Sign of the times...
 

Spotted on this afternoon's walk with Beth to a downtown Wyandotte, MI coffee shop... Sad...


The house didn't look too bad. Someone started renovating it and then stopped... vacant now but Beth said that a family with kids lived there last year. We saw at least a dozen vacant houses in the 10 block walk to town and back...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1325976690.jpg
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http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1325976733.jpg
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Sure looks a lot nicer than my first house!

I know Michigan is hurting, but that is so sad. Looks like a nice house for someone.

There lots of vacant houses and this was the worst one! They look like any decent house in our town, but no sign of life. Many of the businesses are gone, houses vacant and especially during the MI winters, it's very depressing here.

It seems to be an abuse of what this program is supposed to be for.
Demolishing perfectly good houses is not right. :(

Nonprofit Housing Development Program
Allows for conveyance of tax-reverted state property at no cost for
nonprofit and faith-based organizations for the purpose of developing
affordable housing. Contact Ms. Kim Homan, (313) 456-3104

Might as well sell it for cheaps but i guess that would bring down the housing market even more? I mean, why pay 200 K for a house, if they are giving em away for 20 K elsewhere?

Socio-Economics these days are the suck

we get our company meeting where our CEO is projecting amazing forecasts..right after he listed a number of concerns why our last year hadn't done what he had hoped in the previous forecasts..
(cashflow, lack of market share growth due to cashflow, lack of cash, costs, yeah, lack of money to generate more money etc etc)

And when i asked a question as to how and if those forecasts can be affected by the negative stuff in the news all the time
things like bad economies, companies firing loads of people, banks and countries racking up bad rating after bad rating..

I got a vague answer saying "believe you me, we are going to rock the house this year"

and afterwards during the reception i got some suggestion that, Well, I got the comment that i was being to negative in my questions regarding the forecast.


eeh, what?Seriously???
I'm to negative because i'm realistically observing the signs of the times?? because i'm not buying into the .com bubble mentality?

Right.

I'm buying guns & ammo, cause those make better forecasts then any frigging CEO or banker can. They are a whole lot more predictable as to what targets will be hit.

Michigan real estate
 

Seems like I read somewhere that the average cost of a home in Detroit these days is around $19k and that entire neighborhoods are sitting abandoned waiting to be plowed under. What a shame!

I feel sad for Michigan. I was just home for deer hunting. I stayed in Ann Arbor a few nights before heading north.

It sounds melodramatic, but I feel badly seeing a whole way of life disappear. Millions of middle class people with manufacturing jobs could live in nice homes, drive a new car, educate their children. Its a world thats disappearing.....

Something is way out of whack with situation. Increased homelessness, and perfectly usable homes being demolished. Why doesn't this compute to me, Oh I know I must be one of those bleeding heart Liberals.

Richard

Wow, looks like a cute house.

I understand your point of view, but I also see the problem.

No one wants or can afford to live in ______. Hey, we can't have homeless folks, why don't we just let them live there for free and pay for their utilities and food. Wait, that sounds nice, but it means that not only am I working hard to pay for my stuff, but now I have to work hard to pay for theirs too. And once they get stuff for free, people begin to feel entitled like they should get everything for free.

Better demolished than empty and unused and end up with crack heads moving in or have someone turn it into a meth lab or have other random criminals move in.

"cute"?

HardDrive, Don't feel sad for all of Michigan. We moved up to Traverse City 8 years ago and have never been more happy. Great place to raise kids. Very different than southern Michigan.

That sign seemed to express some bit of pride.

A nice dose of REALITY would do you good, just for the change of scenery.

BTW this isn't PARF.

There was a pretty good segment on 60 minutes a few weeks ago about why this kind of stuff is happening.

<embed src="http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf" scale="noscale" salign="lt" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" background="#333333" width="425" height="279" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" FlashVars="si=254&&contentValue=50116747&shareUrl= http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7392090n" />

Thank you for posting that video. That was hard to watch.

The closing quote by the city official kicks the banks hard in the nads.

They caused the problem. They can solve the problem. They just don't want to.

This is exactly what's happening in my town, but it's not due to bad loans, it's because these people lost their jobs. Nobody is coming here because there are no jobs, so we can't sell our house. I drive 45 miles each way to my job because there isn't anything closer and we can't move. I can't be the only one is this position, but I really can't complain because at least I have a job. Many of my neighbors lost their well-paying jobs... They're trying to figure out how to keep their bills paid, lawn mowed, roofs repaired, kids in college, etc...

So there are a lot of owners who couldn't or wouldn't pay for their house anymore because they were upside down? So how may are "wouldn't"

Why do you stop paying for something just because its not worth what you paid for it? If that's the case there should be a lot of cars foreclosed on then.

Craig,
In our area (metro Detroit) the reason people lost their homes is because they lost their jobs, plain and simple. Nobody I know of walked away because they were "upside down" as I am, they lost their income and couldn't make the payments... We are all "upside down" on our homes and we keep making payments because we don't want our families to be homeless...