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Well just when we all thought we'd seen it all, the local bankers, realtors, developers, builders, and media advertisers have come up with a new sham- with the same old goal- to put people into homes that in fact, they can't afford, in the Mountain Top area.
These forces have colluded to get Mountain Top rated as the 2nd best town to move into in all of Pa. Being my family has lived here for 6 generations now, we know the real deal. It "was" a great place to live, until the cost of living went up 5x and taxes went up about 7x.
Building a home here is a losing proposition and a lousy investment ! We know many friends who's homes have been re-appraised for equity loans by local banks, and appraised less than what the first home eq loans were written for. They are all now upside down on their mortgages, and could not sell to clear the debt without showing up at closing and putting in a LOT of their own money.
The realtors, banks, and builders will put you in a $400K new home in a trendy, over-developed, crowded neighborhood, with no front or back yard to speak of. But if you had to sell, you'd never get that $400K back. You'd be lucky to get $250K. Resale is LOUSY.
There are at least 40 foreclosures in this small town that we know of, on the Zillow site. There are many more than that being "held back" by the local banks and private foreclosure investors, as they try to create a bottleneck to limit supply, and increase the price.
The homes being held back from market, are extremely distressed ! The area is a humid, damp climate at times, with lots of rain and a high water table, this leads to a lot of black mold and mildew in the homes that sit idle. Heating costs here are EXTREMELY HIGH in the winter. Many homes get water in the basement unless a high end aggressive drainwater mitigation system is installed in around the foundation.
The area is being touted mainly for its school district. It is desireable in one way, your child has a lesser chance of being beat up by a gang in school, like in some of the larger cities. Just don't expect him/her to actually get a good education and learn anything ! The curriculum there has been largely "dumbed down" and can't hold a candle to the education we got here locally back in the 1950-70's era.
Wherever the influx of buyers may be coming from, they certainly aren't WORKING here, as the local industrial park has been heavily gutted of industry. Certain Teed is shut down, the highest paying local factory there, and stands like a dead dinosaur fossil, a reminder of once properous times that no longer exist. The large Foster Wheeler/Morrison Knudsen plant, and Eberhard Faber plant, have been DEMOLISHED and torn down, and are empty lots. What remains are plants that once employed 1000's of workers, now only employing a few hundred each- except for the Quaker/Gatorade bottling plant. That plant located here to gobble up the one good resource the area had, good drinking water. Instead of this water being used for the local population, it's now being used to bottle Gatorade to ship worldwide.
This once close knit small town, has become a mostly transitory workforce, with people commuting many hours away to their jobs. The community mentality is mostly gone. You don't get to know your neighbors anymore, let alone even see them.
There is almost NOTHING for your kids to do in Mountain Top, other than go to school.
And don't forget the big TCE Foster Wheeler chemical spill on Church Road, that seeped into over 30 drinking wells there, and required the entire section be put on city water. The fumes from that spill are still seeping into the basements and cellars of all those area homes.
The press conveniently left that one out.
The town has heavy traffic during days, and is overcrowded in the developments. How can you have a picnic in your back yard, with your neighbor 10 feet away watching every bite you take ? One business to get into would be privacy fence installer, as all these homes certainly need it.
The older housing developments such as Walden Park, Grand View Manor, etc. are well progressed into deterioration, lots of foreclosures, poor roads, very cramped with little space between most homes. What we are seeing is the ghetto-i-zation of the suburbs.
Homes located on the main throughfares and main artery back roads, are subjected to HEAVY TRAFFIC NOISE. These will display traffic rates of 100 cars per hour or more on an average EARLY MORNING day, and even heavier on the weekend. You will be driving down a back road like a roller coaster in a line of 12 cars like some sick amusement ride- instead of a pleasant ride in the country.
What once was a quaint town of about 5000 people, has now become an over-built ant hive of 15,000 people- but without enough municipal services to handle it. Yet the well monied developers continue to flee the big decaying US cities to come here, and the first thing they do is buy wooded land, and try to develop it with cookie-cutter housing. They will also typically name the housing development after themeselves (how egotistical can one be) or give it other trendy, poor taste names such as "Woodland" or "Stonehedge". If you've seen one, you've seen them all.
