[Heel n Toe]

Does the "developer" own those houses across the street? If so... or even if not, he's probably trying to make these two lots look more like those.

I detest that kind of "mow everything down and slap it up development" and will never live in one. Those guys are taking down trees that look like they don't need to remove... the ones near the property line. Ugh. Maybe they're thinking about possible future storm damage to the homes.

In today's mindless market, so many people just want a certain layout and size and couldn't care less about the fact there are no trees. Part of it is probably that we live in such a changeable/mobile society. I don't know what the stats are of how long the average person/family stays in a home, but I think it's less than 10 years.

I wouldn't even want to live 2 years in a house on one of those scalped lots. So many of today's newer homes look like a garage with a house built on the back of it... like those across the street. I understand why that layout is efficient, space-wise, but it's butt ugly, IMO.

One reason I've heard so many developers go in gangbusters and rip everything out is that when grading the lots, even if they made the effort to leave as many trees as possible, sometimes the ground is graded a bit too low or too high at the base of the tree, and it ends up dying in a few years anyway. That happened here in a newish development on the edge of town where some friends moved a few years ago... many residents lost several trees in their yard.

But over half the trees survived, and that neighborhood never looked half as bad as the scalp jobs that have been going up in the last 10-15 years.

Don't be surprised if they scalp your lot after you move out.