100 Abandoned Houses in Detroit

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kbauman/sets/72157600059407224/with/3

Above is a link a friend of mine sent me. It shows 100 abandoned houses in Detroit. He moved up to Pontiac just in time for the economic meltdown. Needless to say, he is now in Columbus, Ohio.

The irony is, that when the film 8 Mile came out, Eminem's house in Detroit was worth $120,000. Have you seen that movie? I remember reading that it was being auctioned off. That was in Detroit proper. Now, houses are going for less than $10,000. That is all within only a decade or so.

One of the reasons I never ended up back in Detroit after I graduated from college in 1995 was that I could not afford it. Real estate up there was so expensive. For example, my husband and I bought a house in 1999 in a suburb of Dayton for around $80,000. It is a small home -- a Sears Roebuck, 1929, 2 bedroom, bungalow. I remember walking down the streets of Birmingham the summer of 1999 to show my in-laws my hometown. We picked up a flier for the same exact house for sale in Birmingham, and it was listed at $800,000. Mind you, the house is only 726 square feet.

My husband was listening to NPR today, and they actually ran a story about real estate in Bloomfield Township. I guess a woman who was widowed did a short sale and got about $170,000 for her home. Now, this is a decent price in Dayton real estate; however, once you heard the whole story, it is actually tragic. The woman bought at the peak of the bubble, and she actually had paid over $700,000 for her home. Ouch.

This is where American greed comes into play. I know many things are to blame for this recession. Personally, I blame Osama Bin Laden the most, but that is another post if not an entirely different blog. But, Americans are also to blame. When did we start caring more about money than everything else? Let's hope that if one good thing comes out of this economic meltdown it is that we have a healthy respect for money, but that we value people more.