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Area Shows Signs Of Crash Recovery

By KEVIN WIATROWSKI

kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com

Published: October 19, 2008

WESLEY CHAPEL - In August, Rebecca and Guiseppe Scarfone bought their first home, a foreclosed former investment property in the Bridgewater community off Curley Road.

"We'd seen some pretty nasty ones," Rebecca Scarfone said recently of her family's quest for a home of their own. "This one wasn't that bad."

On one recent Saturday the Scarfones were painting the baby's room in their sparsely furnished three-bedroom home, a former rental on Tagus Drive.

They paid $126,000 for the house, $70,000 less than its original price when Lennar Corp. sold it to Tampa-based investor Luis Giler Jr. in 2005, property records show.

Back then, as the housing bubble inflated, Bridgewater's builder, Miami-based Lennar, cut deals with hundreds of investors. Those deals turned Bridgewater into a quasi-ghost town where residents lived side by side with empty houses - a situation explored by The Tampa Tribune earlier this year.

In time, dozens of overextended investors, some with as many as five houses in Bridgewater, either lost those homes to foreclosure or sold them at six-figure losses.

An analysis of county sales records show the houses in Bridgewater selling this year at an average loss of $69,000, or about 28 percent of the original sale price. The biggest single loss to date has been $168,000 - or 61 percent of the original price - for a house on Spandrell Drive.

Very few houses have either broken even or made a slight profit this year. The notable exception to that is a house on Humber Circle that went from one investor to another in January at more than $100,000 profit.

Just as Bridgewater epitomized the overheated housing market and its implosion, the community now may be pointing the way out of the housing mess.

The Scarfones are part of a wave of home buying that may slowly be rebuilding some of the wreckage left behind by the bursting housing bubble. Since January, 42 homes have sold in Bridgewater alone, most of them to owner-occupants like the Scarfones, county property records show.

As a result, a community that was once dominated by investors has seen its ranks of homeowners grow since the beginning of the year. June, July and August were big months for sales in the community, according to county records. Nearly half the houses sold were held by lenders like Wells Fargo, Bear Stearns and Fannie Mae.

Scott Rankin and his family closed on their first house, a former investment property on Masena Drive, in early September.

"The house was standing vacant," Rankin said. "It was one of the problem houses the community had to take care of."

Bridgewater has 17 houses listed for sale and another 11 with pending contracts, according to the Multiple Listing Service.

"We're getting homeowners coming in, and we're starting to develop some community," said Mark Spector, president of Bridgewater's homeowners association. "You still have the vacancies and foreclosures going one, but the feel is different."

Spector and the HOA vice president, Thomas Langston, have spearheaded efforts to keep Bridgewater from slipping into a suburban slum.

The HOA continues to mow the lawns of abandoned or unkempt houses - at a cost of $18,000 last year, Spector said. To save money, Spector and a cadre of volunteers spend their own time and money maintaining yards of empty homes.

Spector and Langston patrol Bridgewater as its neighborhood watch, sometimes staying out as late as 2 a.m. They're also putting the bite in the community's deed restrictions by, among other things, insisting on security checks ofpotential renters.

"We are enforcing every one of our covenants," Spector said.

But Bridgewater isn't out of the post-bubble woods yet.

•Another wave of foreclosures is moving through the community, threatening to put hundreds more houses on the market.

•Homeowners who bought at the peak of the market - a list that includes Spector - owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

•The HOA's budget is more than $100,000 in the red, forcing its board to levy a $250-per-house special assessment to balance the books.

•Crime remains a problem and has escalated from vandalism and gang graffiti to break-ins and trespassing in empty homes.

Keeping Bridgewater afloat as a community has become a second full-time job, Langston said.

"We're constantly reminding people this is a voluntary thing," Spector said. "At first it was 'nobody else is doing this.' Then it became 'I've got to do this because nobody else is doing it.'

Spector takes the long view on his community, mixing the pragmatism of a man upside-down in his mortgage and the optimism of a leader trying to inspire his constituents.

"The housing market's going to come back," Spector said. "And we're going to be in a good position when it does."

HOME PRICES

Recent sales in Wesley Chapel's Bridgewater community show just how far home prices have fallen from their peak in 2005 and 2006 when Lennar Corp. was selling homes there.

7350 Spandrell Drive

August 2008 sale price: $105,000

Original 2005 sale price: 273,000

Percent of value lost: 61

7254 Parkersburg Drive

May 2008 sale price: $160,000

Original 2006 sale price: $243,000

Percent of value lost: 34

7146 Maysville Court

April 2008 sale price: $245,000

Original 2005 sale price: $244,990

Percent of value gained: 0.004