Case Study: Bankruptcy In Detroit

On July 18th, 2013, Detroit became the largest city ever to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The city sat in $18 million in debt. Over the next couple of months, the city’s crime rate rose and many people lost their jobs and left the city of Detroit, which hurt the real estate market. Detroit relied on the auto industry, which slowly terminated jobs. Forbes reported one out of every 764 homes foreclosed. More than 100,000 homes and 78,000 buildings were vacant during this period of time. The price of homes went down 35% from what it had been before. As time passed, the market bottomed out and began to rise. “As values continue to bounce back, there is great opportunity to capitalize on higher return rates,” said Albert Bonaderet, co-founder