Many years ago when I lived in CA and had a government job, I was often approached by real estate agents offering various deals in "planned communities" (an euphemism for various Disneylandesque or perhaps Potemkinesque developments in remote areas, where land was abundant and cheap.) Each time I replied to their sales pitch that it was a bad investment because of the difficulty in selling these properties (as prima facie evidenced by the extraordinary incentives they used to attract buyers) they thought I was crazy. I am glad that I did not bait that crap.
Wojtek
On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:54 PM, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>wrote:
> Willowalk is in Hemet, California. Not a lot of people lived in Hemet
> until the 1960s when it became a working-class retirement town. It was
> still pretty sleepy until the 2000s when they started building places like
> Willowalk.
>
>
> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hemet30-2010mar30,0,7301923.story
>
> [...]
>
> The 427-home Willowalk tract, built by developer D.R. Horton, featured
> eight distinct "villages" within its block walls. Along with spacious homes,
> Willowalk boasted four lakes, a community pool and clubhouse. Fanciful
> street names such as Pink Savory Way and Bee Balm Road added to the bucolic
> image.
>
> [,,,]
>
> Home foreclosures have devastated neighborhoods throughout the country, but
> the transformation from suburban paradise to blighted community has been
> especially stark in places like Willowalk -- isolated developments on the
> far fringes of metropolitan areas that found ready buyers when home prices
> were soaring but then saw an exodus as values crashed.
>
> [...]
>
> There are dozens of places like Willowalk, and they are turning into
> America's newest slums, says Christopher Leinberger, a visiting fellow at
> the Brookings Institution. With home values at a fraction of their peak, he
> said, it no longer makes sense to live so far from the commercial centers
> where jobs are concentrated.
>
> "We built too much of the wrong product in the wrong locations," Leinberger
> said.
>
> Thanks to overbuilding, demographic changes and shifts in preferences, by
> 2030 there could be 25 million more suburban homes on large lots than are
> needed, said Arthur C. Nelson of the University of Utah. Nelson believes
> that as baby boomers age and as younger generations buy real estate, the
> population will abandon remote McMansions for smaller homes closer to shops,
> jobs and the other necessities of life.
>
> Whatever their number, the presence of unwanted or abandoned homes stands
> to be a burden on local governments for years to come, as cash-strapped
> cities and counties have to spend precious resources to patrol the
> neighborhoods and clean unkempt yards and abandoned houses.
>
> "There are cities saying to us, 'I used to have eight code enforcement
> officers, and now I have one,' " said Bill Higgins, a staff attorney for the
> League of California Cities.
>
> About 80 California municipalities are striking back, enforcing ordinances
> that fine lenders up to $1,000 a day for not maintaining properties that
> have been foreclosed, Higgins said. But most cities don't have the resources
> to force absentee owners or renters to keep up their properties.
>
> In Hemet, city officials have simply boarded up homes in some troubled
> neighborhoods. Plywood covers the windows of dozens of apartments on Valley
> View Drive; resident David Hall says it keeps prostitutes and drug dealers
> out.
>
> Willowalk presents a different challenge. The development promised a
> Tiffany neighborhood for what was then something closer to a Target price.
>
> "Leave the world behind as you unwind by our picturesque lakes," cooed one
> advertisement, which touted "intimate botanical gardens and walking trails,
> tranquil lakes" and other attractions.
>
> At first, the reality matched the come-ons.
>
> Maria Lopez, a stay-at-home mother, recalls gazing at the mountains in the
> distance as her children played with groups of neighbors their own age. The
> community pool was just a few blocks away, and she says she used to let her
> older children, ages 13 and 14, go there by themselves.
>
> [...]
>
> The Willowalk Homeowners Assn. is trying to recapture some of the
> community's lost spirit. In recent months, it launched a trash committee --
> members pick up rubbish in the park -- and started a neighborhood watch
> group to keep an eye on residents' homes.
>
> But it wasn't enough for Angelica Stewart and her family, who are leaving
> the $318,000 home they bought in 2006. To Stewart, living in a gated
> community is absurd when drug busts are a regular occurrence.
>
> "It's not worth it for us to live in this neighborhood," she said.
>
> The Lopez family plans to stick it out, knowing they can't sell their house
> for anywhere near the $440,000 they paid for it. Based on comparable prices
> in the neighborhood, the place is probably worth about $170,000 now, and
> maybe less. They're petitioning their bank for a loan modification.
>
> Despite the financial loss and the fact that Eddie Lopez's hours at work
> were cut because of the construction slowdown, the family holds out for a
> brighter future.
>
> They're hoping that Willowalk will someday become the idyllic neighborhood
> they once knew, nearly as perfect as advertisements had promised.
>
>
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