Reply #53: Wildflower Ranch, IIRC [View All]

Without taking the time to look it up, Wildflower Ranch was built in the early 1990s on land that had been cotton and/or alfalfa fields in Van Burn Street west of Goodyear, Arizona. The houses were listed as "all on cul-de-sac lots," but no one mentioned that the cul-de-sacs were half a mile long! For people living in the West Valley at the time, there were few affordable nice new homes being built -- you either bought a resale home or you had one custom-built (which does not mean McMansion) on a lot you bought. There were very very very few traditional housing developments in the area; Wildflower Ranch was the first of what eventually would be many: Sundance, Quail Run, Canyon Trails, Verrado, Pebble Creek, Palm Valley.

Most of these houses were not McMansions. They were built 10, 12, and sometimes 14 to the acre. Construction tended toward the shoddy. But the developers made bazillions.

I haven't been through the area since I moved to the East Valley four years ago. I know that at one time Buckeye, Arizona, had one of the highest mortgage delinquency/foreclosure rates in the entire country. And I wasn't surprised.

There's a hefty "preview" of Reloville on google. Thanks for the referral. I'll try to read some of it when I get time; my degree is in sociology, so this stuff fascinates me.


TG