[captain_perl]

Well, those are inflated prices from being listed on Trulia.

You can buy thousands of houses in Detroit at auction for $5,000 plus back taxes. They all will need rebuilding.

However, the soil is contaminated with heavy metals (I would check where the foundries and prevailing winds were) and the water supply has issues.

And if you want to raise a family, you will need to find an area with a credible school and police force.

[jdhn]

The biggest issue in my opinion are Detroit schools, they're just abysmal. Directly to the south of the houses I posted is a separate group of cities called the Grosse Pointes. They're in the same county as Detroit, but they're their own cities complete with different schools. The same houses I posted above would go for 1.5-2x their price if they were less than a mile south simply due to the school districts.