From HOBB.org: Troubled Housing Market Coming To A Planned Community Near You? --click the title link for more--

Broken Promises Plague Suburban Development

By KEVIN WIATROWSKI
Published: March, 2008


WESLEY CHAPEL - Mark Spector liked the Bridgewater community off Curley Road so much he convinced his in-laws to buy a house down the street.

That was in 2004 when Lennar Corp. was in the early stages of developing the 760-home community just east of the Wesley Chapel school complex.

"We were expecting a real nice, clean community," Spector said. "We'd moved from California, and we were expecting the planned communities to be similar to the planned communities we'd lived in in California."

Spector says what he got instead was a community dominated by renters and out-of-town investors. Residents say the community is plagued by drug dealing, gang graffiti and poorly maintained properties.

"It makes it really difficult for a community to really be a community," Spector said. "It looks very much like an apartment complex on the weekend where you see a lot of rental trucks moving in and out."

The implosion of Florida's overheated housing market has left thousands of homeowners living in situations similar to Spector's and his neighbors' in Bridgewater.

Binge-buying investors, many of them now stuck with homes they can't flip and can't afford, are either filling those houses with short-term tenants or simply abandoning them. For Bridgewater residents forced to live amid the housing market's ruins, the promise of suburban peace and quiet has been replaced with concerns about crime and falling property values. Foreclosures are climbing and the community is littered with empty homes. . .(follow the link above for the full piece). . .

Comment:

Could this be Fort Bend County next?