Crap for 1 to 15k per house if you have to just abandon one because it did not work no biggee.. you have lost next to nothing monetarily. keep the ones that work throw away the garbage let them go for tax's.If your sitting in CA or AU or GB  or other foreign countries and you think these cheap homes are going to make you rich.. then your just perpetuating the greater fool theory in my mind... and the end of the day simple logic has to dictate.. if houses on the open market were any investor  experienced or not can purchase them for 1 to 5k  well then there is a reason.. and there is a reason that in LA or SF or PDX or SEA  or New York or Boston or other prime markets that values are where they are at.. supply demand and ability to pay for the asset.Detroit bottom line just needs to retrench.. if its only 700k pop now and declining and there were housing stock for double that.. it does not take a genius to understand there is a gross over supply and the better owners or tenants are not going to live in the roughest and most dangerous areas of the city they will flee to safer more stable environs because there are massive amounts of homes that can be bought in nice areas for 100k and under.

All that village code crap is what put you in the hole.

But I suspect misuse by the tenants since they store crap in the same space as the heater.

You're right about the neighbors being your best bet, though depending on the location of the parcel, I have heard of some people putting billboards up on their crap pieces of vacant land and renting the billboard space out...Hope that helps a little

I just see a lot of people get a general business degree and rack up crap debt they are stuck with.

I searched and searched, found some people on here are nothing but full of crap.

External appraisal...best you can do is average comp and if your exterior looks like crap, you'll have a lower comp.

I feel like I have a crap-load of transferable skills, but I'm still learning how they all apply to real estate.

I wouldn't install IKEA cabinets at my worst friends house......utter crap.

I am not crapping on the dream but what you did was trade one rat race for another.