Kevin Brass is a writer who sent me a link to an article he wrote about UK investors in the Detroit Housing Market.

Sadly as a real estate right here in Detroit I have to laugh or cry for those UK investors.  I made a conscious decision last year not to work with out of state or out of country investors.  Yes I turned down money.  I turned down a lot of money.  I could have sold a lot of houses to out of country investors.

But I would have become a slick salesmen.  A person selling a product they don't believe in.  A swamp land real estate salesmen.  There were a lot of them back in the early 20th century in Florida.  Sure eventually the property became worth something but decades after naive investors bought into it.

Here is why I believe investing in Metro Detroit properties is a very risky investment.

1.)   There is no quality school system in the City of Detroit.  Last graduation rate I think I heard was about 25%.  But don't quote me exactly on that.  Without a quality school system it becomes a deterrent to live in the City of Detroit

2.)  If a investment property is empty of tenants it is usually stripped of anything valuable.  Furnaces, hot water heaters, copper plumbing, doors.  (Why they even had video of a Detroit fireman taking a door off a house and putting it on a firetruck)  So anytime a property is vacant it has a chance of being vandalized.

3.)  There are very high homeowner insurance costs because of the high crime rates.  Detroit has the highest murder, theft, assault, arson rate in the state of Michigan.  It has been the murder capital of the US many times.  They have featured Detroit for all the arson's of the vacant homes.

4.)  Detroit is a city financially struggling.  The infrastructure is too large for the tax base.  There have been too many residents leaving the city thus reducing the tax base.  Add to the huge reduction of property taxes income because of the home values dropping you have a big problem in the making.

5.)  Many seasoned local investors have given up on the City of Detroit.  So if local investors can make a good living out of it why do you think a person thousands of miles away can.   I know a lot of Metro Detroit investors.  The ones that have property in Detroit are crying the blues.

This is part 1 on my short series on investing in Detroit.