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08/13/2004: "Nothing but time"

Seeing a Free Press article on the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in Detroit for sale annoyed me.

It's no big surprise that so many houses in Detroit sit vacant for years, just left to rot by owners who won't spend the money required for upkeep. Most of these houses have for sale signs out for years.

A huge number of these houses could be purchased. And yet they aren't.

While Detroit goes through its little flux between a dead city and a city that's perched on the edge of thriving, people with dollar signs in their eyes (and just slightly too much cash to throw around) purchase houses throughout the city in the hopes of re-selling them for a profit.

I have nothing against this in theory, until I start seeing morons who are asking way beyond reasonable market price in the hopes that some fool will purchase the property. In the meantime, seeing dollars go out the window when any upkeep is done, these idiots who purchased the houses in the first place do nothing but let the house sit and crumble.

A house down the street is suffering from this. The elderly owner sold this tiny house (according to the City of Detroit Assessment page, it's all of 622sq ft) many months ago. The older aluminum siding was replaced by a bad self-install job of plastic siding (portions keep falling down and needing to be put back up). Other than that, it was apparent little to no additional work was done. I seriously doubt the elderly owner had recently stripped the house out and upgraded/improved anything, and in a house built in 1922, unless it was kept in immaculate condition, this probably needed to be done.

After the siding job, a for sale sign popped up, complete with asking price on the top. Now, according to the Assessment page, the true cash value in 2002 was $25k. Our house true cash value seemed slightly high to us if we were to sell it, so I have got to believe that the $25k listed is not vastly understated. The new "owner" was wanting $69,000 for this house.

A few months later, the price showed that it was reduced to $57,600. What a bargain. In the meanwhile, the garden is overgrown, the siding still falls often, and I can tell that unless this ass gets a reality check, it'll just sit vacant for a few more years until the price they are asking is more in line with reality.

While I dislike most of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs, no doubt the owner trying to sell it had the hopes of quickly rising real estate costs and a "name brand" association making him rich. Like so many other houses, this one has apparently been sitting empty for at least 5 years now. While it's in a decent neighbourhood and fairly large in size, it apparently needs quite a bit of work done - apparently there is water damage, the balcony sags, the heating system needs to be completely redone, many aspects have been "improved" to great 1970's fashions, and probably a host of other things need to be redone. The current owner obviously isn't going to spend at least $100k to make these repairs, so the new owner would need to do it all himself. Given the repairs needed and the Assessment page indicating it's value in 2002 was $350k, I'd expect it to be right around that price, possibly even less if the repairs were more extensive. Considering the current owner spent $187k for it, he wouldn't be losing money selling it for a reasonable price.

Despite that, this dipshit wants $550,000 for a house that, while being "name brand", probably wouldn't be considered live-able. Unless he's willing to go down quite a bit in price, the way things are heading, it'll be another rotting shell in another decade. By that time, even with the name brand status, no one will want to spend the money required to fix it.