Is Detroit the Best Sports City in the NATION right now?

[hehateme]

I say yes!

Red Wings advance to conference finals.

Pistons are hammering the bulls.

Tigers have won 8 in a row.

on the horizon:

Michigan has a real chance at a championship.

And who knows how the Lions could do?

[bxbomb]

awesome

and you can buy a 3 bedroom house in Detroit for $27,500

[hehateme]

yes! and tickets to see the best sports teams in the world only cost 1/2 or 1/3 of what they do in NYC!!!!!

[JonStephen]

awesome

and you can buy a 3 bedroom house in Detroit for $27,500

You think? I heard homes stay on the market for an average of 14 months before selling.....not to mention the highest foreclosure rate in the country BY FAR....oh wait, thats the state of Michigan

[hehateme]

yes, and we have the worst economy in the country!

but look, NYC has the best economy and the highest home prices.........and some of the WORST sports teams in the nations

Rangers - Snuck into playoffs

Knicks - the knicks

Jets/Giants - .500 will be a great season

Mets - Ok, they are good.

Yanks - Struggling to catch .500

College Teams -

[bxbomb]

[bxbomb]

Houses cheaper than cars in Detroit

DETROIT (Reuters) - With bidding stalled on some of the least desirable residences in Detroit's collapsing housing market, even the fast-talking auctioneer was feeling the stress.

"Folks, the ground underneath the house goes with it. You do know that, right?" he offered.

After selling house after house in the Motor City for less than the $29,000 it costs to buy the average new car, the auctioneer tried a new line: "The lumber in the house is worth more than that!"

As Detroit reels from job losses in the U.S. auto industry, the depressed city has emerged as a boomtown in one area: foreclosed property.

It also stands as a case study in the economic pain from a housing bust as analysts consider whether a developing crisis in mortgages to high-risk borrowers will trigger a slowdown in the broader U.S. economy.

The rising cost of mortgage financing for Detroit borrowers with weak credit has added to the downdraft from a slumping local economy to send home values plunging faster than many investors anticipated a few months ago.

At a weekend sale of about 300 Detroit-area houses by Texas-based auction firm Hudson & Marshall, the mood was marked more by fear than greed.

"These people are investors and they know the difficulty of finding financing. They know the difficulty of finding good tenants. They're cautious," said realtor Stanley Wegrzynowicz, who attended the auction.

HOW LOW IS LOW?

The city, which has lost more than half its population in the past 30 years and struggled with rising crime, failing schools and other social problems, largely missed out on the housing boom that swept much of the country in recent years.

Prices have gained less than 2 percent per year in the five years since 2001, when the auto industry entered a renewed slump.

Steve Izairi, 32, who re-financed his own house in suburban Dearborn and sold his restaurant to begin buying rental properties in Detroit two years, was concerned that houses he thought were bargains at $70,000 two years ago were now selling for just $35,000.

At least 16 Detroit houses up for sale on Sunday sold for $30,000 or less.

A boarded-up bungalow on the city's west side brought $1,300. A four-bedroom house near the original Motown recording studio sold for $7,000.

"You can't buy a used car for that," said Izairi. "It's a gamble, and you have to wonder how low it's going to get."

Detroit, where unemployment runs near 14 percent and a third of the population lives in poverty, leads the nation in new foreclosure filings, according to tracking service RealtyTrac.

With large swaths of the city now abandoned, banks are reclaiming and reselling Detroit homes from buyers who can no longer afford payments at seven times the national rate.

Michigan was the only state to see home prices fall in 2006. The national average price rose almost 6 percent but prices slipped 0.4 percent here, according to a federal study.

The state's jobless rate of 7.1 percent in January was also the second highest in the nation, behind only Mississippi.

HOW MUCH CAN YOU BUY FOR $1 MILLION?

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was greeted with applause when he announced last week that two condominiums in the city's revitalizing downtown sold for over $1 million each.

But investors, including some from out of state, proved far more cautious at Sunday's auction.

In the most spirited bidding of the day, a sprawling, four-bedroom mansion from Detroit's boom days with an ornate stone entrance fetched just $135,000.

Dave Webb, principal at Hudson & Marshall, said Michigan had become a "heavy volume" market for his auction firm in recent years, although bigger-money deals were waiting in California, a market he said was ready for the first such auctions of repossessed property in years.

"These people that are buying have got to look at holding on for five to seven years," he said. "The key is holding power."

Even with the steep discounts on Detroit-area properties, some buyers handed over their deposits with a wince.

"I'm not sure it's congratulations," said Kirk Neal, a 55-year-old auto body shop worker who bought a ranch in the suburb of Oak Park for $34,000. "My wife is going to kill me."

Realtor Ron Walraven had a three-bedroom house in the suburb of Bloomfield Hills that had listed for $525,000 sell for just $130,000 at the auction.

"Once we've seen the last person leave Michigan, then I think we'll be able to say we've seen the bottom," he said.

