Is the economy there still heavily reliant on the auto makers?

Most of the major automakers have definitively said they're phasing out ICE vehicles.

Maturity laddering is one of the key metrics the public REITs are held to, and when looking at the financial crisis, whether it be the automakers needing a bail out or the real estate operators that did, or almost, went under, it came down to not having major debt loads mature all at the same time.  

There are 2 buildings, the first in Fort Wayne, near airport houses 1 tenant ZF, a german auto-parts supplier, been in the space x 22 yrs and only has 2-3 years left on lease but space is custom for them and they have long contracts from automakers for parts for legislatively mandated discontinued car parts, when car models get shut down, the manufacturers have to continue to supply parts for 10-15 years by law, and ZF gets many of these contracts, also all work force very established there so company less likely to move, but even if they do, Heritage could carve up the 1, 100k space into 4 smaller spaces and then get 50% more rent.

It's not that simple math is wrong, it's just that you can open your mind up to much more possibilities, like investing in appreciating markets, once you become knowledgeable about 2 things, 1) Sophisticated Math and 2) Economics so you can read the future of the market.Personally, I don't know how any Investor doesn't want to learn enough about Economics to get a gauge on how the next 10 years in their specific Area of investing may turn out.Will it be like Detroit, which went bankrupt but you could easily have seen that if you paid attention to the 3 Big Auto Makers?

Add to this the 500Billion passed by the congress this weekend to keep govt running, and 25 bil to automakers for assistance.

Now OIL is running out and we (and our leaders) are doing NOTHING to supplant it.The common thread in the case of the Dutch and the English is that the reliance on plentiful, and cheap energy caused a complacence because it was just TOO EASY to keep doing what they had been doing.A couple of parallels to this can be found in the cliche' about the old "buggy whip makers", and simlarly in the case of people who made, and delivered ICE back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.There were probably a lot of players in both industries, and as competition from refrigerator manufacturers and auto makers became intense, the remaining buggy whip makers and "ice men" were obviously the MOST EFFICIENT players in their respective markets.

wazzup nice. thanks for the welcome. the areas you mention for potentially investing are some of the same areas i've notice for good opps. texas also looks good. the only question is with so many people losing their jobs with the automakers in MI and OH, how strong is the alternative job market in those areas??

If the automakers are allowed to fail in Detroit, $7,000 may be the high end for many of these homes.

The days of the uneducated, barely graduating high school then working in the mill or for an automaker making around six figures is over.