A Very Detroit Problem

This post is part two in the "Shit's Gettin' Realz" series. Click here to read part one.

Here's the thing about navigating the experience of Detroit: What are normal, reasonable assumptions often turn out to be quite wrongheaded and yet serendipity seems to be built into the social fabric of the place. This is how you can buy a historic house for $7500, within a week meet 20 people who genuinely make you feel like you matter, and still wonder what the frick you have gotten yourself into. How things work here reminds me a little of the Mad Hatter's tea party except that everyone is pulling up a chair for you.

By late April, Chai had finished the final tweaks on the architectural drawings and we had gathered 6 names of contractors from neighbors and local architects we have met. Six seemed like plenty, and so we sent out the drawings for bids. Weeks passed. Crickets chirped. Planets spun on their axes. And we got nearly no response to first emails and to second emails. We were baffled--I mean, we wanted to throw 10s of thousands of dollars of work to people in an economically depressed area. You'd think that would be a welcome opportunity, right?


So, we called the head of our neighborhood community development corporation (with whom we had shared our drawings), and asked what we were doing wrong. He kindly explained that, while we were right to expect that the depressed nature of the area would create an exceptional dynamic, it was not in the way we thought.

A lot of people have come to Detroit in recent years, attracted by cheap real estate, and asked contractors to estimate renovations for them. Once potential buyers realize that the work would cost more than the property is worth, they bag it and go home. That's a lot of time invested for free, over and over again, that has never paid off for the contractors. So, our elaborate set of drawings for a house that had been stripped and unoccupied for 6 years (except for the occasional squatter) smelled like trouble.  Nobody believed that we'd actually  spend that kind of money on a house in such a poor housing market.

For starters, one contractor was decent enough to turn us down right away; one let us know he wasn't interested but only after a mutual acquaintance pestered him on our behalf; one contractor never even acknowledged our inquiry; the guy that had originally guessed $75K for habitability came in at $120K for our full plans but refused to put in the time to create a line item breakdown of costs; and a fifth came in at $180K for our full plans but never replied when we asked for a spreadsheet showing line items. But we did get one really thorough and professional bid with all the line items and contingencies laid out... which came in at $300K. 

Yes, $300K. Cue Groucho Marx' rubber chicken and somebody please tell me that the secret word to winning this crazy challenge is "Pollyanna".

What you need to know here is that the drawings we provided included all of our nice-to-haves for all future phases of work--wrought iron fence, landscaping, new roof, finished third floor, powder room on main floor, knocking out the wall between staircase and living room, etc. We wanted to know both what it would cost to make the place habitable and what to budget for in the long run. Now, $300K for all that comes out to just under $100/sf for a professional renovation, which is still a helluva good deal where we come from, especially for a renovation that involves rebuilding a two-story, exterior wall. But, still, it's a LOT of money for people like us--money we don't have.

So, while I was breathing into a bag, Chai got busy whittling the drawings down to the parts that were absolutely necessary (by both her idealistic standards and my pragmatic ones). We started asking around as to the reputation of the three contractors that gave us numbers. (How easy are they to work with? How well do they communicate? How close on budget do they come in?) While they all got high marks in quality of work, in pretty much everything else one guy was the stand out: of course, it was the $300K bidder.

Our pantry walls and ceiling.
Forget generic "ruin porn". I'm starting
a new art form: mold porn.
You saw it here first folks.

Even though the lower bids sounded nice, it was looking more and more like they would probably sneak their way closer to the higher bid in the end, only with more miscommunications and less confidence that we would get what we expected. The high bidder was also a good sport about indulging our ignorance and need for iterations in sizing the plans. He patiently helped us bring the project down, item by item, to something that might keep me off of Valium, skillfully complimenting Chai on her design all the while. When we interviewed him in person recently, he shared a story about renovating a house that had had a fire in the basement and a sagging, partially missing first floor that he was able to jack up and re-stabilize and make like new. We had just seen how pervasive the mold in the back wall was (now that the cabinets had all been removed by our clean-up crew). So, we knew we needed someone who could tear down the back of the house without damaging anything else in the process. Considering that we would not be in Detroit to monitor the project day after day and thus would need frequent, clear communication, the choice of contractor became pretty apparent.

We did also interview in person one of the non-line-item guys (one that some neighbors really liked). He reminded us that he had already spent 3 unpaid days putting together the number he had given us. He would give us line items, if that's what we really wanted, but not until we gave him the budget and not until we promised him the work. Sizing the project according to a preset budget made no sense to us because (1) if the budget is too little, how will we know if we will end up with something we'd be happy with?, and; (2) to get the loan, the bank will require a detailed, signed estimate that is based on renovation plans that they will have to approve before they decide how much money to give us. Budget before estimate was putting the cart before the horse. He also seemed pretty down on the whole Detroit experience, telling us 3 times in the span of 45 minutes how hard of a city Detroit is to live in.

Yeah, so we've heard.

But before we could go back to Colorado and I could resume crouching and rocking in my favorite corner, we still had to wear the "think positive" hat for one more day. The main reason for this trip to the D was to present our renovation plans to the Historic District Commission and, hopefully, get approved for a building permit without the project requirements and costs mushrooming even further.

Coming up: A $500 fine, an asshole from Ohio, and a map down the garden path (in case you'd like to join me here).