Crowdfund Homes in Detroit?

[chsados]

Lol. I can imagine something similar to The Wire.

A large Bitcoin holder buys up a bunch of homes.  Turns them in to stash houses, hires a gang of youngsters and gives them each burner phones as well as a bitcoin address.  The gang peddles drugs and hands over the loot to a cleaner who launders the money through bitcoin.  The gang gets payed weekly through their bitcoin address.

Sounds like a good cypherpunk book.

check out the username finshaggy.. this is something right up his street. he loves making up stories about drugs and dreams of a uptopian town made using bitcoins..

Lol, yea i have seen his youtube videos.  The kid has some creativity.

[Voogru]

I think Hollywood should just buy up Detroit and use it for post-apocalyptic movies and TV series.

It'll be cheaper than making the sets, they don't even have to touch anything.

[Damnsammit]

I'm going to sell my house in Texas and use the proceeds to buy 20 houses in Detroit. 

[Dumbo]

Is this house seriously on sale for $70?

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13545-Fleming-St-Detroit-MI-48212/88763714_zpid/

[bitcoinstarter]

Is this house seriously on sale for $70?

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13545-Fleming-St-Detroit-MI-48212/88763714_zpid/

Yes, amazing really.

[Chef Ramsay]

If the idea is to refab cribs down there and live, I doubt the locals will take kindly to that as someone else has already pointed out. Most of these people don't have jobs and consume from the public trough, so they have plenty of idle time to do whatever. Drugs and the associated lifestyles is very prevalent and there is a certain anti-suburb mentality down there and they certainly don't want any white folk moving in any time soon. Also, police patrols are way down and they only respond to certain kinds of calls, murder is one of them however.

[SaltySpitoon]

Even if this idea was a bust, it would be good publicity for Bitcoin. "Internet Crypto Currency Group Cleans up the Detroit Housing" - Article about people buying houses with Bitcoins, people reading then associate Bitcoins with real money, the investing group might lose out on a few thousand dollars, but if you are holding enough, a publicity price spike could offset that cost. If it succeeds, you have the publicity + houses which may or may not be worth anything.

I think the answer is building lowish income housing. If you have houses that are too nice, people will torch them. If you have slummy houses, you aren't fixing the problem. So maybe provide lower middle class housing, so people can afford to live there, and you can keep expanding the project without making your tennants a target. (I'm assuming you plan on renovating and leasing out the houses so you will have some sort of income)

[cryptoanarchist]

Is this house seriously on sale for $70?

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13545-Fleming-St-Detroit-MI-48212/88763714_zpid/

I actually am familiar with that area. Pretty scary. You don't want to go out at night around there.

[Dumbo]

Oh I am not moving there, I was shocked to see a house on sale for $70. But that does not include realtor's fee and all the delinquent property tax. I think in reality - that house will cost thousands.

Even the $10,000 house pointed out earlier is just the auction start price. It will probably go up to $60,000 - $100,000.

[Kluge]

There is a way to make money out of extraordinarily cheap housing but actually it does require quite a bit of investment (have seen it done in Australia before).

Basically you buy *every* property in a small street then end the leases for all existing tenants (in a legal and reasonable way) and after they have left rebuild all the houses (and later be very fussy about the new tenants that you let move in).

If you can do that well (and the street is not surrounded by other bad streets) then there is a good chance you can create a nicer new street for people to live in that will actually attract people to it (and then eventually reap the rewards as the property values increase).

It isn't without risk and it isn't so cheap but it has a much better chance than buying a single property in an area that already has severe problems with crime and bad tenants.

But if the taxes are too high then even this approach might not work (so sometimes what look like "bargains" are actually very far from it).

A similar idea has already been carried out in Wayne County. It's called Canton.

[arruah]

Can a non U.S. citizen to buy from you property?

[Varicon]

Can a non U.S. citizen to buy from you property?

I believe so, yes.

[arruah]

I think I can buy that house for $ 500. Tell me how do I do this?

[Kluge]

I think I can buy that house for $ 500. Tell me how do I do this?

One of the greatest things Detroit did to bolster their home prices was to privatize property tax information distribution, and sell the rights to a company which ended up putting tax lookups behind a pay wall (yes, I'm serious, and the FAQ looks super-legit -- http://www.bsasoftware.com/support/programs/is/detfaq.html ). That particular property may owe thousands or tens of thousands in back taxes, on top of >$1.2k in annual property taxes. Detroit has also been refusing acceptance of back-taxes for some properties, lately.

Seriously - stay away.

[Damnsammit]

I still might be moving up to Detroit in the next year, but likely I will be in Sterling Heights

100% of my family has said to stay way the fuck away from downtown.  I'm going up for a visit next month and we are going to cruise around and scope out the hoods.

There were some cheapies in the suburbs, too, but they clearly need a lot of work.  Still seems like a fun project, but maybe you could make a bitcoin community in Warren or something.  Typically better than Detroit...

[btceic]

Is this house seriously on sale for $70?

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13545-Fleming-St-Detroit-MI-48212/88763714_zpid/

gotta love the price drop of 30%!

[joesmoe2012]

heh, aside from investing in the worst parts of detroit, there are actual legit investment opportunities in other parts of Michigan right now.

[Kluge]

heh, aside from investing in the worst parts of detroit, there are actual legit investment opportunities in other parts of Michigan right now.

Michigan's great. I bought a relatively new 3bed, 2bath, 2-car garage house in decent condition with full basement, central air, front and back deck, a big horse barn with gated pasture, and even an area for chickens with coop, and 15 acres in MI for ~$60k just a year ago.

Michigan's attractive because property prices are bringing new meaning to "dirt-cheap" like nowhere else in the Midwest, and overall, the state's really not in bad shape at all - just Detroit. It's not like Ohio. 

[bbit]

the biggest proponets against this think we'll all be dead lol ...

Why can't we just have some armed guards outside wearing Bitcoin armour?

[Damnsammit]

It'd be like real-life Minecraft.

Build during the day, and seek shelter at night... rinse, repeat.