Pixie Dust Loses Magic as Foreclosures Slam Utopian Disney Town

12-14-2010 • Bloomberg.com

Now, there’s trouble in the 16-year-old paradise set within earshot of the nightly fireworks at Walt Disney World Resort. Celebration’s foreclosure rate is about double the state’s pace as homeowners who paid a premium for a vision of utopia fall behind on their mortgages. Earlier this month, a resident on the verge of losing his house shot himself after a 14-hour standoff with police. Three days before that, the town had its first murder when a man was bludgeoned with an ax. “A lot of people bought homes in Celebration thinking Tinker Bell had sprinkled the town with pixie dust,” said Michael Olenick, chief executive officer of mortgage-data firm Legalprise Inc., referring to the character in Disney’s “Peter Pan” movie whose magical dust allows people to fly as long as they think happy thoughts. “Reality is hitting hard.” The foreclosure rate in Celebration since the beginning of 2009, based on notices of so-called lis pendens that initiate a case, is one for every 20 residents, compared with one per 48 people in Florida as a whole