Return on buying cheap homes in Flint, MI?

**sv2007** · 10-09-2016, 10:32 PM

Is this the town that's had that Pb in water problem? If so, based on news, I'd never invest in such area unless it is total speculation. No growth, no industry on the horizon, no future. What do you want to do with the property? Holding land and empty houses (this is especially troublesome) means negative cash flow (oh, you should carry insurance or you open yourself up to bankruptcy).

The safest RE investment is to remodel homes in desirable (or at least ok areas) and remodel yourself (i.e. sweat equity). I guess you can call it flipping or whatever. It is kind of like work (which of course pays).

**97guns** · 10-09-2016, 11:34 PM

key #1 for a RE investment to succeed is the job market, i remember duplexes in the detroit area going for under 10k in 2008/2009, i was keeping tabs on that market for a while. rents were only $300 at that time. they needed work but in theory if you could keep it rented you could recover your investment in a couple of years but even with a 10k investment some went belly up because they couldnt rent

**james.hendrickson** · 10-20-2016, 04:05 PM

Seth - I looked into this a few years ago. Homes were selling in detroit for around $500 to $5,000.

The low prices were offset by a couple of things.

First, a decimated job market. There simply wasn't any demand for housing in Detroit. The population had declined by something between 25% to 30%.

Second, the local authorities were inflexible and incompetent. My understanding is that property taxes were not assessed at the properties current rate, rather based on older higher valuations. The city was reputed to be unwilling to change the valuations. This mean property taxes on the properties would have been inflated. In addition the water quality scandal in Detroit has also recently suggested the local administration simply isn't good at getting basic services delivered.

Return on buying cheap homes in Flint, MI?