Sunday, February 8, 2009

Ghost towns


Has anyone else seen the empty new homes seemingly abandoned littered across Riverside. I was up in Orangecrest last weekend looking at a house when I saw a whole street of empty houses. This was a small tract of 24 homes called Nandina. It looks like they only built about 12 homes. The sales office is now gone and all but one of the homes are sitting empty. These were built early last year and the asking prices started close to a million. The last time I stopped at the sales office they were down to the high 700s. Now they appear to have given up.

Another tract in the same area is the Gallery homes tract. This tract also has a bunch of empty homes. The sales trailer is also gone.

Riverwalk Vista looks to have given up. The last couple of times I drove past the gate was closed. It's hard to sell houses if the gates are closed.

Bridle Creek has packed it in. They have sold everything as near as I can tell but they are far from built out. The last time I was in the sales guy told me they had another 40 lots. I doubt they built more than 10 homes since that conversation.

I see Pulte is still putting up homes at Stellan Ridge. And still asking sky high prices for them. I whole bunch just hit the MLS this week. There's a few that have been built for some months now that haven't sold and they have another half dozen under construction. They are super nice houses but they are still priced a good $200k too high in my opinion. $800k is loopy for a tract house in Riverside.

What will become of these tracts. I suppose they may go to auction. Would you want to live in a half built tract? If anyone has info on these please post a comment.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Interesting to see it happening in the "better" areas of IE. Out here in San Jacinto, there is one KB development (the cove). probably only built 30 homes out of 2500. Some builders built the retaining wall around the community and that's it. One just has the models and nothing else. Sad

Martin Burtin said...

I used to be interested in Kona Road in Winchester. I liked the floor plan on one model a lot. That development has also stopped building/selling. Kona had something like 30 homes built when they sold the models and closed the sales office. That was probably about one tenth of the projected build-out.

One good thing, the American company John Laing sold out to some Arab corp. a few years ago, so they got stuck holding the cash kaboom bag.

I lost interest in the developement quite a few months ago, when it became apparent I could soon afford to buy closer to real civilization, if Corona counts as such.

I'm still wondering what the heck happens to those bonds? If a development has a CFD district set up to pay for new schools, new utility infrastructure, new library, new police and fire station; and they sell bonds that need to be repaid... and only a small percent of homes are built/sold... do those bonds get defaulted on? Does the State guaranty them? Do the few homeowners get stuck with the bill? Anyone know?

golfer_X said...

I don't know what happens when an entire development doesn't get built except for a few homes. That's a tricky one. That's an interesting question.

In normal developments that are nearly built out. They would increase the amount the remaining homeowners pay. They are supposed to get reimbursed when the remaining homes get built. But who knows when that will be these days.

It depends though, I've seen a lot of differences from area to area. It seems like each Mello Roos bond is a little different. Overall thought they all seem to increase the amount homeowners get stuck paying if there is a shortfall.

It's certainly something to find out before buying in an area with Mello Roos taxes. Many of the recent tracts are tacking on $5k or more per year in MR tax.