Griffin Moores | MLive.com A house on Hazelton Street is for sale by Burrell Real Estate in Flint.
FLINT, MI — Rosemary Robinson had lived in Flint for a couple of years before she decided it was time to buy her first house.
So why did the 25-year-old decide to buy a home in Vehicle City?
“The prices,” Robinson said. “They are cheaper than renting.”
A list put out by 24/7 Wall St. put Flint as No. 2 of 10 cities where buying a house can be cheaper than a car.
Local people in the real estate industry say it isn’t too far from the truth.
“What price of car are you talking about?” said Mike Conn, president of the Flint Area Association of Realtors. “It’s kind of a vague thing. There are used cars out there that are $200 to $300 and there are literally houses for the same amount, although they probably need to be bulldozed.
“Is that a bulk of our market? By far, no.”
The association has on record 198 homes that are listed for sale for under $10,000 in Genesee County.
The majority of those homes are in Flint and Mt. Morris Township and start, at the low end, at about $1,400, he said.
“The majority of them are pretty poor,” Conn said. “Probably the greater percentage of them need to be demolished. There are a lot of investors buying these, fixing them up and getting them back on the market to rent them out.”
Many of the homes listed at such low prices are owned by banks or the Genesee County Land Bank, he said.
The amount of time these houses spend on the market depends on the condition, with one having been listed for almost 2,000 days, Conn added.
“There are a lot of other ones that are on the market and sold if they are in halfway decent shape and they are cash sales and a majority of them are going to investors,” he said. “A lot of them are reselling them to people who aren’t able to get a mortgage.”
Low property values also have a ripple effect in the community when considering the city takes in revenue from property taxes.
“As we are putting together our budget and looking at that, if you compare average property values for this year compared to 2005, property values are almost down 50 to 60 percent,” said Jerry Ambrose, Flint finance director. “The city budget relies maybe 25 to 30 percent on the strength of property values.”
While values are low, there is evidence to show the numbers are going up, Conn said.
“We saw a year or so ago more of them in that $1,000 to $500 range, but the prices are creeping up on them because of a lack of inventory on the area,” Conn said. “I think it will take a long time to get back to where it was in ’03 and ’04, but we are slowly creeping that way. It’s a good time to buy.”
The average home sale in the city of Flint was about $15,000 and the median was about $37,000, said Douglas Weiland, executive director of the Genesee County Land Bank.
The median is determined by finding the middle in the price range of home sales for the city.
“Both numbers, you can argue, can be skewed,” he said.
The Land Bank deals only with distressed properties, some of which are rehabbed with federal dollars through the Neighborhood Stabilization Fund Program.
Those properties are listed at the appraised value, which can be $20,000 to $50,000. Most of these properties, however, are in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, Weiland said.
The home that Robinson is in the process of buying is one of the rehabbed houses. She’s paying $24,000 and said the same house would have been $10,000 to $20,000 more in other communities.
Flint has its problems, but there are pockets of crime and economic depression in every community, she said.
“I’ve lived in Flint for a couple of years now,” Robinson said. “It’s more of you just have to be on your guard and don’t do anything stupid, don’t leave things unlocked.
“I grew up in Grand Rapids and there are parts of my parents’ neighborhood that looks worse than Flint.”