Detroit Downtown Real Estate Is Hot
According to Bloomberg,Luxury Condo Developers are invading Downtown Detroit.
$1 million dollar penthouses and other luxury condos are going up alongside vacant skyscrappers in Downtown. Several ex-atheletes are joining in too.
Bob Bartlett is buying a million- dollar condominium atop a historic hotel in Detroit — the U.S. city with the highest unemployment rate, the worst violent-crime rate and thousands of abandoned houses.It’s a city that outsiders underestimate, he says.
“It is a viable place to live, and I think investment in the city of Detroit is a smart move,” said Bartlett, a Michigan native who owns ReviewWorks, an insurance cost-containment company.
Bartlett is leaving the affluent suburb of Birmingham for a 3,900-square-foot (360-square-meter) penthouse in the downtown Book-Cadillac Hotel, renovated after sitting vacant and decaying for more than 20 years.
Only a handful of the 66 condos remain to be sold in the building, which also will house a 455-room Westin hotel. Nearby, more luxury condos and three casinos with hotels are under construction.
Bartlett represents a counterintuitive wave of investment in Detroit, where years of economic decline caused by racial divisions and a struggling auto industry eroded the population and left acres of homes selling for less than $10,000.
Thats great, but where are the jobs? Job growth and population growth fuel the demand side of the equation. Selling a few hundred over-priced condos doesn’t turn the city around. Neither does setting up gambling dens (or casinos as they’re now called!). The city needs real jobs.
For the past 20 years, the median salary and the population has been dropping every year. Doesn’t sound like a “tipping point” to me, even if you can buy homes for $10,000. But enough people believe that, someones definitely going to make some money!
If you found this post helpful, consider donating to my coffee fund!![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
- Housing Numbers Disappoint Sales of new U.S. homes declined for the second consecutive month in February, and the nation's supply of unsold homes continued to rise, an indication that the weak housing market has yet to hit bottom.The Commerce Department reported yesterday that sales of newly constructed single-family homes fell 3.9% last month......
- Mortgage Meltdown: The Worst Is Yet To Come! Check out this 12 minute video from 60 Minutes. There's another wave of mortgage defaults on the way, this time from Alt-A & Option-Arm (also called Negative-Amortization or Neg-Am) loans. As opposed to the subprime loans which were worth almost $1 Trillion, these two groups make up nearly $1.5 Trillion. ......
- Utah Economy Strongest in the Nation According to the Deseret News,Utah's economy is the single strongest state economy in the nation, according to one Utah economist. And the single strongest sector within that economy is construction. It's growing so fast that many construction companies say they can't hire fast enough to staff the jobs they've got......
Related Websites
- California Salmon Population Dropped 88% in 5 Years California Salmon are disappearing. The number of King Salmon (aka the Chinook) returning to the Sacramento watershed was at a near record low low and an 88% drop from the population 5 years ago. Calif. salmon population declines. Regulators are still trying to understand the reasons for the shrinking number......
- Understanding Investment Returns for Retirement Planning One of the problems that many investors have (and that I used to have) is how to interpret and practically apply investment return data published by the mutual fund companies. I frequently read statements made by uninformed investors about historical annual rates of return that cause them to be over-confident......
- Casino to double with $1.2 bil plan Kangwon Land's status as a major Asian casino is threatened by gaming centers across Asia ; Kangwon Land Casino, the country's most popular casino and the only one open to Korean citizens, will double in size by early 2012, according to the operator. Choi Young, CEO of Kangwon Land, told......
[All content is copyright of Living Off Dividends & Passive Income]
May 16th, 2007 at 7:08 am
You might want to check out this article.
http://realestate.msn.com/Buying/Article2.aspx?cp-documentid=4349836
In Detroit, Houses Cheaper than Cars
http://savingforhome.blogspot.com/2007/04/houses-cheaper-than-cars.html
I also wrote about this article in my blog.