Here is your utterly insane stat for the weekend:

According to the Chicago Tribune, the median price for a home sold in the month of December 2008 in Motor City is Seven Thousand, Five Hundred dollars.

I had to write it out that way because I simply couldn’t wrap my head around the numeral $7,500 for a home.

Granted, its in one of the most economically devastated regions of the country, but still — that data point is amazing.

The Trib:

“It may be tough to get financing for a new car these days, but in Detroit you can buy a house with a credit card. The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service. Not $75,000. Remove a zero—it’s seven thousand five hundred dollars, substantially less than the lowest-price car on the new-car market. Among the many dispiriting numbers that bleakly depict the decrepitude of this onetime industrial behemoth, the steep slide of housing values helps define the daunting challenge to anyone who wants to lead this shrinking, poverty-pocked city of about 800,000 people . . . On a positive note, Detroit’s homicide rate dropped 14 percent last year. That prompted mayoral candidate Stanley Christmas to tell the Detroit News recently, “I don’t mean to be sarcastic, but there just isn’t anyone left to kill” . . . John Mogk, a professor at Wayne State University Law School: “A thousand people are leaving the city every month and the city does not have the financial resources and the economic base to solve its own problems.”

Wow, those are just unbelievable numbers . . .

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Source:

Detroit’s outlook falls along with home prices

Tim Jones

Chicago Tribune, January 29, 2009

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-detroit-housingjan29,0,5435392.story

Previously:

Detroit Housing = ~$0 (February 27th, 2008)

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/02/detroit-housing-0/

Detroit Houses = $1 (August 13th, 2008)

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/08/detroit-houses-1/

Looking at the 1980 Chrysler Bailout (November 2008)

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/11/looking-at-the-1980-chrysler-bailout/