O'FALLON, Mo. • The telltale signs are spreading. An overgrown yard. Neighbors moving out at night. An orange St. Charles County Sheriff's eviction notice taped on a window.
At the latest home in the Briarchase subdivision to be threatened by foreclosure, only a dog would come to the front door. A woman tending a front yard nearby gasped at the news of another family hit.
Since the housing crisis took root in 2007, at least 17 homes in the subdivision and surrounding streets have been foreclosed on; eight of those have come since February. It's part of a national blight that threatens to consume more than 1 million homes this year.
Briarchase could be any suburban neighborhood, where, over the past decade, rows of cookie-cutter homes have replaced rows of grain and rolling pastures. The subdivision and the surrounding area illustrate how foreclosures have moved beyond bad loans and over boundaries. The housing crisis now is feasting on continued unemployment and homes whose values have dipped below the amount owed on them.
Left behind is a wake of human drama and falling home prices that few Briarchase residents want to talk about publicly. The only thing that can kill the cycle is good, reliable income, but the jobless rate is unrelenting.
"This phenomenon is changing, and it's not just about low-income and minority neighborhoods," said Todd Swanstrom, a professor at the University of Missouri at St. Louis who has researched housing trends. "It's spreading because of the new cause of foreclosure — weak housing market, and unemployment has risen."
For those caught in the crisis, it will take time for the shame and frustration to settle, says Traci Turner, 44, who lived in the heart of Briarchase until her $165,000 home was foreclosed on in 2008. Let go from a customer service job at Verizon in Wentzville amid an ongoing fight with kidney disease, Turner said, she couldn't afford the $1,200 monthly house payments and had to walk away.
"I still have problems when I drive by," she said. "I feel like I failed. I feel like I let my kids down and everything."
People like Turner who built in the area were lured by the pride of new home ownership, good schools and the convenience of stores that shot up during the housing boom along Ronald Reagan Drive, just off Highway 40.
Standing out meant paying extra for brick on a two-story, country colonial home, or a walkout basement that opens to a community pond with a fountain. Beyond the asphalt path is a holdout farm with an old basketball rim bolted to the side of a red barn. These days, Greene's Country Store across the street pushes bird feeders to a new customer base, even selling Halloween costumes for small dogs.
After her foreclosure, Turner found a trailer park hidden by trees, separated by a fence from the new developments. The trailer park was still in the school district, and she didn't want to pull her son out. She pays $820 a month, plus an additional $80 in storage fees for the stuff that won't fit.
It's a roof over her head, but it has been a big adjustment. She particularly misses the new kitchen, the fireplace she never got to use, and the sense of solid shelter.
"When it storms," Turner said, "there is no basement to go to. I am always afraid I am going to get blown away in a tornado."
'BLOOD FROM A TURNIP'
Housing construction flourished in subdivisions like Briarchase just a few years ago, helping make O'Fallon one of the country's fastest-growing cities in recent decades. Then the bottom dropped out.
Building permits for new homes in the St. Louis region fell from a peak of 1,800 a month in 2003 to below 600 a month last summer. Unemployment in St. Charles County has more than doubled, to 8.4 percent, putting stress particularly on families who were already maxed out with two incomes. Many live just a blown engine or a broken leg away from not being able to cover monthly bills.
After three missed mortgage payments, the foreclosure clock can start ticking. And the rate of delinquent mortgage payments has been on the rise. In Missouri, the delinquency rate — 90 or more days of missed payments — rose from 1 percent of all mortgages in 2006 to 4 percent in 2009, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Illinois saw the figure rise from 1 percent to nearly 6 percent.
If you lost a job during the economic downturns of the 1980s and 1990s, you could still sell your house at a decent price. This time, it's much harder because so many foreclosed homes have glutted the market with discount prices.
And the corner bank where you got the home loan approved usually doesn't hold it anymore. Your loan has been bundled and sold to investors all over the world who also resell, creating a confusing web of impersonal third-party loan servicing companies to deal with in untangling one of life's biggest investments.
In Missouri, a home can be auctioned at the courthouse steps within just five months of nonpayment. The process can take up to a year in Illinois because foreclosure paperwork goes through the court system.
After auction, the eviction notices go out. In some cases, families leave behind personal belongings that are dumped on the front yard.
"It's a vicious cycle, but you can't get blood from a turnip," said St. Charles County Sheriff's Sgt. Mike Kinkade, who oversees evictions. "If a person doesn't have money, they don't have money. They are not going to pay the bills."
Evictions run the gamut of social classes.
"Some of the neighborhoods, you think, 'These are nice houses,'" he said. "You think, 'This would be a decent place to have your family.' But, you know, that doesn't have anything to do with people's personal problems. It just goes to show the reach of the bad economy."
emotional decisions
Families were once euphoric about the promise of building a new home on an empty Briarchase lot. There were still dirt roads, and the beginnings of the subdivision seemed to blend into the nearby farmland, residents said.