[JonStephen]

Thats just wrong

[bxbomb]

Thats just wrong

what is

[hehateme]

[bxbomb]

posted a yr ago

funny though

[JonStephen]

what is

that article

you can get a house for less then a Neon. That other story of the guy who listed his house for half a mil and foreclosed when nobody bought it. The house sold at the auction for $130K

terrible depressing place

[bxbomb]

that article

you can get a house for less then a Neon. That other story of the guy who listed his house for half a mil and foreclosed when nobody bought it. The house sold at the auction for $130K

terrible depressing place

yup

but something tells me all the peeps swooping in buying up desireable spots that could be gentrified in a few yrs from now in a major city and if the auto industry can wake the fuck up and just look at what toyota an hyundai etc are doing the city could turn around

[JonStephen]

yup

but something tells me all the peeps swooping in buying up desireable spots that could be gentrified in a few yrs from now in a major city and if the auto industry can wake the fuck up and just look at what toyota an hyundai etc are doing the city could turn around

coulda, woulda

if you're hellbent on living there thats one thing, but its not an investor turnaround type of condition since the entire city is based off of one company

[hehateme]

guys, your blanket statements are a perfect example of the countries ignorance towards the issue.

i would rather not get into a debate on michigans economy right now, but instead would prefer to bring this thread back to the subject at hand.

DETROIT IS THE BEST SPORTS CITY IN THE COUNTRY

[JonStephen]

must be gratifying since their residents are scattering like rats

how much does the new shelby go for?

[mikdondadon22]

guys, your blanket statements are a perfect example of the countries ignorance towards the issue.

i would rather not get into a debate on michigans economy right now, but instead would prefer to bring this thread back to the subject at hand.

I am interested to hear your thoughts on Michigan's economy

[bullseye]

And who knows how the Lions could do?

i dont think it is inconceivable that the lions could eventually move out of detroit.

[vicman]

You think? I heard homes stay on the market for an average of 14 months before selling.....not to mention the highest foreclosure rate in the country BY FAR....oh wait, thats the state of Michigan

i heard it was Atlanta.

[lolahotass]

I say yes!

Red Wings advance to conference finals.

Pistons are hammering the bulls.

Tigers have won 8 in a row.

on the horizon:

Michigan has a real chance at a championship.

And who knows how the Lions could do?

don't forget the ladies WNBA Detroit team won a title last year or the year before And MIchigan State has been in the NCAA tourney the last few years and won a national championship in recent years... woOOooHoo GO STATE :D

[lolahotass]

GREAT comeback by the Pistons tonite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bxbomb]

yeh detroit rock city

Maybe Bush can sell detroit to canada for cheap and we can finally rid ourselves of that infected scab of a city....and the Lions lol

[lolahotass]

WHAT! um NO We need Detroit!! Besides sports, we are Mo-Town motherfucker! LOL

and eminem

[bxbomb]

Jon stephes looks like SD no great shape

No matter the locale, its denizens almost always gripe about the stiff cost of living, housing and doing business. But in some places the financial pain is clearly more acute than others.

Take San Diego. A slumping housing market, where only 5% of residents can afford the median home, and a high price-to-earnings ratio made the oceanfront city our most overpriced real estate market. Had weather been included as a statistical measurement, there's no doubt San Diego would have avoided our list of top 10 most overpriced cities--but we didn't factor in sunshine.

Arriving at the relative value of a given market isn't as simple as calculating median home prices, income rates and cost of living. Instead, our list of most overpriced real estate markets incorporates a more meaningful methodology.

Behind The Numbers

Using the 40 largest metro areas, we started by estimating a "price-to-earnings" ratio for each market. (Like the P/E of a stock, this value attempts to measure the price a homeowner would pay for one dollar of return.) Using data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the U.S. Census Bureau and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, we took each market's median home price and divided it by annual rents minus taxes and insurance for those properties. (We assumed for this exercise that other costs don't vary drastically from city to city.)

The average P/E for the 40 markets is 28. Note: Unlike, say, the S&P 500 index of stocks, ours is not a weighted-average P/E. If it were, certain cities with greater overall sheer market value would carry more weight.

We incorporated a second metric: an affordability index. Calculated from National Home Builder Association and Wells Fargo data, the affordability score is the percent of the population who can afford to buy the median-priced home, assuming a 6% mortgage rate. In a city like Los Angeles, No. 4 on the list, a wee 2% of homes are affordable for residents pulling down a median income.

Consider Detroit. Almost 88% of its homes are available to those with a median income, and its 17.5 P/E ratio appears relatively low, but that doesn't make real estate in the Motor City a good investment. Already stagnant home prices have decreased at a rate of 1% over the last year and, of the major metros, Detroit is the only one on our list to have lost jobs since 2005 (other than New Orleans, which we left off; in the wake of Hurricane Katrina the city's statistical figures were such anomalies that it wasn't comparable to the rest of the cities).

So which markets are in bubble territory? Look for a high P/E ratio, low affordability, low income growth and a high cost of living.

San Francisco, ranked fourth, fits that bill. Despite home prices growing at a 2% clip over last year, according to the NAR, the city by the bay ranks third to last in expected income growth, reports Moody's. Not good news in a market where only 7.5% of housing is affordable for the median-income earner. Combine that with a housing P/E ratio over 50, and it isn't difficult to imagine some softening on the horizon.

The usual suspects littered our list: Miami came in second, followed in order by: Sacramento, Calif.; San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; Honolulu; New York; Los Angeles; and Boston. San Jose, Calif., rounded out the top 10.

[fkornre]

don't forget the ladies WNBA Detroit team won a title last year or the year before And MIchigan State has been in the NCAA tourney the last few years and won a national championship in recent years... woOOooHoo GO STATE :D

women's sports dont count...