Yep--the Detroit housing market is nightmarish.

This article is making the rounds, with reports of half-million dollar houses going at auction for less than one third of the listing price.

A caveat: foreclosure auctions are a skewed sample of the market. They usually have a lot more problems than just ex-owners who are unable to pay.

That said, it's still a frigging nightmare. We had a realtor in (a friend of the family) to give us the lowdown on the housing market in these parts.

The bottom line: If everything comes together, we just might be able to sell our house for what we paid for it. Factoring in inflation, we'll lose money. That's a gut punch, especially given the update money we've poured into it over the past six years.

Michigan is the only State in the Union currently in recession. It's bad enough now, but if Ford can't pull out of its death spiral, it's going to get very, very ugly.