And that one was in a suburb in an affluent county. (Destiny)

by Funkmon , Friday, July 17, 2015, 22:11 (3516 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

A few years ago people were buying houses in Detroit for free if they just paid back taxes. A buddy of mine bought 4 houses in Pontiac in 2009 for $1000 each. Those were the good days.

Now it's hard to find a decent house for less than $10k here.

For a more direct comparison, my apartment is a 2 bedroom of similar square footage and costs me $500 a month with no lease. I live on a small lake and a golf course is across the street. I live in Oakland County, apparently the 61st richest county in the country.

Here's the thing...the auto market going really hit us hard. We have enough industry and suppliers to do fine, we're still rich as fuck, and the Detroit/Windsor crossing is the most valuable (in terms of goods crossing the border) in the world, but when I was a kid, basically everyone worked for the big 3. There was a graph in the Detroit News this week about the UAW's Detroit membership and it's down ninety percent since I've been alive.

We still have so many auto workers that they only bother advertising the employee price of cars on TV, but it's not the same.

At the same time, the housing market crash demolished the housing prices, and without the auto industry for middle class families to fall back on, many went into default.

The only places that haven't had their real estate values completely destroyed are the fabulously rich neighbourhoods and the gentrifying neighbourhoods in downtown Detroit.