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Comment by jdhn | Hacker News Reader

As someone who works in Detroit, I think that the city is a lot more fragile than people like to believe. Quicken Loans is just as vulnerable as the auto makers due to the fact that its core business is dependent upon consumer demand. Fewer people buying homes due to economic factors like rate raises and a general downturn in the economy is going to hit them hard. Sure, there's other companies downtown like GM in the RenCen, BCBS, and StockX, but Quicken Loans is the juggernaut.

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as a young person i'm constantly looking for cheap areas to live with growth prospects. i went to detroit for a weekend last year and was just stunned by how cheap some of the property is, but also how run down the east side of town is, it's unfathomable to believe that could happen to an american city until you visit. on a block of 10 houses there would be 5 empty/stripped, 4 rundown, 1 artist commune.

i just don't see what the growth prospects are for detroit. i don't think manufacturing is coming back anytime soon to the US, and in terms of natural resources/weather detroit seems limited. the music scene is cool, but not the serious tax revenue generator the city needs. as a resident are you seeing any growth industries cropping up?

Maybe AV R&D, but that's the biggest one right now. Duo Security just got bought by Cisco for $2 billion I believe, but that's in Ann Arbor.

I'm excited to see what happens when/if StockX is bought by someone. It could turn out to be the spark the city needs to jumpstart more tech jobs.

i checked out stockx it's like an ebay focused narrowly on street wear. i guess tech$co$ acquiring this could provide some jobs but isn't ebay laying off/rebranding and doesn't craigslist (similar concept) operate with 50 employees? hopefully the car industry can overcome AV level 3+ challenges and bring some affordable autos to mkt soon with true hands off autonomous (level 3) capabilities

StockX is owned by Dan Gilbert.

> just stunned by how cheap some of the property is

What kind of prices are you talking about?

Here's a selection of homes from East English Village, which has won the Detroit Curbed Cup competition 2 years in a row (for what that's worth):

3 bd / 1 bth / 2 car garage: $90k [0]

4 bd / 2 bth / 2 car garage: $190k [1]

3 bd / 2 bth / Garage status not mentioned: $120k [2]

[0]https://www.trulia.com/p/mi/detroit/5257-cadieux-rd-detroit-...

[1]https://www.trulia.com/p/mi/detroit/4800-bishop-st-detroit-m...

[2]https://www.trulia.com/p/mi/detroit/5042-grayton-st-detroit-...

Well, those are inflated prices from being listed on Trulia.

You can buy thousands of houses in Detroit at auction for $5,000 plus back taxes. They all will need rebuilding.

However, the soil is contaminated with heavy metals (I would check where the foundries and prevailing winds were) and the water supply has issues.

And if you want to raise a family, you will need to find an area with a credible school and police force.

The biggest issue in my opinion are Detroit schools, they're just abysmal. Directly to the south of the houses I posted is a separate group of cities called the Grosse Pointes. They're in the same county as Detroit, but they're their own cities complete with different schools. The same houses I posted above would go for 1.5-2x their price if they were less than a mile south simply due to the school districts.

What's with the real estate photography trend of trying to make everything look like a circa 1998 3D Render?

I bet that it's due to subpar lighting combined with the mindset that HDR will fix all visual flaws.

Just a few years ago there were some spectacular deals if you didn't mind a (major) fixer-upper: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cheap-detroit-houses-auction_...

While you're unlikely to find anything like that today, the prices vary widely depending on which part of the city you look at. According to Zillow, the median price is $41.5k but the range is massive (i.e. low 5-figures at the low end to (I believe) low 7-figures at the high end)

Not up on the current but there were houses for ~$10k a few years ago. That's next to a burnt out crack house from the Eminem movie, like #8 below:

https://detroit.curbed.com/maps/lose-yourself-in-this-8-mile...

StockX just raised the biggest VC round in Detroit history, with $44MM from GV and Battery.[1]

Full disclosure: I’m on the StockX Engineering team (serverless), and we’re hiring.

[1] http://detroithomecoming.com/stockx-raises-44-million-from-n...

You guys don't happen to use F# do you? Is it all python/SQL?

What's even more worrying is that years after the bailout, investment and economic stabilization, detroit's population is still declining ( although at a slower rate ).

If people are leaving when times are good, what will happen during a recession?

Moreover QL's technology is as brittle as GM's or Ford's. They happen to have an acute focus on customer service and marketing which made them number 1. But it's a matter of time before someone automates the hell out of the mortgage industry correctly. As far as I've seen, it's Shore Mortgage.

For a company that’s trying to automate an industry (Shore), I’ve ancedotally heard nothing good about their technical stack and technical talent.

QL definitely has a huge focus on automation right now.

StockX is a Dan Gilbert company so if QL goes down, they probably do too.

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