I am not bragging here. But I am pointing out something really wrong. Aretha Franklin’s mansion in Detroit has been sold, for about the equivalent of £230,000. I live in a flat in London. All I’m saying is, were I to sell up tomorrow, it’s worth more than that.
How the fuck can my pit in London be worth more money than an actual mansion lived in by the Queen Of Soul Music? Something is badly wrong here.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/24/aretha-franklin-detroit-mansion-sells-auction
Rigid Digit says
???
I don’t live in that London, but my gaff (based on recent sales in the area) is also more than that figure.
Yes, something does seem amiss
DrJ says
That kind of money wouldn’t get you anything in Dublin either. The Detroit housing market, from the very little I know about it, has collapsed totally. The population was 1.8m in 1950, to just over 600,000 now. There’s too much housing stock and a lot of it is distressed. Let’s all move to Detroit!
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicaprobus/heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-buying-a-500-house-i
dai says
Yeah huge parts of the city are almost completely empty. Maybe they can turn the property into an Aretha museum or something?
Vulpes Vulpes says
And if you have even a small a house in London, you can sell up and move as far west as South Wales, Devon or Cornwall, buy a much bigger place with a garden and parking, and price a local out of the market. Supply & Demand innit.
Clive says
Which is exactly what we just did … tiny Sussex 3 bed semi with postage stamp garden = Lincolnshire 7 bed detached in an acre and some change. If there’s one bit of advice I’d give to kids it would be to choose a career you can do from home and not be tied to a city. And as for locals there’s hundreds of affordable houses for sale in the area
IanP says
This argument means Londoners can never be allowed to leave London because they “price the locals out of the market”.
Every fucker is allowed to come to London though, driving up the prices, and until MrsP and me die my kids will never be able to afford to buy a home in Hackney where they were born and bred.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Yebbut, who the feck wants to move to Lahndahn?
Tiggerlion says
Detroit is an object lesson in the deficiencies of capitalism. It is a city too dependent on one industry that was at its peak in the forties and has declined since. The most powerful companies, the big three General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, drove out weaker competitors. They then spread their plants far and wide, often to other parts of the country, so they never became too dependent on a single workforce. At one time, 90,000 people worked in one plant. In the meantime, there were racist housing policies. Most home owners were white, living in the suburbs and black people were unable to get a mortgage. Soon, with fewer jobs and race riots, a middle class exodus began. The businesses dependent on the custom of the workers collapsed. The tax take fell. Infrastructure, schools, police all suffered. Sub-prime loans made matters worse. The Wayne County Tax Foreclosure laws meant that when households couldn’t pay their equivalent of Council Tax, the house was seized and auctioned (Aretha nearly lost her mansion for this reason). Speculators snap up cheap properties but spend little on them and sell them on. The whole city is effectively bankrupt and run by the State.
I wouldn’t recommend buying a house there. You’ll end up with liabilities and losses you don’t want.
Here’s a long article in the Detroit local press that paints the picture very well:
https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/08/17/detroit-home-values-real-estate/921453002/
Having said that, the city is beginning to turn things around, bulldozing some neighbourhoods and bringing people together in certain parts where small businesses can start to thrive. It’s a slow process and the last thing Detroit needs are speculators who won’t actually live there.
Gatz says
Am I the only one who can’t read the title of the thread without thinking of it as a strip in Viz? The Queen of Soul experiences various Motor City property maintenance mishaps while belting out appropriate sections of her hits.
davebigpicture says
Damn builders got no R-E-S-P-E-C-T!
Mike_H says
Damn plumbers!
Chain chain chain?
Chain of fools!