Chicago-based Neumann Homes went bankrupt last November, leaving a trail of wreckage in its path. Its worst victims? HomeownersWhen Patrick and Betty Ann Wagner moved 50 miles from Chicago's Northwest Side to suburban Antioch, Ill., a year ago, they figured their five kids would delight in the three swimming pools and sand volleyball court of their new subdivision's community center. Sitting at a large pine table in the kitchen of their four-bedroom home, Patrick opens a glossy map. "This is where they said the clubhouse would be," he jabs at the paper. But the rec center is just an open pit, and their neighborhood is eerily quiet. Across the street, two homes are still swathed in housewrap behind mounds of dirt; two others are finished but empty, with "For Sale" signs in front.
Welcome to Clublands, a 600-acre development conceived by Neumann Homes, which in 2004 had plans to build as many as 950 homes selling for $300,000 and $400,000 in this suburb less than a mile from the Wisconsin border. But it never happened, and probably never will. Today the Warrenville (Ill.), company, once ranked the 35th-largest homebuilder in the nation, is bankrupt. A court-approved auction is liquidating all its property. Among the assets on the block are two-thirds of the Clublands sites that were never sold—and the tract for that promised clubhouse.
Bankrupt Builders
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