The era of "planned communiities" and housing developments has to end. This rampany development has left rows of empty new homes and foreclosed homes throughout the town. This next housing bubble is going to be worse than the 2008 bubble that nearly wrecked the entire US economy. Didn't they learn something ? Dozens of foreclosures still stand, yet they continue to build more ? This is the definition of insanity and the township supervisors involved need to WAKE UP and stop issuing the permits. The infrastructure can't handle any more.
If you're planning on buying a home in this location, proceed with extreme caution. There are many homes in distress functionally, there is an abandoned condo project that looks like the remains of a town that was hit with an A-bomb on Church Road, go see it. And the new homes being built, are at least 35% overpriced or more. If you buy in at $400K, you'll be lucky to cash out at $250K- that is something the realtors and banks aren't fessing up to.
IT'S A PUMP AND DUMP SCHEME. When they get done with Mt. Top, they'll move on to another town like Dallas or Back Mountain, and do the same thing all over again. BEWARE.
I never did understand the appeal of Mountain Top, when I first started looking for houses in NEPA I checked out a few there. My first impression was how congested and annoying 309 would be everyday and how it would grate on me if I had to drive it every day. Then the ugly Cul De Sac developments whacked me in the eye and my next thought was how noisy the traffic on 309 would be to them. Sitting on their back porch in supposed luxury while the cars whizz by from only a few hundred feet away staring at you. Breathing in the fumes and so loud you can't hear yourself think.
I picked a nice partially wooded lot at the top of Mayflower in Wilkes Barre overlooking the city and Back Mountain and am way happier than I would have been in one of those "Luxury" Flake board no insulation "Mansions". With no privacy because they plowed out the whole area and you stare right at your neighbors.
Even being happy here I still like to keep an eye out in real estate around here as you never know what is going to pop up on the market that might be an even better deal. I always do my homework though and look very carefully at any property I might consider. On one such occasion we decided to look at an older house off the beaten path in Mountain Top. I figured since it wasn't newer, it wouldn't be one of those cardboard cutouts with no insulation right off the busy road with no privacy. I was right on that much but here is where I will concur about the water table.
As soon as I pulled up to the house I could see signs of water problems. There was a hose running through the yard and when I got out of the car to get a closer inspection I could see that it was connected to a basement sump pump. In the Back Yard there was another very large black plastic pipe connected to the wall of the house to pump out flood water. The house was vacant and it looked like they had failed at their efforts to stop water and mold problems and had moved out. Most likely from being overcome by mold spores. Before leaving, I peeked inside a window that allowed me to see the kitchen and I saw all I had to see to make me run. Black Mold growing up the side of the wall from the floor all the way to the ceiling. The developer either poorly planned the site or even more likely, Those new Cul De Sac community developments had diverted the water table and now these older homes where flooded.
Then add in the chemical spill over near Church Road and I have see more than enough bad things in Mountain Top to know it is a bad buy.
correct on all counts. the traffic and highway noise is a major complaint. Especially on Route 309, South Main Road, Nuangola Road, Woodlawn Ave., Kirby Ave. If you're in one of those homes it sounds like the cars and trucks are going to drive right into your living room. Quite a few former residents have said, you have to stop talking until the traffic goes by, if it's a truck. try biking on those roads during busy hour, you may get run down by a trendy SUV or poor taste German import. The USA mfg. sector is falling apart and these people insist on buying imports as if its' a status symbol to lease one, while living on a 1/8 acre lot. Who are they trying to impress ? A few sideroads sound like a drag strip with every car that goes by as they hit the gas and speed past. the place is loaded with SPEED TRAPS and is drawing on the local population for revenue, there are lines painted all over the roads where they time motorists. so rather than fix the problem, just draw revenue from it.
