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Best way to invest in Detroit?

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Buy a bulldozer and a bunch of houses? Worst case, you might be able to grow some crops when the apocalypse arrives.
 
Few thousand dollars to invest in real estate or small business? Lol. What kind of serious business or real estate can you buy for couple thousand?
 
iamwiz82 said:
The key is to get downtown in a livable condition (which it is) and to bring people back there. Buildings downtown and being gobbled up and rehabilitated for tenants, commercial and residential. Bringing people down there brings the need for all the typical services. Quicken Loans is offering very large, forgivable loans to bring young suburbanites to downtown as long as they stay for 5 years.
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it's too bad the jobs aren't there... if I could make the same salary in Detroit as I make in NYC (or turn my current job into working from home full-time), I'd happily be part of the gentrification wave (though I'd probably invest in a strong door and bars for the windows)
 
loki8481 said:
it's too bad the jobs aren't there... if I could make the same salary in Detroit as I make in NYC (or turn my current job into working from home full-time), I'd happily be part of the gentrification wave (though I'd probably invest in a strong door and bars for the windows)
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Philadelphia's re-emergence is happening without much job growth, oddly enough.

Many new residents are students in the city's colleges (UPenn, Drexel, Temple, St. Joe's, etc.) or they work in the surrounding suburbs and reverse commute. There is a significant federal government footprint, but essentially no financial services jobs, not many tech jobs, not much industry, etc.
 
Imp said:
Buy a bulldozer and a bunch of houses? Worst case, you might be able to grow some crops when the apocalypse arrives.
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Yeah... someone should buy up a few dozen blocks of Detroit, bulldoze everything there, and then build a walled complex with a golf course and luxury housing for the auto executives.

They already have places like this in South Africa... why not do them in Detroit?

I'm thinking that 15 foot tall walls, an electric fence, and security guards armed with AR-15's oughta be enough to keep the riff-raff out.
 
boomerang said:
My wife's BIL works for DTE Energy, electric provider for Detroit and a large surrounding area. They are tearing out their infrastructure throughout the city for a variety of reasons. One is to keep people from stealing electricity in unsafe manners, getting injured and then suing. He says that barring massive redevelopment which would first entail tearing down large swaths of dilapidated housing, replacing their infrastructure will not be even remotely affordable. In other words, they are not going to come in placing poles, stringing wires and placing transformers for one or even a few houses because nobody will pay the price let alone be able to afford it.

The city has got a lot farther to fall before it resurrects itself if ever.
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Just wanted to clarify this.

The Detroit Department of Public Lighting (PLD) previously owned and operated SOME of the distribution assets in the Detroit city-center (Midtown especially). As part of the bankruptcy, PLD will be dissolving and selling those "assets" (I hear it's all in awful shape) to DTE, who will operate them from here on out. The overhaul of previous PLD assets has started and should continue for several years.

DTE has always served and will continue to serve customers in Detroit neighborhoods. The blight is primarily in neighborhoods, not the city. I do not know of any infrastructure being "torn out" (aside from normal maintenance) throughout the neighborhoods, as DTE has always owned and maintained that equipment.
 
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ponyo said:
Few thousand dollars to invest in real estate or small business? Lol. What kind of serious business or real estate can you buy for couple thousand?
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Target stocks/fund? Real estate investment trust?

I doubt the former exists as focused as the OP wants but the latter most certainly does. Just pick one who's holdings are in the area.
 
rcpratt said:
The blight is primarily in neighborhoods, not the city.
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Are the "neighborhoods" in the city? Is this a semantics game? If so, I'm not interested in playing. I will see my BIL tomorrow and will verify but he's talking about areas of the city that are vacant with dilapidated housing that is unoccupied. It's not like DTE has got trucks running around pulling transformers on occupied housing.
 
boomerang said:
Are the "neighborhoods" in the city? Is this a semantics game? If so, I'm not interested in playing. I will see my BIL tomorrow and will verify but he's talking about areas of the city that are vacant with dilapidated housing that is unoccupied. It's not like DTE has got trucks running around pulling transformers on occupied housing.
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I don't know WTF that means either. I think he's trying to say that the decay is mostly in the inner suburbs, while the urban core has rebounded, but IDK.
 
I've thought about buying a couple properties there for the future land value, though you still have to pay taxes so it makes it not worth it. The big 3 got a bailout quite a while ago now and it still has not really recovered that much. Guess it makes sense, they laid off all those people and just because they got money does not mean they'll rehire them.
 
money-on-fire.jpg
 
Dixy will save it, he is going to come fresh out of college and make large six figures teaching business with a PhD.
 
loki8481 said:
it's too bad the jobs aren't there... if I could make the same salary in Detroit as I make in NYC (or turn my current job into working from home full-time), I'd happily be part of the gentrification wave (though I'd probably invest in a strong door and bars for the windows)
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I had the same thoughts. When I was looking to leave the SF Bay Area Detroit was one of the cities at the top of my list to move to but I was not able to get a good job offer there which is why I ended up in Houston instead. had I received comparable offers in both places I would have gone with Detroit.
 
Detroit is not a growth investment. Not since Snake Pliskin rescued the President has there been a better reason to get out of a city...
 
boomerang said:
50+ unbroken years of Democrats running the city has to factor in on some level. It only stands to reason.
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It only stands to reason that political stagnation is dangerous regardless of where you are or which party has become complacent and inbred? Nope, can't be that. It's probably just those liberals trying to undermine everything Murricah was founded on, the godsless bastards.
 
boomerang said:
Are the "neighborhoods" in the city? Is this a semantics game? If so, I'm not interested in playing. I will see my BIL tomorrow and will verify but he's talking about areas of the city that are vacant with dilapidated housing that is unoccupied. It's not like DTE has got trucks running around pulling transformers on occupied housing.
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I don't find it so unclear, is "downtown" better?

I have no idea what you're trying to say either. Pulling transformers on housing? Wtf?

FWIW, I work for DTE. Just trying to have a conversation. Sorry.
 
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