TAMPA - When Tom and Mary Dowling bought their new home in October, they didn't mind that the Gibsonton subdivision was in its infancy. Living among rumbling bulldozers, they figured, was a small price to pay for getting a good deal on their home.

But it didn't take long before construction stopped, the sales center closed and the neighborhood grew eerily quiet. There are now just 32 homes in the 366-lot Tanglewood Preserve. The rest of the neighborhood is made up of sidewalks winding through acres of weed-choked homesites. The land is in foreclosure, and the builder is trying to unload its last three houses.

"I thought by now the neighborhood would be looking a little more established," Tom Dowling said. "I love my home, but I don't want to live here. I'm not even going to try to sell right now, though. Who would buy?"

Dowling and his neighbors live in a ghost of a subdivision. The lots have been prepped for construction; plumbing is in place. Roads are paved, and street signs are up. But common areas aren't getting maintained, and property values are falling.

Neighborhoods such as this one are a side effect of the demand for new homes during a historical housing downturn. Some builders have pulled back; others have filed bankruptcy or face foreclosure.

Subdivisions such as Tanglewood have a few homes. Others are merely row upon row of streetlights and white plumbing pipes sticking up out of the ground.

New homes are selling so slowly in the Bay area that there are enough vacant lots in the five-county area to last builders more than five years. And that doesn't count undeveloped fields developers set aside for subdivisions.

Progress Will Take Time

It's likely going to take years for the half-built communities to fill up, said Ed Andrews, who owns Tampa-based Andrews Management Co. The company prepares lots for developers and maintains some of them until builders buy the land.

One of those neighborhoods is Panther Trace, a master-planned community of nearly 2,000 homes in Riverview. Construction in the subdivision started in 2003 when several builders developed villages of homes in varying price ranges. Many of the homes sold quickly. But when the real estate market slowed dramatically last year, builders with contracts to purchase the last 600 lots bailed, Andrews said.

"They just decided to walk away," Andrews said.

That leaves the developer, a partnership out of South Florida, waiting for the market to turn around. When it does, the lots will be ready for homes. Even the parking lot for the model center is paved and marked for cars.

"It's a good community," Andrews said. "The amenities and the school are there now. We hope Panther Trace will be one of the first neighborhoods to come back when the market rebounds."

Even a good location won't protect a builder from this real estate market, said Marvin Rose, of Rose Residential Reports, which tracks new home development. He points to Live Oak Preserve in New Tampa. The developer, Engle Homes, is in bankruptcy and has hundreds of empty lots in its second phase.

Another struggling new subdivision with a good location is Channing Park in Lithia, developed by Taylor Morrison. Beside the popular 4,000-plus-home FishHawk Ranch, the subdivision has only five houses. None appears to be lived in.

The homesites, nestled around mature trees, have country charm. The sidewalks are lined with purple flowers and freshly planted shrubs.

"This is a classic example of a project that just opened at the wrong time," Rose said.

Officials from Taylor Morrison did not return repeated phone calls for comment.

While builders struggle to finish subdivisions they've already started, thousands more lots sit empty.

There are 31,895 finished home lots in Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas, Hernando and Citrus counties, according to Houston-based housing research firm Metrostudy. That's almost double the 16,600 prepared lots available in 2004, a figure the firm considers a healthy market.

Even so, that level would represent a lot of empty homesites, considering the area's slow pace of sales.

In the past 12 months, builders started construction on just 5,777 homes, said Tony Polito, of Metrostudy's Tampa division. At that selling pace, he said, it would take 66 months, or more than 5 years, to get homes on all the empty lots.

By comparison, in 2002, just before the local housing boom, construction began on 12,629 homes. In 2005, there were 19,585 home starts.

Some neighborhoods just got started too late, said Charley Hannah, vice president of luxury home builder Hannah-Bartoletta Homes in Lutz. His company started construction on five houses in River Bend in Ruskin. The plan was to build about 25.

When the company was unable to secure contracts for the homes, it stopped construction late last year. One of the houses is nearly complete; the rest are concrete shells. It's less expensive to wait until the market rebounds, Hannah said, than to get stuck with empty homes.

"The land is a real gem," he said. "It wasn't a bad decision to build there, just bad timing."

Hannah said he's not worried about the long-term vitality of neighborhoods such as River Bend that aren't fully developed. His company opened in 1988, just before a major real estate downturn in the early 1990s. There were ghost subdivisions then, too, he said, and builders ran away from them, fearing they would fail.

Some of those subdivisions are now sought-after communities with well-known names: Tampa Palms, Hunter's Green and Cheval.

"Those areas went from smelling like a skunk on a rainy day to being the preferred place to be," Hannah said. "What happened in Tampa Palms is absolute assurance that when things turn around again, these lots in River Bend will flourish."

Rose agrees. It may take awhile, he said, but new homes will again be in high demand.

"The good news is that in almost all these cases, the lots will get built upon eventually. It's just a matter of timing the market and working out financial and legal problems."

Looking Forward To Change

Back at Gibsonton's Tanglewood Preserve, Dowling worries about his property value.

"The woman across the street had her home appraised recently," he said. "She paid $260,000 last summer, and the appraisal came in at $210,000."

Even the builder, Richmond American Homes, is finding its homes aren't worth what they used to be. A three-bedroom, two-bath home with stainless-steel appliances and upgraded countertops is listed at $195,000. This time last year, the same model sold for about $260,000.

"It's a really good deal," said Nancy Ward, of Keller Williams, which is trying to sell the home. "And the builder is willing to negotiate - and they're paying closing costs,"

Some homeowners don't mind life among the empty lots.

Christopher Carter, who moved into his 2,337-square-foot home in October, said he's annoyed that common areas in the community aren't always maintained, but he's not worried about his investment because "eventually the homes will be built, and there will be neighbors."

"I know I can't sell my home now," he said. "But it's not for sale, so that's not an issue."

For now, he said, he's enjoying the peace and quiet.

Reporter Shannon Behnken can be reached at               (813) 259-7804        or sbehnken@tampatrib.com.