CARROLL COUNTY'S VACANT LOTS
Amid housing crisis, 148,000 home sites across region sit empty
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, January 11, 2009
David Parker’s family lives in one of the quietest subdivisions in metro Atlanta, Winchester Farms in Carroll County. No music, no barking dogs, no traffic.
Why? Because the Parkers don’t have any neighbors. The rocking chairs on the front porch of their $399,000 house face empty lots.
Winchester Farms was supposed to have 50 homes, but only a handful were built before construction halted in the housing market crash.
So far, only the Parkers have moved in. The Parker children ride their dirt bikes over the empty land and thrill to the site of turkey and deer.
“It’s nice to have a subdivision all to yourself,” said their 47-year-old dad, a youth psychiatric counselor.
The Parkers’ situation is not unique. Just down Flat Rock Road in northeast Carroll is another subdivision, Round Rock Estates, with only one family.
The home construction slump means more Atlanta subdivisions are sitting incomplete, with few residents and big empty spaces.
Approximately 148,000 vacant home sites dot the 22 counties tracked by Metrostudy, a real estate research company. That’s up 42 percent since 2006, when the market decline began, Metrostudy’s numbers show.
Empty home sites can turn into ugly erosion problems or dumps. They tend to depress home values. Governments have to expend time and money monitoring them so they don’t fester into sore spots.
Carroll County, about 40 minutes west of Atlanta, employs two people whose job is to patrol the county to make sure erosion control measures are in place at dormant construction sites.
Carroll is the leader in terms of how long it would take to absorb all those vacant lots. If home construction were to stay at its current sluggish pace and no new sites were approved, Carroll would have to wait 26 years for the last house to be built, Metrostudy said.
Of course, that’s not going to happen. But it does show just how out of whack the market has become.
Housing’s sudden sickness caught developers, bankers and local governments unaware. A symptom is the glut of lots.
“Things just kind of ran up and hit a wall, and everything stopped overnight,” said Steve Bridges, president and CEO of the Community Bankers Association of Georgia. “Believe it or not, lots in most markets around Atlanta were actually considered to be in short supply not so long ago.”
Reality vs. rules
In Carroll, like other areas, new home sites are generally approved if they coincide with the county’s long-range plan and would not create environmental or transportation problems or strain services.
Governments generally don’t consider population growth and existing lot supply when asked to approve subdivisions. They have to be careful about trampling on property-owner rights.
“There are no regulations in place that would govern how many lots the commission would approve based on population data,” said Lee Gorman, Carroll’s community development director. “They don’t say, ‘We don’t want 50 houses here, but we can live with 25.’ “
Banks, however, do consider whether a new subdivision makes economic sense, said Joe Brannen, president of the Georgia Bankers Association.
“Banks have long looked at absorption rates, economic conditions, population trends, etc., when making credit decisions to developers,” Brannen said.
But land development is a multiyear endeavor, he added. And when investors quit buying mortgages in 2007 in the subprime loan crisis, “the tracts of land were already purchased, county governments had already given approvals, dirt was disturbed, and work had commenced.”
Local government planning has never been sophisticated enough to adequately address Atlanta’s population boom, and that’s allowed lots to mushroom, said Dan Reuter, the Atlanta Regional Commission’s land use division chief.
“We were just dealing with it and not guiding it,” Reuter said. “We should be more aware and more demanding of looking at what are our needs and what kind of housing stock we’re permitting, and where. We’ve oversubdivided, and we’ve overbuilt. Building a subdivision is the easiest development that exists.”
Rick Porter, an instructor in the building construction program at Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture, said “land development is a local, small business, 500 people making decisions. There’s no coordination.”
Historically, lots usually were approved in small chunks, limiting developer exposure. In the last 10 years, however, big developers became bigger players in the Atlanta market, so project sizes grew, Porter said.
“The development industry tried to change the business model of land development, and it has come home to roost, terribly,” he said.
‘Sell or get taken’
Developer Lyn Loveless’ plan was to sell 50 lots at Winchester Farms in Villa Rica. He sold 30 percent of them before sales stopped.
Now, Loveless travels 50-plus miles from his home in Fayetteville to Carroll to check on silt fences and disburse seed to keep dirt in place.
He put his 27-acre home on the market for $2.2 million.
“Everything I’ve got is for sale,” Loveless said. “It’ll sell or get taken. I’m just like everybody else. I’ll probably lose everything I’ve got. Give me a job cutting grass. I’ll cut grass.”
Parker, Winchester Farms’ lone homeowner, said a house up the street is under contract, so his family might have some neighbors soon.
For now, he’s smoking his cigar and grilling in the quiet. “I’m perfectly fine with it,” he said.
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