Detroit housing, and the rest of the state of Michigan, needs some good news. They may have finally gotten a little bit, although it’s hidden among so much negative news.
The first bit of good news for Detroit is that they finally saw the median price of homes in their area head upwards for the first-time in over a year, to the tune of a 6% increase, or up to $69,000. Home sales also increased 8%.
Though this is good news, it comes with the knowledge that in many neighborhoods in Detroit homes are literally being bought for less than $500, some as low as $100, which obviously brings the average down drastically. And, as unemployment keeps increasing, this could be a temporary blip.
That goes for the next bit of good news also, which is a program called ROOF, for “Retaining Occupancy On Foreclosure”. In essence, the idea is to allow people to stay in their homes even after they’ve been foreclosed upon for up to 3-months, possibly longer, and if the house is sold by within the 3-months they’d get a refund on any expenses they still have to pay, such as utilities. It’s an interesting program, as long as some of the people who are being foreclosed upon can qualify to stay and pay.
These two bits of positive news come on the heels of two other stories. One involves a homebuilder, Bernard Glieberman, chief executive officer of Crosswinds Communities Inc, who chairs the Michigan State Housing Authority, has more than $100 million worth of lawsuits filed against him and his company for projects that haven’t been completed.
This flows into another story on how the Michigan Homeowner Construction Lien Recovery Fund, which was set up to help protect homeowners from having liens put on their properties when home builders defaulted on completing their projects, has exhausted its resources, which means homeowners could be sued, even if they’ve actually paid the money to the builders already. The Michigan Association of Home Builders, affiliated with the NAHB, is trying to get state legislators to pass a law to extend protection for homeowners against contractor liens who can prove they’ve already paid for the work.
Mitch Mitchell is a consultant who writes and participates in many different fields, including real estate finance issues. 
It’s great to an increase in the average sales price. This brings hope to the fact that we may be starting to pull out of this recession.
That’s great news for the good people of Detroit. Hopefully the Lien Recovery Fund will be extended.
Great news during hard times. It’s still a great time to buy!
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So will there actually be enough people still in Detroit to rent these places being bought for so little? Another question is whether or not there may be such an exodus from the state as people more south and how that will effect home prices in the future.
Sam, what’s happening is that people are moving to Detroit because of the home prices. I was reading where this musician bought a home for $100 and then put the word out to his buddies and they came from all over to buy their own homes and renovate them.
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I’m not sure when the news has any thing good to say because people respond more to the negitive of things the good is covered up by the media by showing only the bad.