The various houses used in the Animation were built years apart. The Disney Haunted Mansion was first, starting in 2002 and completed sometime in 2003. After that, Tony built the Amityville Horror house. It was during that time, Cal and Tony talked about the idea of putting an entire neighborhood together. They discussed other houses, and a friend of Tony's requested the house from the 1960's TV show, The Munsters. From there, the Bates house was built along with the hotel portion and sign, then the house from Addams Family.
Tony's all time favorite "scary" movie is the original 1963 version of The Haunting. This proved to be the most difficult building to model within the series. The building that provided the exterior shots for the film, The Ettington Park Hotel, did not have many images that were "head on", which made it difficult to judge the elevation of various parts of the building. It took Tony several months to get it just right, at which point Cal found a fantastic video, taken by a drone. After viewing that, Tony's OCD kicked into high gear and he nearly remodeled it from scratch!
The first versions of Cul-De-Sac, included the 6 buildings.

During the next year, Cal and Tony discussed how to improve upon the animation. It was during that time they decided to add the Beetlejuice house, which also proved quite a challenge given the lack of reference photos. A cemetery was added, along with favorite phrases and names from pop-culture (Tom Petty), and TV shows (Walking Dead). For the "Christmas Special", Cal modeled snowmen and put in a "Calvin and Hobbes" theme to the sequence.