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It's very weird to think despite the major decline of Cairo, IL(after checking a few of your above street view links, found this a few blocks away from the street view of the collapsed roof house), that there's a STILL open Ford dealership in that town! They must be doing some things right, to still be open to this day. I'm surprised that Guetterman Ford hasn't relocated, to another town.
In reality, dealerships see very slim profit margins on new vehicle sales (their bread & butter is return customers who need service and used car sales). So many of them operate based on volume by selling new vehicles at extremely deep discounts, to establish their initial relationship that would bring people back in for vehicle repairs.
And the OEMs encourage this because they will give out generous bonuses to dealers who meet a certain sales threshold every month/quarter/year, which helps that dealer make up for the loss they incur from selling vehicles at/below invoice.
An automobile is the 2nd biggest purchase the average person will ever make in their lifetime, so people will travel some ways to complete this transaction if it means getting a great deal on their car. That's why these dealers in podunk towns seem to do good business.
Seven Mile & Gratoit, Detroit, MI | Street 2 | Street 3
Complete disaster; after the recession hit, entire blocks became abandoned one after one. Not much to say, we all know know enough about Detroit. To many would be the absolute worst case of urban decay and abandonment.
The first image is technically not 7 mile and Gratiot, but the neighborhood that's adjacent to the intersection. The other 2 images are technically a mile or two south of there, near the intersection of 6 Mile and Gratiot. And it didn't just happened after the recession either. If you compare the aerial image between 1983 and 2005, you can see how this neighborhood declined long before the 2008 economic collapse.
That is great they still do in the city also. I should have just did more a search. Chicago as far as I know only has the one Ford plant, but its economy was always more diversified so not as dependent on the Auto industry as a whole. Still for Corporate America and all the White-Flight fueled by old "redlining" keeping Blacks out then severe White-Flight, de-industrialization and abandoning by Corporate America including a lot of the Auto Industry.... It was a Perfect Storm negatively for Detroit in wealth and jobs.
This 2017 TV news program with a video in the link on Detroit and its drastic white-flight especially after the 2017 riots that created a overnight movement of those who were White.
from the link.
- After the riots white flight was frantic. Sixty-seven-thousand people fled in the summer following the uprising, 80,000 more the following year.
-It opened the door for black families who only dreamed of owning homes like those in Sherwood Forest. The racial makeup would flip from majority white to 75 percent black over the next decade.
Add Blockbusting by Real Estate firms that I am sure was not just Chicago and its White-flight booster.
Blockbusting - is a business process in which U.S. real estate agents and building developers convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices, which they do by telling house owners that racial minorities will soon move into their neighborhoods in order to instill fear in them.
- The agents then sell those same houses to black families who are desperate to escape overcrowded ghettos at much higher prices.
Anyway there are many links about even just wikipedia. Many Black Families then lost their homes when they could not bay the high cost or the loans they could not get from regular banks at lower interest etc..... so perhaps leading to much of the city just abandoned then also? Clearly, Detroit had even the MOST of total abandonment of homes that just rotted away then.
Once all cleared out.... there will be a lot of land for a new city to emerge...... same for areas of other rust-belt cities that had their share and cleared out or eventually will. land for new infill when the Sunbelt cost rise enough or just looses favor or environmental issues arise to effect the migrations currently still in full-force.
The housing market is insane regardless of where you are city wise. Obviously prices can be extremely different depending on the location, but it's a knife fight if you're looking to buy these days.
That being said, some of the cities you have in mind aren't nearly as rock bottom as you're thinking in terms of price. Here's the current average housing price according to Zillow for some of the major Midwestern cities (city proper only) plus Philadelphia and Baltimore since you mentioned them:
Minneapolis - $318,146
Chicago - $292,302
Philadelphia - $215,000
Columbus - $200,515
Cincinnati - $199,689
Kansas City - $194,803
Indianpolis - $180,776
Baltimore - $176,551
Milwaukee - $157,607
St. Louis - $153,594
Cleveland - $86,559
Detroit - $49,909
I'm most familiar with St. Louis, and prices are skyrocketing. Doesn't matter that we're the most dangerous city in the nation, doesn't matter that you can still get a home in parts of north city for pennies in comparison to other cities, etc.
I'm frankly confused as to why Detroit and Cleveland are still so low.
Good points. According to Redfin, the median price in Chicago is $370,000, not $292,000 as Zillow has with a median of middle priced homes. I have added stats for the worst neighborhood in the southside (Englewood) and westside (Austin) in Chicago. The prices are not cheap, especially in Austin, and are up in one year in April by 50% there. Englewood's housing prices are percentage wise going out of sight. Even those in the "ghetto" are being priced out.
I have been in some deadly looking places in Charlotte and Cincinnati , they were weird and other worldly in ways. You can roll into some dangerous places in America, and not even realize it, until you look around.
Drive 5 minutes up Providence Ave and you're in wealthy Swarthmore. It always struck me as so strange that two diametrically opposed suburbs could exist in such close proximity to each other.
Visit the city of Detroit/Grosse Pointe border in Michigan. Wealth and poverty literally separated by feet.
Yes. Benton Harbor is the Detroit of west Michigan. Benton Harbor now has undrinkable city water like Flint. Cross the bridge into the town of St Joseph and it is night and day difference.
In St Louis simply cross north of delmar and it is racially/economically segregated
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