Potential buyers walked through display houses that Mayer Custom Homes and McBride & Son Homes used as models. They picked out a home style and different amenities they wanted to add, from wood floors to granite kitchen counters.
At least one of the display homes would eventually end up in foreclosure. So did the flagship house that Mayer used as an office before the company went out of business in 2009.
Few Briarchase residents directly affected by foreclosure are willing to share their story publicly. There's a sense of embarrassment, and a fear that an employer or friends will learn of their financial problems. Those who agreed to be interviewed offered a few details, but they asked that the Post-Dispatch not use their names.
There's a former manufacturing sales rep who paid $250,000 for a Briarchase home in 2008 but had lost a big commission, and saw other sales dry up with the economy. In 2009, she couldn't sell the house for $199,000. By early 2010, she'd spent $150,000 in savings and walked away to rent an apartment.
"I made a bad judgment call," she said. "It's kind of debilitating, self-esteem-wise."
There's a single mom who lost her job as a systems analyst at Citigroup and needed six months to find another job. Her home went into foreclosure, but she reworked her mortgage at the last minute and is in the clear — for now.
And there's a Boeing manager who is barely holding on to his four-bedroom home. Recently divorced, he's delinquent on his mortgage and said he can't afford the $2,875 monthly payments. He lost the income from his former spouse and is paying alimony. A home equity loan went toward a deck, a car and college tuition for kids. Now, he owes $295,000 on a house that is valued by the county at $271,000.
He started a business of his own, but he's still struggling.
"Time heals credit scores. I am not afraid of walking away," he said. "It's a business decision. It's not an emotional decision."
For those not in danger of losing a home, there is still the worry about what a spate of foreclosures is doing to property values. The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that property values in Missouri will drop by $5.8 billion between 2009 and 2012 because of foreclosures.
In Briarchase, undeveloped, grass-covered lots still sit empty, in an area that is already rich with "For Sale" signs in front of new houses. "Price Reduced" reads one sign on Briarchase Place. "New Price $10,000 Reduction," reads another right across the street.
"I am telling you, prices have absolutely plummeted," said subdivision resident Joan Hooley, taking a break from yard work on a recent morning. "It just makes me sick."
Peter Forder, 31, waiting for his daughter to be dropped off by a school bus, acknowledged that "we've been affected just like any other neighborhood."
A former broker for U.S. Mortgage, he used to help people get home loans. Many of them had poor credit, and Forder said he would warn them of the risks, but few listened.
"All they hear is 'I can get you a loan,'" he said. "You just knew that they weren't hearing you because they were still making the choice."
Asked how he felt about it now that he's watched the foreclosure crisis unfold in his neighborhood, Forder said adults make their own choices. And many people were happy to be getting into new houses. Even Forder, who moved from the Central West End, jumped in with the purchase of his $250,000 home in 2007. He'd paid 50 percent down, right before the bubble burst.
He, too, was confident house prices would keep climbing.
A few blocks away, Ryan Dick, 33, a graphic designer, has been trying to sell his house for a few months. Only two potential buyers have taken a look, despite price reductions. The family is going to take it off the market soon. It's not worth competing with foreclosures.
"Because we kept up with what we needed to do, it seems like we get punished," said Dick, who has one child and another on the way. "We'll wait until the second child comes. Hopefully the market will be better and we'll try again."
THE WINNERS?
The run of foreclosures has brought in a new crop of owners buying at bargain prices.
Brandon Armour, 26, a data analyst, and his girlfriend bought a foreclosed three-bedroom home in August for nearly $155,000 and just moved in. In 2004, it sold for $197,000. Armour said the six-year-old house didn't even look lived in.
"It's suburbia at its finest," he said from the front porch, cat padding by the door. "It's all a bunch of young families. This is the kind of place we are going to be in for a while. It's kind of perfect."
The allure of the area has not faded — the type of place where neighbors, sharing cigars and sipping beers, congregate in driveways as the kids play with plastic toy houses in the yard.
Near the entrance to Briarchase, Chris Richardson, 25, and his new wife bought a foreclosed home in February for $161,000. It was valued at nearly $255,000 four years ago. A plaque on top of the refrigerator reads "Happy Ever After." The original owner didn't hold back picking out amenities, including a double oven and vaulted living room ceilings .
"We just found a really good deal," said Richardson, a puppy in his arms. "We wouldn't have been able to afford anything like this."
He works as a loan processor for American Equity Mortgage, and he's kept a part-time job at Shop 'n Save that he's had since college.
"I see it both ways," he said, reflecting on the neighborhood. "I feel bad for the people who were talked into too good of a deal. Then, I know what I can afford. I am not going to overextend myself."
But if home values fall more, has he really won?
He's not worried. He thinks he bought at the bottom and speculates more people will buy, driving up the values.
It's the sentiment that residents had before him, those who planted their dreams in the same suburban patch.
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