Ghost Towns Across America - No Signs Of Bottom

[Joanne98]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting After the Bubble, Ghost Towns Across America.


The Pfluegers are a bit lonely. Just one other family lives in any of the 28 new or unfinished houses on Foxboro Court. Up the street, a sign announcing "Elegant Homes" sits on a lot choked with weeds. The block is as quiet as an old ghost town.

Some of the projects abandoned by bankrupt developers are in places that were hotbeds of new housing construction: Southern California, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix. As of July, the percentage of vacant housing stock available for sale or rent stood at 4.8% nationally, the highest figure in at least 33 years, according to Zelman & Associates, a real-estate research firm.

Robert Waltenspiel lives with his wife and two daughters in a unfinished subdivision in Auburn Hills, Mich. Standing in front of his house, he can see more than 30 weed-choked lots where new houses were supposed to go. The developer halted construction more than two years ago. Mr. Waltenspiel's kids have no one in the subdivision to play with, so he has to take them to a nearby park for social interaction. His 4-year-old "will walk up to strange girls in the park and say, 'Hey, will you be my friend?' " he says. "A, it's adorable. B, it's sad."

Krista Anderson, an administrative assistant, lives in a subdivision outside Phoenix where the developer suddenly halted construction last fall, leaving behind not just unfinished houses but also scaffolding, piles of cement and construction material that "is turning yellow and looks bad."

"With my art and my books, I don't need to go outside," says Miriam Ramirez, who lives with her husband, a retired doctor, in a stalled subdivision in suburban Atlanta. "But not everybody's like that."

Real Estate Company of Arkansas, a local outfit, had been so eager to sell units that it raffled off a year's free rent for one house. On a cold weekend afternoon last December, more than 1,000 people showed up at the subdivision in hopes of winning the prize.

As a marketing effort, the event was a total bust. "We didn't sell one house," real-estate agent Michael McKinnon says. "We didn't get diddly."
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/08/ghost-towns-across-america-no-signs-of.html

They'd rather let them rot, then give them away for free.

[Juneboarder]

1. This is sad...

it's happening in my neighborhood in San Diego, CA... Developer stopped the construction about 2 years ago and they have been sitting ever since. One house has sold (those poor folks) and the rest of the 20 homes just sit.

On a positive note, my dog loves going to those vacant homes to run wild on their acre lots off leash!!! Doggie heaven...

[Warpy]

2. I saw this in the late 70s, too

and the builder can be forced to secure all the structures against vandals and squatters by boarding up windows and securing doors. That will help.

Once that is done, the people in the ghost towns are going to get really spoiled by country living and silence, something they wouldn't have had with continuing construction and new neighbors.

Around here, there are people in trophy houses surrounded by finished houses that were sold to speculators, mostly from out of state. Those houses have been totally abandoned now and vandals have started to rip out plumbing and wiring for the copper, rendering them uninhabitable. Most of them will end up being torn down, an appalling waste when so many people are falling into homelessness.

[murray hill farm]

3. I listed my house over a month ago...

thinking it would be a 2 yr process. Not one showing or call of interest thus far. I think now that my 2 yr process was way too optimistic.

[Warpy]

4. The only way to generate interest is to list at a fire sale price

because the decline in house prices is going to continue for some time as oversupply keeps prices heading south.

Know your market, though. Houses in my area of the inner city are selling well to people who want short commutes. Nicer houses with longer commutes are not.