As the supply of thin strips of flat land around the San Francisco Bay is near exhausted,
Home Builders are moving further and further east in search of buildable land.
The California Delta has seen the bulk of the urban sprawl in Northern California. Farmlands
of Oakley, Brentwood and Discovery Bay are now the prime targets.
Just about every National Home Builder is in business here. Centex, Standard Pacific, Pulte,
Meritage, KB Home, DR Horton are all building homes here.
These communities are islands of modern housing in a sea of farmland, connected by poorly
maintained narrow roads to the main thorough fares. Highway 4 the major highway that connects all
these cities, is itself a narrow two lane road in most places, with uneven pavement and potholes.
No curbs, no sidewalks either.
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I hope these cities plan to improve the infrastructure with the growth in their tax base. I
am no city planner, but may thatz how new cities develop. Eventually the entire space is filled
with commercial and residential structures, creating a unified urban environment.
But the communities themselves are exemplary. Well planned with wide streets, open spaces and
beautiful homes with well maintained landscape. So many have been built in the last few years. And
the Builders are planning on building many more of them.
I visited about a dozen of them, just a fraction of what is out there. ( I wanted to do more
but even on a sunny day, this time of year, sunlight is pretty poor by 4 PM.) They all had one
common theme. A few Model Homes, A Sales Center, and then, vast stretches of open buildable lots,
for future homes.
The Oakley/Brentwood area is filled with signs directing you to new home developments. There
are signs at every intersection, human twirlers to billboards.
I also drove past a piece of sizeable farmland which had a notice stating the city was
considering issuing a permit to build homes there.
The one community that really caught my attention was Granville Estates by DR Horton. As I
toured the community I saw about a dozen homes on Holsapple Way, with "Available" signs on them.
My guess is, these homes were built on speculation when the market was hot, but now are sitting
on the market awaiting a buyer.
Foundation was being laid for may be another fiften homes just next to them. And there were
big empty lots nearby, being staged for construction. The sales office was open and I saw a couple
of families touring the model homes.
There were three for (re)sale signs on a single block in the Rose Garden Community. And many
more scatterred through out.
It definitely felt like the housing bubble in this part is ahead in the cycle than the rest
of the San Francisco Bay Area.
It left me wondering what is it like in the newly built areas of Las Vegas, Atlanta, Phoenix
and Riverside county.
It could'nt possibly be any better, only worse, much worse than it is here.
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