Sad state

I have been working on a good post, but it'll take away. So this week, instead of something funny, we'll be talking about foreclosures. How fun!

We bought our house a year ago. I love my house. It is truly our dream house. It is in a great, small neighborhood. Only 42 lots. The lots are big. There's a pond. The neighbors are AWESOME. I really love it here. We had the house built for us, as did about half the people who live here. The other half bought houses that were already built, but not finished, allowing them to customize the inside.

This community was begun in 2006, so it's only been here for about 4 years. But, the first houses were built, and sold, during the height of the housing bubble. There is one house that has less upgrades than ours, approximately $5000 less in upgrades, according to our pricing sheet, but they paid $20,000 more for their house. There's another that had about $12,000 more in upgrades than our house (again, according to the price list we were given) but they paid about $60,000 more than we did. Likewise, several houses that were built and then sold just this year sold for about $20,000 less than our house. (I want to add that I've been in several of the houses that have the same floor plan as ours, and I like mine the best!) Some of the neighbors are bitter about this, but hey, that's the housing market. They're very bitter that one family ended up selling their house at a short sale, thus "ruining" the price of the rest of the neighborhood. We plan on being here for 10 years, so we don't really care that much.

But like I said, this neighborhood has only been here for about 4 years. When I got back from Texas, I noticed that one of the houses looked like it was empty. This was a little odd, as the house had never had a "for sale" sign out front and the owner's had planted 10 trees this past spring (they all look dead now). I talked to other neighbors, and nobody knew what had happened, we all just knew the house was empty (we didn't know them). Yesterday I drove by and there were several brightly colored pieces of paper stuck to the windows and a special lock on the door. I didn't go and read the papers, but I'm assuming the house has been foreclosed on. I'm sure some of our neighbors will be pissed that this will further reduce the value of our houses, but it just makes me sad. What happened? Why didn't they try to sell the house? Why did they plant all those trees if they knew they were having problems? (Yes, the planting of the trees really bothers me!) I hope the best for the family. I hope they found someplace safe for their family. I hope that whatever caused their financial problems is soon rectified. I hope they're okay.