From Birmingham to Detroit, no Metro city is immune

From Birmingham to Detroit, no Metro city is immune

Ron French / The Detroit News

Bentler Street and East Lincoln are separated by 13 miles and millions of dollars.

Bentler strays through the rundown Brightmoor district of Detroit, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the poorest big city in America. Thirteen miles away, East Lincoln saunters through a picturesque neighborhood of Birmingham, one of the region's poshest enclaves.

But walk slowly along both streets, and you'll see the telltale curtainless windows and dusty front porches of foreclosed homes.

The number and size of the bad loans are different between the communities. Yet both streets illustrate how no community, no matter how rich or poor, is immune from the housing meltdown.

East Lincoln is a street in transition. Half the homes are 1,000-square-foot bungalows and half are new "big-foot" homes, filling the small lots from end to end.

"This was a tear-down area," said Birmingham real estate agent Rebecca Meisner. "They may have paid $200,000 for a lot."

There are three foreclosures in a long block of East Lincoln just east of Woodward. For-sale signs dot the avenue.

"Property values have just tanked," said Michael Druzynski, the owner of a bungalow in the 1300 block of East Lincoln. "A house this size five years ago would have sold for $225,000. Now, you'd be lucky to get $150,000."

Foreclosures are pushing those values down. There are 125 homes in Birmingham that have been in some phase of foreclosure since January 2006. It's a low rate compared with much of Metro Detroit. But even this ritzy ZIP code has a rate above the national average.

The same thing is happening in the equally posh Grosse Pointes, where 318 homes were in some phase of foreclosure through August 2007 -- nearly triple the number in the first eight months of 2006.

"A lot of people were on ARMs (adjustable-rate mortgages)," Meisner said. "When the ARMs became due (reset to a higher interest rate), they couldn't make the payments anymore, and they couldn't sell because the property value had dropped."

Today along East Lincoln, there are homes that have been for sale for more than a year.

"In the neighborhood 10 years ago, homes were sold before the signs went up," Druzynski said. "That's how I knew the economy had changed -- when I saw for sale signs stay up for more than a week."

"We never used to see foreclosures in Birmingham, Bloomfield or Oakland County," Meisner said. "Now, they're everywhere."

On Bentler Street, foreclosures lead to worse things than declining property values. There, vacant homes become drug houses or are stripped of everything of value.

"As soon as a house is vacant, it gets vandalized," said Karen Reed of the 15700 block of Bentler. "They steal the copper. They stole the awning off a home."

On Reed's block, there are seven homes that have been in some phase of foreclosure since January 2006. Most are vacant and boarded up.

The street has never had much luck. Built in the 1920s as tract housing for autoworkers, the neighborhood went from harboring bootleggers to crack dealers.

Recently, the crime du jour turned to mortgage scams, said John O'Brien, executive director of the Brightmoor Alliance, a neighborhood community development organization.

"People have always taken advantage of the people here," O'Brien said. "You get a classy salesman and they get you into a home for less than you pay in rent, and then they get swamped by taxes and insurance."

Today, a street that always struggled with vacant homes has about a third of its homes empty. Some are boarded up, and others have signs announcing sheriff sales in the windows.

"Look at the block," Reed said. "Who's going to want to move here?"