Attn: Detroit Investors - 36 month Case Study - see video enclosed...oh boy

[Matt R.]

A little background on this one. I have been following Shea on youtube for about a year. He is in Detroit and has seen it all. I find his honest take entertaining and educational. For this video case study - some dude he knows sold this to an out of state investor. He was called in to help somehow after the first dude who sold this "turnkey" investment headed for the hills. I remember the video from 3 years prior and how he was commenting on how bad the area looked with the thug activity across the street etc... He actually video taped the dudes throwing dice....amazing. Now fast forward 36 months...here is what happened...

[Account Closed]

My husband and I are  30 years investor in the Big "D".  The beautiful pictures shown here via Video of Detroit are in DOWNTOWN DETROIT PEOPLE!!  Excellent place to visit.  Entertainment.  The WATERFRONT is grand, and if you want to rent property there, you will pay through the nose.  And...those places have SECURITY! 

As a long time landlord in the City of Detroit, I think I should know the scoop.  My husband and I had to retire and get out of  there because the neighbors didn't care what happened to the "guy" next door.  They were afraid to say anything.  Afraid to report crime for fear they would be killed.  The police force and fire departments were cut back, due to lack of funds and the response time was like 2 hours to get to the scene of a crime or fire, if they got there at all!

I can't tell you how many bullets I've dug out of my homes and they were in decent neighborhoods.  My husband and I would try to buy up the block in order to control the riff raff, and we did okay.  But one can only do so much!  

If your property stays empty for even a day, your home will be broken into,  your furnace will be taken, the pipes, the water heaters, the siding, appliances, light fixtures, you name it, it won't be there. But you will see a mountain of trash piled on your lawn from the neighborhood.  Vacancies are a good place to dump their stuff.  But...hey...nobody SEE'S ANYTHING!

The City of Detroit, because they are bankrupt will tax you beyond your wildest imagination.  Which is why so many of us landlords left Detroit.  You can't face the crime, and the fines, and the pro-tenant court system and survive.  You just can't!

I laugh when I see they Brokers from outside of Detroit, say  we are crazy for down playing the Detroit Market, when someone like myself has  ACTUALLY LIVED IT!  Had sweat in the game.   Millions of Dollars invested there,  and seen our homes go to crap after being in the business so many years!  Go to crap all of a sudden!

For over 20 years our properties were money makers.  We made around $23,000 to $30,000 a month!  Yep a Month! in income.  Then in 2006 everything started to really go down hill, because anyone who could breathe, whether good credit or bad, were offered the chance to purchase a home.  So people started to leave Detroit.  Which meant the tenant pool went down hill.  We had 18 vacancies a year, and were hopping from one rental  to another to try to get them rented before thieves broke in and stole everything.  

From 2006 until 2009 it  was a disaster.  We lost our work crew, because the crooks stole their van, their tools, while they were working inside our homes.  We couldn't hire anyone to work on our properties inside Detroit.  Even our plumber was killed while working on one or our homes.  (Our homes were not in the Ghetto) We had no choice but to sell and ended up selling our homes for 5,000 a piece.  Beautiful homes.  But my husband and I just couldn't do it all by ourselves. 

I tried so many times, to convince my husband to sell way before all this happened.  Way before the market crashed. But like most of you "dreamers" who think Detroit is coming back, or  isn't so, bad, he too thought that way.  I begged him and pleaded with him to sell, but he didn't listen.  And Detroit never did come back.  And it was that bad.  And we had no choice but to  sell our properties for a song and a dance and lost millions of dollars in the end, just because my husband had a dream just like you, that it wasn't so bad. 

The hardest part wasn't the part that we lost so much, the hard part for me was to see my husband's face when he realized we should have sold.  My husband, a strong man, brought down to his knees in defeat.  30 years of his life, gone.  Everything gone!  Because he refused to see what was happening.  To see my husband, a broken man, makes me write about Detroit as I am doing now.  I am REALITY! 

Until the City of Detroit curtails the crime, I don't care what type of deal you get, or how beautiful the house, it won't stay that way.  Please understand this.  

Please don't listen to people who only work in the City of Detroit and don't live there. Please don't listen to Brokers or Salespersons who want to sell you property there.  Please don't listen to someone who only has perhaps one rental property there, and hasn't been there long enough to really see the good, bad and the ugly.

If you want to invest in Detroit, do it in Downtown on the Waterfront and pay millions if not billions of dollars for the chance to do so. But don't let anyone tell you that investing in the rental market of Detroit is a good deal!  

Nancy Neville

Retired Landlord in the City of Detroit

Husband 30 years. Myself 13 years. 

40 properties, from apartments to single family homes.