TOMBALL, Texas—Susan Mosco has watched her neighbors in Tomball lose their homes and disappear.

“They’re foreclosing on all these houses. Honey, I’ve been here for six months. I’ve seen 12 people move from this subdivision,” Mosco said.

Foreclosures are hurting not only the families being forced out, but the homeowners left behind.

“I put a pretty good-sized down payment down on it when I bought it. I don’t think I could sell it right now,” Matt Travis said of his home.

Travis fears all the foreclosed homes sitting empty on his street mean he’d get thousands less than he paid for his.

“I paid just over $120,000 for it, and I’m just guessing, I probably wouldn’t get $94,000 if I tried to sell it,” Travis said.

The Houston real estate market continues to be one of extremes. There are pockets of neighborhoods where 80 percent of the houses for sale are in foreclosure.  But on the flip side, there are neighborhoods where home prices have continued to rise.

“Land prices are going through the ceiling in some of these neighborhoods,” real estate appraiser Frank Lucco said.

And they’re not just in the luxury enclaves of West Houston.

“A real example of that is The Woodlands,” Lucco said.

Five years ago, Lucco counted two dozen homes in The Woodlands selling for more than $1 million.

Last year, there were more than 70 sales over $1 million, and one at a whopping $5 million.

So who is buying these homes?

“There’s no question about it – it is dominated by the oil industry,” Lucco said.

Energy company profits continue to boost not only Houston’s home sales, but also the overall job market.

Houston’s job market ranks among the best in big cities across the country.

And that lures people like the Boyd family, who just left California.  They found nursing jobs in Houston in just one week.

“There’s a lot of people packing up in California,” Mike Boyd said.

According to data from United Van Lines, he’s right.

In the first half of 2008, United moved hundreds more families into Texas than they moved out.  But in California, it was just the opposite.

That gives some hope that Houston neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosures have a good chance of bouncing back.

The Boyds said they think finding a house in Houston will be easy.

While that may be the case, there are no certainties as the financial industry continues to struggle.

“If they can’t get financing, they can’t buy their house,” Lucco said.

And that uncertainty is the reason home prices may not have hit their lowest point in neighborhoods where un-sold homes line the street.