H OUSING N EWS R EPORT
April 2016
home within the city’s water district, according to Theodoroff. “There are a lot of younger people that realized that the biggest bang for the buck they can get is in the city of Flint. … I’ve had two listings in the past month in the city of Flint, and I sold them very quickly,” he said, noting one listing sold to a single man for $27,000 and another sold to a family with young children for $30,000. “Our downtown area has had quite a revitalization with lofts, and an old hotel was converted into apartments that had a waiting list.” The price points of Theodoroff’s recent two listings aren’t too far off the median price for the city, which RealtyTrac data shows was $22,961 in the first two months of 2016, down from $28,788 in the first two months of 2015. Median prices in Flint zip codes range from as low as $6,528 in 48505 to $49,111 in 48532. Thanks to steps that have been taken to mitigate the water crisis in recent months, the fight real estate agents are waging now is mostly about perception, according to
“The auto industry drives the majority of the Southeast Michigan economy. … The big three have regained their foothold and done very well,” said Sussex, who has owned his brokerage since 2004 and said that the homes in the region lost roughly 35 percent of their value during the downturn. “Over the last three years, we’ve regained 20 percent to 25 percent of that 35 percent.” Sussex noted that the city of Flint was lagging the recovery even before the water crisis hit. “In Northern Oakland and Genesee County, the values have been appreciating since 2013, which is a complete reversal from 07, 08, 09,” he said. “Flint it has not seen the recovery that everyone else has. It has not seen the recovery in the car industry that everyone else has … And then you add the water crisis on top of that and it kind of squelches any kind of recovery.”
Cliff Lipscomb Director of Economic Research
Greenfield Advisors Cartersville, Georgia
“ What both Porter Ranch and Flint show is that sales volume is affected by incidents that affect the way a person can use and enjoy their property.
”
Localized Impact
On the other hand, the recovery has taken hold in towns like Grand Blanc, located about
five miles south of Flint, and Mount Morris, located about 10 miles north of Flint, according to Sussex. RealtyTrac data shows median home prices were up 11 percent year-over-year in Mount Morris in the first two months of 2016, and home prices in Grand Blanc were down 4 percent during the same time period — a relatively small decrease compared to the 21 percent drop in Flint. Even the water crisis has done little to slow the momentum in those peripheral cities, according to Sussex, who said that he recently worked with buyers purchasing a home in Grand Blanc, and the water quality was a non-issue for them. “It didn’t even come up as a question in my buyers mind in terms of any disclosures whatsoever,” he said. “It wasn’t even on the radar. Because Grand Blanc, even though it’s Genesee County, it’s outside of the Flint Water District.”
Theodoroff.
Aging Infrastructure
“If anything good is coming out of this, we are going to get a ton of federal money to fix the infrastructure,” he said, adding that many other Midwestern markets with older homes may be facing similar environmental problems caused by aging infrastructure in the near future. “I just want the pipes re- coated or everything dug up and fixed. And it appears we’re going to get the fix now.” Lipscomb, the environmental economist, noted the Porter Ranch crisis was also rooted in old and failing infrastructure. “Porter Ranch is an old oil well that was repurposed as a natural gas storage facility,” he said. “It seems to be an infrastructure issue. Flint is very similar in that respect. This is an infrastructure issue. This is a lead contaminant problem caused by an aging infrastructure.”
Betting on Flint
But some buyers are willing to bet on Flint, even with the required disclosures and water tests that come with buying a
While the Flint water delivery infrastructure is being fixed, real
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