brook's Fullersburg, etc. have seen Californiaesque mega price rises fueled by speculation and yuppie stupidity in recent years. The yuppies have gone nuts taking on debt to afford the teardown palaces with MEGA real estate taxes like 82000 and 62000 bucks per year. (these people are just one divorce or job loss away from bankrupcy).
And yet the job base is shrinking for the GOOD jobs. The manufacturing is in serious decline effecting even the mom and pop office wearhouses of which many have languished on the market for over a year. Office buildings have about 25 percent vacancy. (The Chicago Fed has worried about this).
Perimiter towns and cities like Kankakee, Joliet, Elgin, Aurora, and Waukegan have become home to a massive low wage low skill Hispanic populations that are at war via numerous gangs with existing African American gangs.
Again all of this happens while real estate taxes spike to unheard of levels.
Demographic reports such as FRY point to mass shifts out of the area.
The picture and future look grim as the Midwest loses out in the Globalism game.
you know why the midwest blows...because it is the midwest, not near an ocean suckas. Kinda like why Democrats blow, they like to tax/spend, cheat, lie, and drive Hummer 2's...awww yeah, taste it liberal housing panic, bitter people! GW in the house. Romney is next for 8 years. Get used to it.
Kind of hard to believe, isn't it. Mega bubbles on both coasts and mega busts in the middle.
Chicago, rustbelt capital? Nah, that title belongs to Detroit (or Cleveland or Pittsburg perhaps).
Chicago economy is about as diversified as it gets in the Midwest.
Yeah, I agree with you that there is a glut of condominiums here in Chitown.
I also agree that the quality of jobs is declining (as is the case everywhere in America--thanks to the miracle of globalization).
However, if you pull some stats on affordibility I think that you will find that things here in Illinois are nowhere near as bad as California, Florida, and New York.
We've had a nice run-up in prices but nothing close to the insanity on the coasts.
Detroit a hellhole? When did they upgrade it. Two hot areas in California are Richmond and Watts, nasty, nuff said.
Here it is, one year and a half after the comment on Chicago and the wealthy suburbs was made, and one of the suburbs, Hinsdale, went from an average price of 1,099M in 2006 to 1.239M in 2007, or a 12% increase, with 3 spec homes priced at around 5M selling in the last 3 months. Sorry, but Chicago continues to be no Detroit........
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