Homes go for £800 - could it happen here?

GDB2222

10% reduction if furnished, here.

Realy

GDB2222 wrote: »

10% reduction if furnished, here.

What about unfurnished?

going2die_rich

Many of the so called houses going for £1 etc actually had loads of clauses, whereby you had to promise to invest x amount to improve the properties, so it was never really £1 etc. It would only really have been feasible if you could buy the entire street, do them all up and make that street "livable". You would no doubt have had to have been one of the sort of people who had no moral issues in using a bit of physical force in "persuading" some of the less deseriable people to move on. So that the area would pick up.

Austin_Allegro

chewmylegoff wrote: »

This has to be seen in context - £800 on a two bed in Detroit is going to buy you a horrible shack made out of wood that has probably been half eaten by termites in a horrible area riddled with crime and gangs and surrounded by other empty houses the banks are trying to sell.

Hmm, so not that much different to a city centre newbuild block in the UK, except they're asking £250,000 for the privilege...:rolleyes:

drc

Generali wrote: »

The welfare state may well find itself in a spot of bother pretty soon.

We have millions of baby boomers planning to retire in the near future. Their state pensions are entirely unfunded as are the entirety of the pensions of the civil servants that are retiring. Many of the people in private pension schemes will find that as a result of recent stock market falls, their pension schemes aren't fully funded either.

We have (at a guesstimate) perhaps 500,000 children whose parents and grandparents have never worked and never plan to for as long as they can get away with it.

These 2 groups need paying for. It's going to be tough to pay for one or the other. Paying for both is impossible. The former group vote. The promises made to the former group are the more expensive.

So, what do you think will happen? Is this the end of the bloated welfare state as we know it?

baileysbattlebus

Mandark wrote: »

The woman said the normal rate was $70-80,000 for a 3 bed house presumably in a semi decent working class area, which is great by British standards. It was reported last month that the very cheapest houses in Detroit are now going for the token $1.

I remember in the 1980s when tabloids were running stories about whole sections of terraced streets that you could buy for 100 grand or so. We could be heading back to those days.

Detroit, 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.

Detroit, where unemployment runs near 14 percent and a third of the population lives in poverty, leads the nation in new foreclosure listing 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 there, 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.

"The home, at 8111 Traverse Street, a few blocks from Detroit City Airport, was the nicest house on the block when it sold for $65,000 in November 2006, said neighbor Carl Upshaw. But the home was foreclosed last summer, and it wasn’t long until "the vultures closed in," Upshaw said. "The siding was the first to go. Then they took the fence. Then they broke in and took everything else."
The company hired to manage the home and sell it, the Bearing Group, boarded up the home only to find the boards stolen and used to board up another abandoned home nearby.
Scrappers tore out the copper plumbing, the furnace and the light fixtures, taking everything of value, including the kitchen sink. [...]
So desperate was the bank owner of 8111 Traverse Street to unload the property that it agreed to pay $2,500 in sales commission and another $1,000 bonus for closing the $1 sale; the bank also will pay $500 of the buyer’s closing costs. Throw in back taxes and a water bill, and unloading the house will cost the bank about $10,000. [...]

Colpaert declined to provide the name of the prospective purchaser, because the deal had not been through closing. The agent did say that the buyer agreed to pay the full list price of $1, and planned to pay cash."

They say when the last person leaves Michigan, the bottom of the market will have been reached.

You still pay taxes on the land if even if you knock the house down.

You can be fined by the city for it not being up to standard, or being a blight on the neighborhood(they dont care if the rest of the neighborhood is crap), you have limited time to get the home up to standard, or you pay ever increasing fines until you do.

It makes you wonder why the banks don't let people stay in their home at a reduced payment - it has to be more economic than having to pay to maintain and secure a property and eventually pull it down - which is what they are starting to do.

If something appears to be too good to be true, it usually is!

hethmar

Of course its too good to be true. I dare say you could buy rat holes even now for a few thousand quid in this country if you dont mind clearing out the crack den its been used for and then erecting security fencing - its daft to even quote these cases - most of us would pay not to have to live in the sort of houses/areas that the extreme cheap properties will come up in. An example was that News of the World flat said to be worth £135k and now sold for £15k - some people jumped on it as an example of the property armageddon without looking into the details - a big house being very badly split into units by a builder who goes under with none of the flats/bedsits finished - and no doubt a lender wanting to recoup the original purchase price of the one house.

adr0ck

council tax exemptions last for 6 months only for residential properties

once your 6 months is up you pay full council tax

you don't even get single person reduction etc

Generali

drc wrote: »

So, what do you think will happen? Is this the end of the bloated welfare state as we know it?

Perhaps. There are some very expensive bills coming up that are going to have to be paid somehow and as the welfare state is by far the biggest part of the central and local Government budget it seems like the obvious place to start.

What are we going to cut? Health, pensions or dole? That's pretty much going to be the choice. Richer pensioners will have a hard time of things IMO but there are a finite number of them (an increasing proportion of whom will be retired politicians, senior teachers and civil servants).

What would you cut after that? Healthcare or the dole?

Sapphire

My gut feeling (for what it's worth :cool: ) is that in any area where there is relatively high employment, i.e. London, this would not happen. However, if there is high unemployment in some areas that are already diminished by the cessation of manufacturing, etc, then yes, I do feel properties could come down to a very low level indeed.

The 'government' should then buy these houses and rent them to those who have lost their homes.