Haven't there been recurrent musings on Hacker News about getting a bunch of friends together and buying up a whole city block in Detroit? Most of us could easily afford it, free and clear.
I'd totally be in if Google would open a Detroit office. ;-)
I predict that this is what'll happen with a lot of the rust belt cities: as prices drop low enough, people will move in and the city will be transformed into something no longer so rusty. Kinda like how Boston reinvented itself with high-tech after all the textile mills moved south in the 40s and 50s.
I've been fascinated with this topic for a few months... but it seems that one has to be really resourceful to deal with life in one of those neighborhoods.
Startups, and coders in general, need to move quickly. All the services a modern city offers come into play -- from the guy you hire to design the logo, to the superintendent who fixes the radiator, to cheap and fast burmese takeout.
Those $100 houses are much more conducive to an artist colony, where people are willing to put in more effort and deal with reduced efficiency for greater freedom, and complete control over the outcome. It might be interesting to found a "hacker's colony" along the same lines but it would have to be pretty non-commercial, or be composed of hackers who already had remote working arrangements with paying customers. I mean, if the taxis won't even go to your neighborhood, you're not going to get a lot of client meetings done.
I wonder how much it'd cost to build a giant glass dome on your block. Properly designed it seems like you could have SoCal weather in your dome year round, with some security and ability to have interesting house designs to boot.
Edit: To answer my own question with some googling, rough cost estimates of building a giant greenhouse are about $8 per square foot... (using polyethylene, not glass). So to cover a city block, with a 20 foot setback, would cost about $1 million... I guess I might have to scale back that plan a bit.
Most of us could easily afford it, free and clear.
$55 per $1,000 in assessed value due in property taxes, per year.
$75 if the property isn't covered by the "homestead" exception (i.e. you get one discount for a primary residence, everything else gets assessed at $75 per $1k.)
I rather doubt the city assessor's office will agree that the fair market value of your $1 house is $1, particularly after you invest money in making it habitable and/or after you successfully cause the neighborhood to be desirable.
Though for a fraction of what you pay in rent in San Fransisco you could own a perfectly suitable house in a perfectly suitable neighborhood in much of the Midwest.
Interestingly, the "assessed" value in Michigan appears to be 50% of the "fair market value" of the house. So that would be an effective tax rate of 2.25%, not 5.5%. (This still seems to be higher than other midwestern areas.)
Although provided you have fixed up a house or two and made the neighbourhood desirable, you could rent out one of the houses and use the income to pay the property taxes on all of them.
Haven't there been recurrent musings on Hacker News about getting a bunch of friends together and buying up a whole city block in Detroit?
Wow. I remember discussing that exact idea with a hacker colleague back in probably 1995 or so.
Buy a block. Fix it up. Surround with barbed wire fence.
I friend of mine that I haven't caught up with for about 10 years now owned 4 houses on Appoline last I knew. He probably owns at least a dozen now. He had them setup almost like "rooms". One had the PC and TV on the first floor and a gym in the basement. He "lived" in another, one was for his mom, and the other for a cousin.
Net access? The article talks about homes that have had the copper wiring stripped from them. (Actually -- I do want to do a full reno of a house one of these days)... how do you get onto the Tubes?
I'd totally be in if Google would open a Detroit office. ;-)
I predict that this is what'll happen with a lot of the rust belt cities: as prices drop low enough, people will move in and the city will be transformed into something no longer so rusty. Kinda like how Boston reinvented itself with high-tech after all the textile mills moved south in the 40s and 50s.