another factor, the old Reading railroad has been rebuilt and under new management, and runs a lot of freight trains through Mt. Top. Now they blow the air horn at every intersection, at all hours of the night, and wee hours of the morning, and it's LOUD. We heard it at 2 AM, 2:15 AM, 2:30 AM, and 3 AM last week, all in one night. holy crap ! How the heck is anyone supposed to sleep ? They also go through at 9 PM and 4 AM and 5 AM and 8 AM. The top row of homes in Kirby Estates is along these railroad tracks ! These are big money homes that have to sit and listen to the rumble of a damned train a few hundred feet away that shakes the house and wakes the dead. Who the heck gave the permits for this ? Yet they are building even more homes on Kirby Ave. and elsewhere in Mt. Top. I've seen them build a series of homes in one of those cramped col-de-sacs, sell a few of them, then go back and put homes BETWEEN the first ones they built ! I thought it was garages for the first set of homes, that's how close they are. If you wanted to live that close together, you may as well live in the city !
you're right about the lot clearing, they cut down every darn tree in the area, built 75+ homes, then call it "Forest " something or something "Forest" or "Sherwood" etc. They name the place after the wildlife and trees that were destroyed while building it. The homes are set up that the back yards meet, the center in a big circle of about 50 homes. So in your backyard, you see 10 other homes back yards, with no trees, no fences. Like a barren wasteland just grass.
where is the value, where is the PRIVACY ? a handfull of businessmen have used their influence to ruin this once quaint town of the last century. Any empty lot or woodland is looked at with greedy, scheming eyes, to build yet another pile of cheapo homes on tiny lots without any privacy, to maximize one thing- PROFITS- and the banks, realtors, builders all go along for the ride.
like a virus or cancer, this runaway development mentality eats away at the host town until it destroys the host. Before you know it, you have a mini-Detroit on your hands, with suburban decay that rivals the inner city. THERE ARE NO JOBS HERE other than low paying service jobs.
when this housing bubble COLLAPSES, like they always do, sit back and watch the huge losses as the homs go empty, the people can't pay the mortgages, and the mold and mildew has its way with the latest crop of McMansions. Almost none of these homes have more than 1/2 or 1/3 acre, some are on only 1/4 acre. Like living on a postage stamp. There are a few high end developments with 5 acre lots, but who wants to pay the $8,000 or $10,000 a year property taxes ? This is money that literally goes up in smoke to the local county and school district to pay salaries and pensions for the elites. And we've all seen plenty of corruption THERE lately, remember the "cash for kids" scandal ? look it up "cash for kids Luzerne County"- these same people, now convicted and in jail, built the defunct shut down condo project on Church Road, and it was built ON TOP OF the TCE chemical spill zone !
this is what's going on there. total pump and dump tactics. the people profiting from this real estate ploy will then take their 6 or 7 or 8 figure profits and build a house 30 miles away on 100 acres in the quiet countryside, post it "no trespassing", live in solitude, after ruining YOUR town.
and crime- it IS coming to Mt. Top- 2 homes on Church Road that were sitting empty, were broken into, and all the copper pipe and radiators stolen, by thieves who cashed the stuff in at local scrap metal recyclers.
Mountain Top real estate scams soldier on unimpeded !! where else could this occur ? the people who tried to build the Sanctuary on the TCE site, were later convicted in the "cash for kids" scandal !
Thursday, June 30, 2011 Mountain Top Contamination Whispers of Shady Redevelopment By Duane Craig Mountain Top PA Trichloroethylene contamination site. Events in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania stand as a classic example of how long it takes to get cleanup started on contaminated sites once contamination spreads beyond the initial area, and also shows how creative people become when trying to redevelop contaminated sites. Trichloroethylene, or TCE, contamination that originated below an old Foster Wheeler Energy Corporation manufacturing facility on Crestwood Drive where pressure boilers were manufactured from 1953 to 1984, has spread in a plume to affect 36 residential water wells along Church Road, according to one report from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 06-29-2014 at 03:32 PM..
