Detroit: Starting Out--Some Food For Thought.

[Scott Mac]

I was looking through Detroit Land Bank properties and noticed this typical Detroit Style Home going for as little as $1,000 in some areas.

Look at the other pic of what someone did in another city with a similar style house and imagine what a D-town home would look like all fixed up like that.

Imagine a whole street of fixed up homes, it's called Gentrification.

And with a few homes in sight of each other fixed up, if the trend catches on the prices on the delapitated old shacks starts going up, and so does the price of the fixed up home.

Some of these homes (not all of them) for the right person, could be diamonds in the rough.

If you consider yourself poor, you could learn fixups from youtube, and buy the materials as money allowed (vs looking for grants or trying to get loans), and if you are willing to put in the labor....and put up with the danger of the area...a gentrified home could be the outcome. 

If the street Gentrifies, sell it and make a bundle and do it again, if it doesn't you will have one fancy home to call your own.

Can't find or afford contractors, you then must be the contractor (be your own boss) and swing the hammer and saw the saw.

Just my 2 cents.

[Travis Biziorek]

Hey Scott, I have a good deal of perspective on this consider a) I own 12-doors in Detroit, and b) I'm working to finish up a duplex that I purchased from the DLBA the other year.

It's true that years ago you could still find DLBA properties that were worthwhile from an investor's perspective. That's largely not true today. The decent stuff that will be worth more than you spend renovating it just doesn't exist. You'd be grossly underwater trying to rehab one of these to use as a rental.

The duplex I have is in Russell Woods, a great spot for investment. But I bought it 3 years ago for $8,000 and completely gutted it. It will likely appraise for slightly more than I've put into it (now about $160,000). And we should be able to get $1,200/mo/unit. Those numbers work for me.

But again, you can't find properties like that today.

Most folks doing DLBA properties now are local Detroiters that are doing exactly what you said... learning how to renovate on a budget and simply getting the home habitable. There is a great Facebook group focused on this called "Detroit Land Bank Tips & Tricks". 

Join it and see what some folks are doing. It's an extremely positive and uplifting community of people helping one another through the process and living in these left-for-dead homes until they can improve them little by little.

This, to me, is what the program is best served for now. And it can be life changing to those that are willing to put in the effort and navigate it.