Chinese Investors Flock To Detroit

Pacific Standard:

 Detroit, the largest American municipality to ever file for bankruptcy, is clearly broken. More than $18 billion in debts pushed the city to this point. In December, a federal judge ruled that even city workers’ pensions are fair game for cuts.
Yet for some—namely foreign investors and owners of the Cleveland Cavaliers—Detroit’s diminished state spells opportunity. Late last year, a Peruvian developer bought the former Packard automotive plant—all 30 football fields of it—for $405,000. Chinese investors are collecting derelict homes, some by the dozens. And Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans, owns or controls over eight million square feet in more than 40 properties in downtown Detroit. That’s as much space as three Empire State Buildings, and enough to make him the second-largest property owner in downtown after General Motors.
“If Dan Gilbert ever gets tired of Detroit,” Kurt Metzger, director emeritus of Data Driven Detroit, told me, “Detroit is screwed.”...
In an October auction, a Chinese firm bought two buildings in downtown Detroit for $13.6 million, including the former home of the Detroit Free Press. The buildings were purchased at auction by the Shanghai-based Dongdu International Group, which outbid Gilbert and snagged the buildings sight unseen. Similarly, since last summer and fall, Chinese and other foreign investors have remotely been buying abandoned homes, often at the cost of an inexpensive dinner, through online auctions and Michigan-based realtors.

But it's not just Detroit:

 Chinese investors continue to run, not walk, toward foreign financial opportunities. Real Capital Analytics says Chinese investment in Europe tripled from 2012 to 2013; in the U.S., the $4.3 billion spent in 2013 by the Chinese on commercial property was more than the previous five years combined. And, according to the Rhodium Group, a New York-based consulting firm, Chinese companies doubled their direct investment in the United States from $7.1 billion in 2012 to $14 billion in 2013 (and up from just $340 million in 2007).

I remember back when I was in high school and the Japanese were buying up real estate in the U.S.  I was such a jingoistic asshole racist right-wing nut back then.  I thought all those Japanese purchases were terrible, and that Congress should block them.  Then the Japanese economy blew up, and American investors bought most of them back at a discount.  I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened with the Chinese.