Hard times in the Motor City
After five hours of calling out a drumbeat of "no bid" for properties listed in an auction book as thick as a city phone directory, the energy of the county auctioneer began to flag.
"OK," he said. "We only have 300 more pages to go."
A four-day auction of Wayne County tax-foreclosure properties pretty much flopped. Hardly anyone has any money, and most of those that do have money to spend are investors and speculators who are only interested in the choicest properties. Unless Detroit recovers in a big way, most of them are probably going to find that it's not 2006 any more and they can't sell their "quick flips". Meanwhile, people trying to buy a house fit to live in because they actually want to stay in Detroit are being outbid on anything livable by the speculators.
And that "phone-book-sized" auction catalog? That was only the properties seized in 2006. There's a LOT more where they came from (no pun intended):
The number of Detroit properties in tax foreclosure has more than tripled since 2007 and seems certain to rise further. The lots for sale last week represented arrears from only 2006, well before the worst of the downturn for U.S. automakers.
The Detroit Free Press estimates that the total vacant land in Detroit now adds up to an area almost the size of Boston. How much longer, the way things are going, before it adds up to an area the size of ... well, Detroit?
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