WSJ: Northwest Arkansas a Ghost Town

After reading the Aug. 2 issue of the Wall Street Journal, we’ve been on the lookout for Mad Max and Snake Plissken.

Apparently we are living in a region of empty subdivisions where life seems “post cataclysmic.” (Realtors, direct your angry e-mails to Alex Roth.)

It’s an evocative description, even if it is a little long on hyperbole. But, after being heaped with national praise for years during the area’s economic boom, we shouldn’t mind the kind of zings that come with the area’s overbuilt market and series of financial stumbles.

In case you missed it, an article entitled “After the Bubble, Ghost Towns Across America” led with the story of a couple in Bentonville as one of only two families living in the Quail Ridge subdivision; they are only there after winning a drawing for 12 months of rent-free living intended to spur interest in buying the $400,000+ homes.

Roth goes on to cite a few other “forlorn” subdivision projects in Northwest Arkansas, poking at their “fancy” names like Tuscany and Kensington Hills.

The mini-meltdown going on in the area’s real estate market might have escaped national notice were it not for the FDIC raining down fire and sulphur on ANB Financial NA, shutting down the $1.8 billion bank on May 9, another story that made the Journal’s front page.