Well, Well...A Home Selling Gimme for Grosse Pointe Shores

Lots of government agencies do deals and giveaways to get people to move to their area and promote home ownership in it.  State housing agencies have low interest rates and downpayment assistance programs. HUD has a hero program that gives house buying incentives to cops, teachers, and other hard-working professionals to buy homes in underdeveloped (poorer) neighborhoods.  Some even have programs to encourage their college graduates to stay put and buy a house.

But Grosse Pointe Shores, a well-to-do Detroit suburb on the shores of Lake  St. Clair, has a unique come-on.  Last year, they started a program to offer the use of boat wells at the city marina, rent free for one year, to people who bought a home there.  The program has been deemed a success and will continue.  The program has two aims: the encourage home buying there, and to fill up the city marina, whose well rentals have fallen with the great recession. 

One of the cool things about living in the Great Lakes region is that access to water is not a rare, out-of-reach thing. A friend of mine bought a house with a gorgeous view of Maumee Bay in a foreclosure deal, and middle class people in the Toledo neighborhood of Pointe Place enjoy Lake Erie as their personal backyard.  Now an enterprising city has taken advantage of this selling point to hustle homes.  Good for them!