Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The danger of buying a new home



I've commented on many occasions about the dangers of buying a new home in today's market. Today the LA Times blog has a couple of posts about these dangers. Some local developments have put the brakes on a few developments around town. Not problem if the development is still in the planning stage. But what about projects like Rosedale in Azusa.

AZUSA - Frustrated over problems at what will be a new 1,250-home community, some residents want a home builder to buy back their homes.

Two of four home builders at Rosedale, Fieldstone Homes and William Lyon Homes, stopped construction this year at the city's first master-planned community in the foothills.

Neighbors living in Fieldstone's Arborview neighborhood said they feel cheated, others said being surrounded by vacant homes and unkempt grounds causes safety concerns.

Even though Fieldstone representatives deny the allegations, residents feel the developer has walked away from the project.

"The bottom line from my perspective is that we were presented and purchased what was supposed to be a house in a master-planned community," said resident Neil Giles. "It's supposed to have all these amenities and what really happened is (Fieldstone) walked away from everything."

"Right now, our property looks like trash," said resident Joy Rodpai-Parham. "They haven't mowed the lawns in I don't know how many months."

But officials said many of the problems residents complain of are products of a housing market that took a turn for the worst.

"Due to the continuing downturn in the homebuilding industry, Starfield Azusa Partners LLC has put new home construction on hold at the Rosedale master-planned community in Azusa, California,"

"The streets aren't being swept, the landscaping's not being maintained, there's no pool," he said. "So what are the homeowners getting?"

There are several developments around the IE that I would be very hesitant to buy into. The preserve in Chino is a perfect example of this. There were BIG plans for this development but they are turning into a steaming pile of empty promises for the few residents that bought homes there. One perfect example is there are too few students to open the new schools. Children will have to be bused for miles now. You have to wonder if the builders will keep building or just pack it up, leaving residents living next to barren fields.

There are plenty of others too, Sycamore Creek in So. Corona, Riverwalk Vista in Riverside, The Retreat, and lots of others. I don't care how good the deals are the chances of the builders bailing out are just way too high (especially at Riverwalk Vista).



4 comments:

Marsupial said...

There is a sign here at Sycamore creek visible from the 15. It says "Blaze a trail!" and it shows a runner makeing her way down a paseo. The top of the sign is supposed to look like flames. I wonder how amusing that is going to seem when all of this neck-deep high brush around here goes up like a tinder box this summer.

Terry said...

What about The Reserve over in Eastvale? Supposedly a lot of cows lost their happy homes to make room for this and now the most they do is keep watering down the desert so it doesn't cause horrible sand storms when the winds blow (I had to drive thru a blinding one one day to get past it to Homecoming.) It sure looks like nothing is going to happen, but the sign is still there. Any word?

I'm Not POTUS said...

Your in luck in Eastvale if your bovine or Dutch.
When they got kicked out they planned on going to the central valley and even Mexico to opperate dairy farms.
With the cost of diesel and grains it now makes more sense for dairy farmers to buy back all those parcels from the Bank for $50k to $100k an acre. Why not, those idiot banks gave them $1 million an acre 2 years ago.
I figure they will pay contractors like myself to knock down the repo homes and grade them for use as small alfalfa fields.
The bigger unfinished parcels will hold cow pens.
They will also gladly bide their time picking up titles to the mortgage notes to all the hold outs left and demand settlement. In 2 years it will be back to what it looked like in the 90's

Sellin @ Da Drop said...

I can picture it now. An Eastvale tool in his Mcmansion entertaining clients in his lavish back yard oasis with stone waterfall and built in wet bar while the guest's kids are outside tossing cowchips at each other. Meanwhile he thinks 'what the f happened?'.