Friday, March 5, 2010

The Inchvestor



Jerry Paffendorf is one of the pioneer entrepreneurs of Second Life. During the big media boom, his name came up in many of the stories dealing with virtual real estate.

Roughly a year ago, he spoke with Rita J. King, founder of "Dancing Ink Productions", about his new real life venture. The story can be found here. Loveland, so the name of the project, is a micro real estate project, selling land in the Detroit area inch by inch. (King is currently his biggest investor.)

Detroit has 62,000 uninhabited buildings and vacant lots, according to the U.S. Postal Service. Entire blocks of commercial and residential property are deserted. It's the harsh, physical evidence of a city that has lost 1 million people from its peak population of 1.8 million in the 1950s. Right now, Paffendorf is selling an inch of Detroit real estate for $1. After 10,000 square inches are sold, Paffendorf plans to begin selling property by the square foot.

NPR has an interesting story about this (click here) and so does the Detroit News.

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