Thanks for the opinions.
Indian Village would definitely something that we would consider for the long haul. About 5 years ago, while we were living in New York, my wife and I restored and sold a historic investment property here in Florida and found it to be a rewarding experience, both historically and financially. The homes in Indian Village give us that same feeling, albeit in a far less hot market. I just can't get over the fact that these huge, gorgeous properties are so inexpensive. I mean, from some of the prices that we've seen, we could pay cash for a few of them. We're definitely keeping our eye on that area.
We were up in Royal Oak for a residential property auction earlier in the year (of the burnt down, boarded up variety) and noticed the same. We've actually milled over buying some commercial space as well and moving some of our company's manufacturing up to the area. We haven't had the time to really look into the benefits of opening a satellite workroom other than real estate costs. It's probably something that we should revisit. I know that here in Florida, the state of Michigan is putting on the full court press as far as getting out of state corporations to move operations north.
As a kid, I remember the area being so robust, and even those the area's fallen on hard times, there are so many wonderful areas that still remain. With a large part of her family still living in the suburbs of Detroit, it's definitely a big draw for my wife and me.
that would be great if you moved your company to michigan..
is michigan offering tax breaks? if i were the state, i'd make some very long term tax break offers (at least 10 years or so)....the cost of moving a company to a new state requires at least that...
certainly other costs are going to be lower in michigan....relative to other states, real estates costs are much lower....and wages are lower than some......
Royal Oak is actually a great area.....it's come back in recent years....sort of a birmingham wannabe, but in an interesting way...
and there are some really nice houses there....
if you can get a good deal on a house there, it's probably a good investment...i'm not so sure about detroit....
by the way, there are other neighborhoods in detroit with the most gorgeous mansions you can possibly imagine....or at least there were...i wonder what happened to them...i can't remember the streets...
i'll go look it up to see if i can find them...and of course there was palmer woods....but further over there were a couple of streets with incredible mansions....maybe around 6 mile?...or maybe further downtown.....chicago st?...boston blvd?....something like that...
i wonder if there are people living there or if it's bombed out like the rest of detroit....
oh wow - i'm coming back in to post this...
look at this incredible house designed by albert kahn in the boston-edison area:
http://realestate.yahoo.com/Michiga...725bd46af4b;_ylt=AqoceV38HZ0ljVIPUOJW_nDnMrQs
looking at the price of that one, if indian village is only $150,000, it's probably not that bad a bet...since it's on the east side (isn't it?) ...that's probably the safer bet to make in detroit....northern detroit certainly isn't...
They've only gone down because the ACTUAL value of the home has decreased. Unfortunately, all the foreclosures you see around here aren't taken into consideration when the assessor does his assessments. I guess that's a good thing too because of our Headly Amendment and Proposal A, our taxes would drop so drastically that the cities wouldn't be able to function.
i know....my mom's going crazy over the taxes she pays on her house....it is soooooooooooooo overvalued for tax assessment purposes...
a house down the street from her was foreclosed (we're talking bloomfield hills - how obscene is that??).....it was finally sold by the bank for less than half the tax assessment value.....less than half!!!.....she's livid....
she wants to sell and get out mainly because of the insane property taxes she's paying .....
by the way, why was that house foreclosed? the people who owned it bought another house and walked away from the old one....left it to the bank....it's amazingly not illegal to do that....nothing the bank can do to them since the house itself was the collateral....so they bought a new house and walked away from the old one...unbelievable...
the only thing that's affected is their credit rating and they didn't care...
unbelievable....
Jane Seymore is still looking good after all these years!
Hello Michiganders!! from another Michigander! 
