Catching up - How It All Began

All right, I've never blogged before, I really have no idea what I'm doing, but I thought that this might be a good way to share my experiences with the people who have been asking about how things are going. There's a lot of back tracking that needs to be done to get you all up to speed, so I guess we'll start from the beginning and see how it goes...

As some of you may know, back in October 2011 I purchased a house in Detroit's West Village in the Wayne County Foreclosure Auction. A bit crazy, yes, but it's been a dream of mine for quite awhile to move back into the city. And yes, I suppose I could have taken a more conventional route, but I guess I've never really done things the easy way.

The research was quite an adventure in itself. I caught wind of the auction through Loveland's Why Don't We Own This site. They had compiled the Detroit houses that would be available for purchase in the auction in handy lists and an interactive map that were categorized by zip code. Each address was also linked to Google Maps and to its listing on the auction website. Genius. And oh my gosh, so helpful. So I started compiling my own lists, maps, and photos of the properties that I was interested in. It was important to me that the home be unoccupied (I didn't want to be putting anyone on the street), in a "neighborly" neighborhood, and to be structurally sound with good bones.

After gathering information online, my next step was the drive by. After peeping at the perspective property from my car and determining that the house in question was indeed still standing (some weren't), I drove up and down the surrounding streets to get a feel for the area. If things were still looking good, my next move was to harass, er, speak to the neighbors. This usually meant knocking on doors, though, in what turned out to be my favorite neighborhoods, knocking on doors wasn't necessary because after seeing my slow drive, pause, drive, pause, move down their street, they had already come out to investigate what the heck this weird lady was doing. Yay for nosey neighbors! My goal was to get as much information as possible about the house, to of course see if the neighbors were friendly, and lastly, to let them know that I'd be snooping around the house for a bit, so please don't call the police or let your dog loose on me. Then, out came my camera and headlamp.

Most of the houses were surprisingly easy to get into, some had unlocked doors, some had open windows. One that I loved and ended up being a finalist, was a little tougher, but a neighbor who was eager to have a neighbor rather than a boarded up house next door, happily helped me gain access to the property. This involved a rickety ladder to scale the tall fence and almost a 2 story climb to an unlocked window, luckily I'd been honing my breaking and entering skills and was able to find a way in through a ground level door that only involved the slight risk of slicing my wrist on (already) broken glass. A day in the life...

I could probably write quite a tale of just the property research stage of my adventure. Besides keeping my own notes, I also posted some of my findings on the Why Don't We Own This site, hoping to help people in their own searches and to let potential buyers know of any important details that I uncovered, such as the presence of mold, the lack of water lines, or the case where someone was actually living in the home and had no idea that it was going to be sold to the highest bidder! Donna Terek of The Detroit News did a video piece about the auction that featured the creators of Why Don't We Own This. She also interviewed me regarding my involvement, and what made the final piece was that I had called attention to the property that was currently occupied. Here's the video, as found on Donna Terek's "Donna's Detroit" online column:

Well, I'll leave my inaugural blog post at that, for now. How'd I do? Any blogging pointers out there? Should I continue with the back story or just dive into what's happening now? Questions, questions...