Readers suggested a topic on local housing bubble fallout. "I’d like to hear from HBBers on the changes (good or bad) that have taken place in their communities as a result of the housing bubble. Sprawling new developments are obvious, but what about some of the other, more subtle (or not so subtle) changes like demographic shifts, closing or opening schools, traffic patterns, loss of a favorite small business, etc?"

"Just the other day, I was driving down the eastern shore of Tampa Bay and saw that Cox Lumber is shut down and boarded up, a casualty of the housing bubble. We’ve had boat ramps and bait & tackle businesses get swallowed up, traffic medians put in to re-route familiar patterns (thanks a pantload, Lennar). This past spring, the familiar scent of orange blossoms was gone from the air, due to the fact that a number of groves in the area were sold off to developers."

One wrote, "One thing I’ve noticed in So Ca, and being a member of The International Council Of Shooping Centers ,is the amount of designer malls that were built during this latest bubble. (Doesn’t the world have enough shopping centers already!)"

"Now we are looking at leasing in more of a survival mode. Even the yuppies have decided that if its all made in China, why not just buy it at Target."

Another saw, "Here is the change I’m seeing locally: Multiple families living in one home. Not that common (yet), but some homes have far too many cars. I even see this in Palos Verdes. Kids never leave the nest as its too expensive to buy anywhere in the south bay. I’m talking kids about to hit 40!?!"

One from New York, "In NYC the good news; the most new housing production since the 1960s, middle class people willing to live in more city neighborhoods, a temporary boost to public finances due to real estate transfer taxes."

"Unlike elsewhere, new housing quality may have actually increased here, as developers who formerly only built in established affluent neighborhoods (and made people take crap to get that location) attempted to attract people to less desirable locations with the quality and amenities in their buildings."

"The bad news; people who grew up in the city but didn’t attend college priced out by college graduates from elsewhere, loss of economic competitiveness due to higher real estate prices than elsewhere. I believe people and businesses may stop coming here if the prices do not fall. While NYC banked the extra tax revenue, the State of New York blew it, and will be coming after us for tax increases and service cuts."

From California. "The housing bubble has made land so valuable around W. LA that they’re tearing down surfshops, malls, old houses, anything they can get their hands on (they=developers) to build CONDOS. I shudder every time I see a new condo dev’t going up, because I know it’s going to mean more traffic, less retail/pedestrian space, and more single/DINK yuppies moving in."

One from Illinois, "In Chicago, which is very neighborhood-centric, development happens at different speeds. Some neighborhoods have been completely transformed since I moved here a decade ago, some have remained largely the same."

"In the now quite-gentrified Wicker Park neighborhood to the south of me, for example, little was done for years to protect older residential buildings. Lots of frame houses, classic Chicago bungalows, and two / three flats were razed to make room for ugly-ass new construction — the kind we all know will not age well."

"Lots of arts spaces, small restaurants and the like were driven out of the area by ever-increasing rents and taxes. Many of the small businesses that remain in that neighborhood either have built-in hipster appeal … or have owned the property for years. Lots of old-timers cashed out and more elsewhere, too."

"I’m hoping that the bursting bubble will save my neighborhood from the same fate — it’s a neighborhood on the verge, and it would be a crying shame if it lost its character."

And from Virginia. "Here in the D.C. area, formerly dicey areas in Va. close in to downtown have become much more expensive, since the rise of the far-flung exurbs has made traffic much worse, really just in the last 10 years or so."

"And those exurbs that suddenly sprouted up in the last five years. Lawdy! They’ve managed to pave over pretty much everything in Va. within 50 miles of D.C."

From Georgia. "In the Atlanta area the main impact I have seen due to the bubble has been the deterioration of once stable lower middle class to middle class neighborhoods. People trying to raise children in a true middle class environment have had to gamble on exotic loans in order to live in safe family areas. Those who didn’t want to take the risk with a mortgage have had no choice but to live with low life crack heads & drunks as neighbors and hope that their children survive."

"Another adverse impact is the continued deterioration of traffic congestion. Traffic in the NW metro area was nightmarish because of this for 6 hours. So it has become prudent to avoid the interstates if you want to get anywhere alive & on time."

One from the road, "Had to go into (shudder,) Bakersplat today and saw three dedicated billboards along Hwy 58 touting reduced prices in new housing developments. These were not ads with 'price reduced' slapped across them, but boards specifically advertising $50,000 off, etc."

"Still a lot of new industrial starts and commercial building going on. Saw a new (empty,) office complex on Truxton Extension with its windows shattered. In-town traffic seems to be easing, though, so maybe folks are leaving town for (dare I say it,) Oklahoma?"

And Minnesota, "In the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, the recent housing bubble has created an unsustainable retail construction blitz. When the music stops in this musical chairs game, there will not only be some very po’d J6P, but also a lot of commercial developers/landlords/out of business tennents."

"We’ve also seen many local small businesses dissapear completely. Many local hardware stores and coffee shops… gone in 60 seconds after the big box stores and chains moved in. Customer traffic at most of these big box stores appears to be down significantly compared with 6-12 months ago (not a scientific statistical analysis, just a personal anecdotal observation)."

"Also spoke with family from the St. Cloud MN area… one told me about an ATV/Snowmobile/Farm Implement dealer (one of the largest in the Midwest, if not the entire U.S. in terms of gross sales) manager who told him that if it weren’t for the John Deere farm implement division, that they would be in the red due to virtually non-existent sales of ATVs and Snowmobiles. Seems sales are down significantly from 05-06."

"Again, seems to follow a very similar pattern whereby home-mortgage slaves used their HATM (house ATM) to withdraw funds."

And on the media, "I live in the Bay Area and am amazed how quiet the media is about the housing market here. I never read about the slow market in San Francisco or environs. I still hear how the Bay Area is so different; there are so many brilliant, well-paid people living here that the prices will never go down. Why do I see so many houses on the market for months and months, then?"

"Just for fun, I looked did a search for houses for sale in Burlingame, which is an expensive suburb of San Francisco. The cheapest ones are in the $1.1 range. I looked up a bunch of them on zillow.com, and found that most of them were purchased within the last 11 months to 4 years. I wonder if these are people who went in over their heads and now need to sell. I think most people would say that this was impossible in a rich place like Burlingame."