Median Home SALE Prices in Detroit

On the way to Athens the other day, I read an interesting piece in Time Magazine about how bad things have gotten in Detroit in recent months. Earlier in the week, I had picked UConn (-4) to beat MSU, but after reading the article, I changed my pick to MSU. MSU has 9 players from the state of Michigan and 1 player from the city of Detroit. I heard Izzo mention in a press conference leading up to the UConn game that things had gotten really bad in the area and that MSU was playing for more than just their University. It's impossible to know if the problems in the state led to them playing any harder or better, but these are things I always like to think about in sports.

I told everyone in Athens about the article. I was intrigued by it for a few reasons. First, I really hadn't heard that much about how things bad things had really gotten in Detroit. Next, the medium home price in Detroit had fallen to around $10,000. I couldn't believe it. I found that, "One-third of the population lives in poverty, and almost 50 percent of children are in poverty, according to data from the Detroit-Area Community Indicators System. Median household income has dropped 24 percent since 2000, according to the Census Bureau." And their mayor, when asked about the murder rate dropping, responded with a joke about the reason being that there was no one left to kill. With all this in mind, I thought it was cool that they seemed to play an inspired game to knock off the favorite, UConn in the national semifinal game.

Then yesterday, Shane Goldwater Murray called me to inform me that I was way off base in thinking that Detroit had hit the shits. The median home SALE price in Detroit had fallen to below $8000 in the month of December. I had misspoken, and there were probably only like 2 houses sold in Detroit in December so it was Time Magazine manipulating the statistics. Therefore, things are just fine in Detroit, and the market will sort it all out. I agree: MSU probably won the game because they came out ready to play and executed. And because Izzo is a good motivator. Maybe they had no extra motivation- we will never know. But what we do know is that things are looking pleasant in Detroit and while the median home SALE price is less than $10,000, the median home price is probably well over $75k.

Thank you for correcting me, Goldwater. I will never misspeak again, and I will try to get my facts right from now on. Your understanding of economics is far superior to mine and any future help you can give me in understanding such complex issues is greatly appreciated.