I see it was you that tipped me off about the Chemical pollution in another thread so thank you for that. I could have bought an older house for cheaper in what I thought was a quiet private spot and ended up poisoned. I don't believe the contamination was just one big spill. I think it was accumulative from seepage, runoff and septic overflows for years. I really can't believe that Glen Summit Water wasn't shut down by now. The water they pull from is the same watershed is it not?
the Glen Summit bottling plant is only about 1/2 mile or less, from the actual spill site. It's in the same industrial park. the bottling plant is on the edge of the park, the last building on the main road in the park. Supposedly according to the spill map, the spill went downhill in the other direction, away from the bottling plant. Looking at the lay of the land, that is probably correct, but the TCE was found in the Bow Creek over by the bottling plant. Bow Creek flows through Bow Creek housing development and Briar Brook, crosses Rt. 309 near the Rockledge development, then continues on past the high school, into the Wapwallopen Creek. High dollar homes on all sides along the entire trek, with TCE running through it. Yet they never test for it in the creeks. Glen Summit water was and is historically very good, among the best, BUT I'd have it tested anyway. They do have a very good reputation and in past years their water was always very pure. I haven't drank it in decades. I would also have ANY water tested today, city water, well water, or bottled. Reason- pollution in the USA is widespread, there are literally 100's or 1000's of these TCE spill sites in the country. The solvent was used from the 1950's well into the 1980's the disposed of by dumping it on the ground behind the plants that were using it. That's just the way they did things back then. Some of the worst sites are former and current US military bases.
I just moved to Mountain Top 6 months ago from Freeland... What is being suggested in these comments is already happening everywhere and is, by no means, exclusive to Mountain Top. I have a far more modestly priced home than the "cookie cutter mansions" mentioned before and I am in what is apparently called "Old Mountain Top". I think it is delightful. I am in a quiet neighborhood with mostly decent neighbors (only one problem house on street), a nice back yard, small but pretty front yard. Coming from Freeland I feel like I've moved directly into the royal palace. The school district is FAR better than any neighboring school district.
Instead of bashing Mountain Top for it's decline since the 70s, please take a moment to compare it to the decline of everywhere else since the 70s. I can guarantee that Mountain Top is still a wonderful choice, but please, the people complaining so much in these comments - feel free to stay out. I like neighbors who smile and wave, not grimace and complain.
If people don't like the way things are going in their town it is up to them to contact their local regulators and policy makers and make sure they have a voice in the right arena. Complaining on a web site in some anonymous way is only going to feed the feelings of despair and angst that are running rampant all over the country. Make sure your local council knows who you are and what you think. AND... if you can figure out how to speak your mind eloquently, those in the community that cannot, but feel the same, will want to speak through you to give your voice more power. The politicians work for us - NEVER forget that. We are their bosses and it is up to US to fire the ones doing poorly. Just please don't forget to look around sometimes - tunnel vision never solved a thing for the common good.
I love my new home because it is an old home that was well maintained by someone else who loved it. I have no water damage. While I have little insulation (as was not the practice in the 30s) it will be a minor task to install it. Since I paid more like $100k rather than this ridiculous $400k for puffed up pomp and circumstance homes designed to seduce the uninformed, I'll have the money left to do continuous improvements to my home and truly make it mine over the years.
Please don't complain where it does no good to do so. Make your voice heard where it will do something for you and your neighbors. Preventing people from moving to Mountain Top simply feeds the "ghetto-i-zation" effect by leaving behind what you feel to be dirty. Take some responsibility and clean up around you. If more people did that in this country we would still be a world power instead of waging war around the world in a desperate plea to tell everyone we are in charge. Americans used to rule the world by example - now we are the insecure bully on the playground that no one likes. Take personal responsibility for your town, your home, your family, your country. Only then can we accomplish anything worth accomplishing.
If you are unwilling to do just that then get off of a public forum and go bury your nose back into whatever show network TV wants to jam down your lazy throat and quit badmouthing my town.
Concerning the chemical spill... Good luck living somewhere industrial chemicals haven't been spilled. Again - get mad, get loud, and get heard by your politicians. The federal superfund, the state brownfield fund and every other program set up to actually clean this sort of thing up has been losing funding since inception and are at staggeringly low levels. The superfund alone has a backlog that is expected to last roughly 35 years if no more contaminated sights are identified!!! Fat chance of that.
