What a deflated bubble looks like in Buick City

[redmondjp]

Since attending my first two years of college in Flint, MI (formerly home to at General Motors Institute (now ) back in the mid-1980s, occasionally I check the news to see what is happening in that area. And let me tell you, it hasn't been pretty. Hundreds of thousands of square feet of prime American manufacturing has literally disappeared from that area over the past quarter-century, not to mention countless thousands of once-secure, high-paying jobs. This is the city that filmmaker Michael Moore made his first documentary about, called (worth seeing, BTW, even if you don't agree with his political views--and make sure to also catch the followup documentary entitled Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint).

Today while perusing the , I decided to check the . Total number of listings (greater Flint area): 1745, listed on 175 pages at ten properties per page. I sorted from lowest to highest price. Now guess how many pages I had to go through before I hit the six-figure price level--no, seriously, go ahead!


Eighty-eight. The first $100K property occurs on page 89. Wow.

That's 88 pages, or 880 properties, most of them having a 2 or 3 bedroom house on them, for UNDER $100K! So out of the 1745 properties listed, almost half of them are under the $100K mark.

Take this on Bagley Street, which is near the university and very close to where I used to live (nice tree-lined streets with mostly well-kept older homes, well at least 25 years ago it was like this): $27,500 (less than a new H3 Hummer!!!). Can you even imagine what this exact same house would be listed for if it was in, oh, Ballard? Oh, check out the picture of the back yard with the shed on the left--look carefully underneath the overgrown tree on the right--I think that's a real, live deer!

Now to state the obvious, Seattle is not Flint and I don't think we'll ever see the same level of urban disaster here as now exists in Flint (well, not until after the next BIG quake, like the one which rocked the whole Pacific coastline from N. CA all the way to Canada in 1700). However, if I were to obtain a flux-capacitor-equipped Delorean and travel back to 11/12/85, and were to tell folks living in Flint that in 20 years their property values would drop by 50-75%, they would stare at me in disbelief, the way that some perma-RE-bulls around here do if you dare to suggest that somehow values could actually go down in Seattle.

I haven't been back to Flint since 1990, where I attended the graduation of my class (I told them I would but they didn't believe me, since I had moved back to my home state of WA to finish college at WSU). From looking at the satellite maps, I can see that most of the Chevrolet complex adjacent to the university (where the small-block Chevy motor was designed, tested, and built for decades, and where some of the major sit-down strikes of the late 1930s occurred) has been razed, with only the faint outlines of the building walls left. It's kind of depressing, really. And you can bet that countless people who lived there over the years have all told themselves at one time or another: "it can't happen here."

[rose-colored-coolaid]

What a relief that we live in a city where this could never happen. Manufacturing is easy for competitors to compete with, but not software. Let's compare.

The Set-Up
The rust-belt was vitalized by a growing tech industry (autos) where a couple major players (Big 3) settled in. These Big 3 bought up (or ran out of business) any smaller innovative companies, and eventually had more than 80% of total market share.

Seattle however, has grown primarily around a newer tech industry (computers) with one player settling in the area. This company has frequently (and unethically?) purchased or run out of business smaller more innovative companies, eventually seizing about90% of the total market share.

The Follow-Up
In autos, foreign makers entered the market, and were mocked for their futile attempts - for a time. Eventually, these startups developed their products, and began to penetrate market share and mind share. This was the Big 3's opportunity to innovate.

In software, Linux opened the door to free open source software (FOSS) and Apple managed to keep a small share of the market, both were mocked as being a futile attempts - for a time. Eventually FOSS products began to develop into being usable, and Apple became incredibly hip. Meanwhile, the market shifted towards the WWW, where a different giant company is the 800lb gorilla.

The End
The Big 3 are now...what...the Big 3 out of 4? And only until Honda overtakes Chrysler.

But in Seattle, we are untouchable. This will never happen to us.

[WestSideBilly]

I moved here from a city that wasn't quite as bad off as Flint, but I know where you're coming from. An ex girlfriend bought a house there for under $40k, and she had dozens to choose from in that price range. And it is a nice little house. It would probably sell for $500k or more in Queen Anne/Ballard/Green Lake. Pretty disturbing when you think about it.