The headline on a recent Tribune article paints a stark picture: “Antioch subdivision like ‘ghost town’ after developer goes bankrupt.” And the caption to the photo that leads the article makes it sound even more bleak:
The Clublands has remained unfinished since builder Neumann Homes declared bankruptcy last month. In addition to half-built houses, streetlights have yet to be installed and the roads aren’t paved. “It’s been like living in a ghost town since we moved in,” Gabriel [a Clublands owner] said.
My son bought at Clublands a year ago, and I’m there for breakfast most Saturday mornings. I approach his house along a mile of paved roads in the subdivision, heading past hundreds of homes on manicured lawns, many with holiday decorations, and many occupied for years now. No street lights? Unpaved roads? A ghost town? What’s that about?
The subhead to the Trib article reports that “the developer went bankrupt and left the few residents with little infrastructure.” That’s accurate if you consider 1,000 people “the few residents” and miles of paved roads and sidewalks, a beautiful park, gazebos, walking and bike trails, playlots and a 47-acre lake “little infrastructure.”
Well, the Trib reporter was snookered into visiting only a later phase of the 9-phase Clublands development and proceeded to characterize the whole based on what little she saw. Shoddy reporting? Yup. A few seconds looking at Google Street View’s shots of Clublands from last summer, or a brief look at the Trib’s archived articles, would have shown the reporter that her conclusions were whacked. Representative of far too much of the recent reporting about the housing bust? You bet.
Approach everything you read about current conditions with a great deal of skepticism, and an awareness of how much conditions can vary – even within a single subdivision..