Do any of you have any clue what it costs to dechlorinate soil?!?!?!? Soil remediation, monitoring wells, oxidative de-chlorination chemicals to be injected, professionals to monitor progress so you don't over-do it and then have a chemical incident of a completely different nature. It takes years to clean up even a small impact plume that you get to soon after the incident. The reason chlorinated parafins were used is because they worked fast, didn't break down, you could use them again and again, and they were cheap - EVERYONE used them and no one cared if they spilled on the ground! On top of that, look at the plume under every gas station built before 1992 (benzene), look at the plume under every dry cleaner in operation prior to 1987 (tetrachloroethylene), look at any location of an industrial manufacturing plant prior to 1974 (the year the EPA was given authority to regulate this sort of thing). Countless industrial chemicals were spewed into the atmosphere, into the soil, into the water table, and into your blood. Get over yourselves already and start doing something about it instead of continuously shouting NOT IN MY BACK YARD!!! It's already IN YOUR BACK YARD!!!!!
The money spent on the wars we are fighting would have funded the cleanup projects to completion for decades to the point that there would be little need for the superfund to exist anymore.
Don't blame the town for the action of the individual. Get informed before you complain. Complain to the right people and agencies. Hold your politicians accountable for their actions. Never forget who works for who. And never assume you are safe because your elected official told you so... find out for yourself! Then make damned sure you tell them what kind of job they did!!
In my opinion Mountain Top is a wonderful place and as long as I live there I will do everything I can to not only preserve what we have, but clean up after decades of waste and ignorance. Some towns are lost. This isn't one of them.
Last edited by kjt124; 02-11-2015 at 01:48 PM..
Reason: misspelling
Offended easily? I can't speak for coal cracker but they apparently had a rather bad experience whether yours was positive or not. I call it like it is and I merely reported here what I saw. If you got a good deal and are happy with your living there then I'm happy for you. Why not come in here with a new thread and explain to us all the positives in an upbeat way? I know several people who live in Mountain Top and they all corroborated with me on my findings. Glad it worked out for you and please write us a positive thread for the sake of would be movers to your town.
No offense taken! I am having a wonderful time and I am truly sorry that some others are not enjoying their experience. Both of my posts (while probably more direct than most people are used to) were not meant to express distaste. My hope is always that I can rile people up in order for them to get the energy up to do something about what makes them unhappy... even if it is nothing more than arguing with me! There is an overwhelming feeling in this country of being completely powerless and it is that feeling that becomes self-fulfilling. All of the issues discussed negatively in this thread (and so many others) should be treated in the same way... by holding your government (on whatever level) accountable. They are not problems with a particular locality - they are problems that have spread across the entire country over the last several decades. I was trying to indicate (in every possible public forum I have access to) that this problem will continue and will get worse and will spread to every town in America until "We the People" get pissed off enough to do something about it!
At any rate, anyone who is considering moving to Mountain Top, the advice to avoid the puffed up cookie cutter mansions is likely sound because many of them were built in the wake of the housing crisis. Get yourself one of the older homes (after you've gotten an inspection, of course) and it is quite nice here. This place still actually has a Main Street of sorts. You can actually shop for everything you need without leaving town (and without using the Internet). There are many places to eat, places to shop for groceries, hardware, gas stations, churches, banks, doctors of all types. Prices are higher than Wal-Mart, but I chalk that up to a convenience fee for not having to deal with Wal-Mart. Not to mention, typically the quality of service offered in the shops and establishments of Mountain Top is an absolute treat compared to Hazleton or Wilkes-Barre. Not to mention, Mountain Top is considerably cleaner than any of the surrounding areas. On top of all that, this is the first place I've lived in my last 6 moves that I can drink the water coming out of the tap without it giving me heartburn!! (moved a lot for work these last several years) There is no Nirvana, but Mountain Top is damn decent in my book. Looking forward to a nice couple of decades!
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the Sanctuary TCE site pump-n-dump scam
