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QUEEN CREEK — Out on Phoenix's suburban fringes, where cement mixers are fast colonizing hay and cotton fields, the day is winding to a close. The home hour has arrived.

But sundown gives away a troubling secret: Behind dark windows and unanswered doors, it's clear nobody is coming home.

The ranch home on Via del Palo where the newspaper in the driveway has been sitting unclaimed since April. The house at the corner of 223rd Court with faded fliers stuck in the door.

They're empty, left behind by a rising tide of foreclosures.

This neighborhood has a still-unfolding story to tell. It's not always a comfortable one to hear.

Not long ago, builders were raising home prices here by thousands of dollars week after week. Families camped out for lotteries to win the right to buy. Buyers gambled with loans whose risks were obscured by euphoria.

This is the tale of how America's real estate boom came to a seemingly ordinary subdivision called the Villages at Queen Creek, where the whipsaw of easy credit has led to some extraordinary times. They were the best of times, for a while. The empty homes, though, raise serious doubts about what comes next.

As the nation confronts skyrocketing foreclosures, what is happening here and in scores of similar neighborhoods is worth considering.

Because while the pressures at work in Queen Creek were extreme, the choices people made — and the consequences — are not so different from those faced by thousands of other homeowners and their neighbors.

"Honestly," says Joy Kessler, standing on the doorstep of the house she and her husband are surrendering to foreclosure, "if you were in this situation, what would you do?"

In 2004, Dave Gustafson and his family headed to Arizona to visit relatives. The buzz of construction convinced them to have a look around.

Back in California, they had less than 1,100 square feet. But salesmen here offered 2 1/2 times the space for half the price.

The place they liked the best was the Villages, a warren of streets cradling a golf course, quickly filling with sand-colored, stucco homes.

"The salesperson was saying that they (homes) were going up $1,000 a week," Dave Gustafson recalls. "So ... we signed right away."

Builders made it easy. A down payment of $2,000 to $5,000 was all it took. Buyers could borrow at low teaser rates, requiring payments of nothing more than interest.

As promised, prices were going up faster than the houses themselves.

By the time the family's new home was completed, the $179,000 base price had climbed to $220,000.

The Gustafsons opted for Corian counters, a pool and a whirlpool, adding more than $50,000 to their loan. Payments were fixed for only two years, but they didn't worry. With prices rising, they'd refinance. In five or six years, the Gustafsons figured, they'd sell for $500,000.

They were hardly the only ones feeling optimistic.

Kris Rowberry, ecstatic when the value of his home in nearby Gilbert took off, bought a second one in the Villages as an investment.

"I was thinking, man, if I could have 10 properties, I could just kind of retire ... and kick back and live off the income," he says.

The American Dream is overdue for revision.

"There's been a huge shift in the way people view their houses," says John Karevoll of DataQuick Information Systems. "Your house now can basically be used as an ATM."

A generation ago, families celebrated getting a mortgage and again when they retired the loan. A home meant security. Financial commitment promoted pride and neighborhood roots.

But Americans have become much more mobile, and looser lending has made it easier to buy a home and borrow against its value.

Now a home is not just a place to live. It is an investment — a way to make money and finance a lifestyle, says Robert Manning, an expert in consumer credit at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

The lending industry encouraged that transformation, promoting not just subprime loans but mortgages requiring little or no documentation of income, no money down, and interest-only payments.

When easy borrowing combined with a run-up in prices, speculators joined the fray.

But rising interest rates and falling home prices put particular pressure on people who live in the homes they own.

When people who bought almost entirely with borrowed money see appreciated worth disappear, there's little incentive to hold on. Few players, though, seemed to appreciate the chance they might get caught.

"Lenders never said no," says Jay Butler, director of realty studies at Arizona State University. "Nobody expected this to continue, but they hoped it would just long enough to get out of it — and they were caught up in the whirlpool."

By late 2004, the Phoenix real estate market was roaring.

The euphoria reached Queen Creek, though the freeway hadn't arrived yet. "Drive until you qualify," agents told buyers.

Buyers lined up to make a down payment in the new subdivisions. Rowberry joined 200 people one Saturday morning for a chance at 15 lots.

Meanwhile, California and Nevada investors came to greater Phoenix looking for the next great deal.

"I'm just one guy and it wasn't unusual to get three (calls) a day" from speculators, says John Wake, a real estate agent.

The Villages, already half completed, looked too good to pass up.

"Everyone was doing the same thing — taking out lines of credit, milking it for all it's worth," says Matthew Berends of Surprise, another Phoenix suburb where prices soared. His home is in foreclosure. "In one year for a house to go up $80,000, it's like too easy."

But some relatively modest purchases would prove to be risky gambles.

Greg Giniel and his wife moved into a home on East Sanoque Drive bought by a friend, with Giniel as a silent partner. What Giniel hadn't counted on was that the friend had bought three other homes with adjustable-rate loans that were bound to rise.

One street over, the Kesslers paid $279,000 for a house in the fall of 2005.

With $25,000 down and an interest-only loan, it seemed wiser than their old rental.

There was a problem, though, obvious only in hindsight. A market that had skyrocketed was about to plunge.

Last year, the Gustafsons fell behind on their mortgage. In August, their lender started foreclosure.

Problems began to snowball. High gas prices prompted people to rethink living on the outskirts. Investors rushed to sell.

In 2005 — a record-best year for Phoenix real estate — just five homes in the ZIP code containing the Villages were lost to foreclosure, according to Information Market, a Phoenix research firm.

So far this year, 75 homes have been claimed by lenders. It could be just the beginning.