Even the swanky developers get bit by the subprime snake

Custom developer Lake Ridge has a suburban Dallas development in Cedar Hill that is in a lot of trouble, in fair part over subprime mortgages now starting to head south.

And “unexplained house fires” sounds like code for “arson not yet investigated as such.” Question there is, who's setting the fires - a homeowner fixing to go upside down or a “pre-homeowner” (ahem) possibly stuck with a house that the development can't move.

The fact that some of these burning houses are unoccupied could support either the homeowner OR the developer theory:

The three story brick-and-stone house at 419 Golden Pond caught fire on December 3. Cedar Hill Fire Marshal Randall Jordan said it was intentionally set.

The house was unoccupied - without gas or electricity - yet somehow fires started in several places on lower floors.

Now the charred ribs of what used to be a peaked roof stick into the sky. It was the most expensive house on the block, listed on tax rolls at $640,000.

Darrell Mosely, who lives across the street, says the house at 419 was not the first to burn. He points to one farther down the block that's burned twice (That one, according to Fire Marshal Jordan, was caused by faulty wiring). But Mosely is irked that these homes and others with questionable value are jacking up his tax rates.

But there wasn't a homeowner to even light a match on this one:

On Mallard Point, about a mile away, a bare foundation is what's left of another home that burned. It was still under construction. Grand Prairie fire inspector C.J. Griffin said it is impossible to determine the cause

These are houses at $400K and more. For you outside Texas, know that this is definitely on the higher side of the Dallas Metroplex housing market, even if this would be mid-market in Chicago and a bungalow in L.A. Double these prices or better and you get an idea of their worth in Los Angeles. In other words, somebody is torching the SoCal equivalent of million-dollar homes over subprime mortgage problems.

So, that's the interesting thing - the subprime crisis is spreading, and spreading upward. For people who think this isn't serious, think again.