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Perhaps Kentucky Fried Movie was more prophetic than we realized in 1977:
Pennington: These are the Hartz Mountains of Asia. A terrain so rugged, so treacherous, no country will claim it.
Asquith: Worse then Detroit?
Pennington: I'm afraid so.
Dr. Klahn: The CIA thinks they can infiltrate the Mountain of Dr. Klahn!
CIA Agent: You can't scare me, you slant-eyed yellow bastard.
Dr. Klahn: Take him to... Detroit!
CIA Agent: No! No, not Detroit! No! No, please! Anything but that! No! No!
Things have gotten so bad in Detroit, houses are now cheaper than cars:
The city, which has lost more than half its population in the past 30 years and struggled with rising crime, failing schools and other social problems, largely missed out on the housing boom that swept much of the country in recent years.
Prices have gained less than 2 percent per year in the five years since 2001, when the auto industry entered a renewed slump.
Steve Izairi, 32, who re-financed his own house in suburban Dearborn and sold his restaurant to begin buying rental properties in Detroit two years, was concerned that houses he thought were bargains at $70,000 two years ago were now selling for just $35,000.
At least 16 Detroit houses up for sale on Sunday sold for $30,000 or less.
A boarded-up bungalow on the city's west side brought $1,300. A four-bedroom house near the original Motown recording studio sold for $7,000.
"You can't buy a used car for that," said Izairi. "It's a gamble, and you have to wonder how low it's going to get."
Detroit, where unemployment runs near 14 percent and a third of the population lives in poverty, leads the nation in new foreclosure filings, according to tracking service RealtyTrac.
With large swaths of the city now abandoned, banks are reclaiming and reselling Detroit homes from buyers who can no longer afford payments at seven times the national rate.
Michigan was the only state to see home prices fall in 2006. The national average price rose almost 6 percent but prices slipped 0.4 percent here, according to a federal study.
The state's jobless rate of 7.1 percent in January was also the second highest in the nation, behind only Mississippi.
I'm not sure where the bottom is, but can the last person to leave Detroit please turn out the lights? |