alstry (35.76)

Weed Infested New Home Communities

June 11, 2008 – Comments (2)

From the Modesto Bee:

The signs are painted over. The models are empty. All building has stopped at the three Falling Leaf subdivisions in Modesto's Village I. With less than half of the planned 314 homes complete, developer William Lyon Homes has quit construction. Empty lots growing weeds remain. Falling Leaf apparently is the latest victim of the housing market downturn plaguing the Northern San Joaquin Valley.
...
Falling Leaf repeatedly cut prices. Example: Its smallest house, a 1,620-square-foot plan, was priced at $379,000 in August 2006, then dropped to $329,990 by February 2007 and dropped again to $269,900 in April 2007. By last month, the development drastically sliced prices on its remaining inventory to about $100 per square foot.

The above was found at Sacramentolanding.com

Think about this folks, prices are so cheap now that builders have simply turtled.  Those poor folks that purchased homes in the past few years are so underwater that practically their only option is to go into foreclosure as who the hell wants to buy a new house in a weed infested mosquito riddled unkept new home development.

This is California reality. 

It is hapening all over the state in areas where large tract homebuilders overbuilt and sold to anyone with a pulse.  Now we have to live with the consequences.  Destroyed communities with no funds to complete.  Those already in the communities are hosed with little chance to recoup their investments.

Now builders are liquidating hoping to extract anything they can out of the land....but prices are getting so low that there ain't much left to extract. 

When you can't extract, you must contract.

Sure, SPF found some idiotic sophisticated distressed specialist private equity fund to invest $600 million into equity in its overleveraged CA land portfolio in this environment?  I am telling you, it would be easier to find investors to open a pork processing plant in Tel Aviv or Dubai.