Partially Completed Southern California Housing Tract Demolished
May 6th, 2009Breathtaking madness.
Via: AP:
A foreclosed tract of partially completed homes was demolished after the bank that owns the project deemed it a hazard and calculated that finishing and selling the dwellings would be a money-losing proposition, a bank official said Tuesday.
The planned 16-unit tract on the fringes of a suburb about 65 miles northeast of Los Angeles included four finished homes with granite countertops, whirlpool bathtubs and dual-pane windows.
“The current economic environment requires difficult decisions be made by the government, by banks and by individuals,” said John Wessman, a spokesman for Guaranty Bank of Austin, Texas. “We made the difficult decision to return the site to a safe, clean and undeveloped state keeping in mind the best interests of the community and our shareholders.”
Crews began tearing down the structures in late April and completed their work Tuesday.
Building permits had been issued for the development in September 2007, Victorville city spokeswoman Yvonne Hester told the Los Angeles Times.
At the time, the median price for a home in San Bernardino County, where Victorville is located, was $325,000, according to San Diego-based tracking firm MDA DataQuick.
In March, the most recent month for which data is available, the median price for the county was $160,000, DataQuick said.
The bank repossessed the development in December, months after work halted, Wessman said. Demolition permits for the project, which had started attracting vandals and squatters, had been granted in early April.
Besides the four completed homes, a dozen had been left in various stages of construction, but had not yet been closed up with drywall, Wessman said.
The homes were among a parcel of over 300 plots, the remainder of which remained unbuilt upon, he said.
The company had no immediate plans to have any other completed or partially completed homes demolished, Wessman said.
Such is the incisive, bold action those smarter-than-thou execs. are paid the big bonuses to carry out. … and you know what they say: “You can’t argue with success”.
This seems to be a new ‘business strategy’ for the mortgage industry. I have seen other instances of this, where they destroy perfectly good homes to avoid taxes and other liabilities. Sheer madness.
Sorry to disagree that these homes are “perfectly good”. They are anything but.
1. Built in the middle of the desert, miles from anywhere.
2. MacMansion designs, with tall rooms that will be expensive if not impossible to keep cool in summer, or head in winter.
3. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
The last time I drove (was driven) from LA to San Diego, the entire trip was bordered by strip mall hell, with suburban shit-box homes like these for the entire trip. Dante would have been impressed.
If I ever make that trip again, I’ll do it by train to avoid the eyesores, or bring a book and not look out the windows.
The people who live in these places are dead meat.