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Your research is very outdated. The exurbs fared very poorly during the real estate bust, in particular during the time when gasoline approached $5 a gallon. As a long term trend, the children of the suburbs seem to prefer the center of the city. Simple mathematics does not seem to support the expense of sprawling infrastructure, which grows geometrically as a city expands, along with the cost of building all of it. I would put my money on the inner city, where prices are cheap, and population densities are falling -- anywhere near mass transit lines.
I would put my money on the inner city, where prices are cheap, and population densities are falling — anywhere near mass transit lines.
I lived in NYC from 2002-08, and rentals did nothing but go up. Same thing for buying. I'm not sure there were any cheap prices at least there. Generally, living expenses ex-housing are more expensive than the suburbs, too. Population densities in big cities are not falling, either. The overwhelming trend the entire decade of 2000 was a healthy increase in big city populations. Here is a link, compiled from census information (according to their own citation) up to 2009:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html
Out of 50 major cities, there are only 5 with a decrease--2 being Cleveland and Detroit (no shock there)--and another being LA just recently, a place that is a complete swindle, where it's no wonder people finally realized "nice weather" isn't good enough reason to live in Plastic Surgery Squalor.
ECBB:
I do not know about exhurbs... but my desire to move to the woods to live deliberately (to quote HD Thoreau) was in part based on survival... not sure that qualifies as an anecdote to surburban or exhurban living trends.
I just wanted to live where I controlled water, basic sanitation and the heat at a minimum. And have a place where I could lay in a large amount of staples and feel that if need be I could defend myself and my family.
Iwps is probably right... short of another government 'error' and we see another inner-city terror attack transpire those along mass transit lines will probably fare better with their RE than those in the boonies. Less sure about the inner city... one thing always lacking there is affordable anything... and taxes in the cities are sure to skyrocket as there are far fewer taxed voters in most cities than in the 'burbs... those untaxed city folks (and city government workers) always vote Dem to ensure ever higher taxes and more money into their pockets.
Done!
2010 Aug 4, 3:22am
Some rich NY Jews moved away and upset the local lifestyles standard of living and economies.
The Community's swimming hole of 3 or 4 generations in the town I grew up in, was acquired and closed quite promptly as private by such people. Today the 120 square miles patch of woodland in front of my childhood family home in the middle of Bumphuck Egypt S.C. is now a gated community. And probably has less than five adult trees in the whole site.
And the houses go for in high 900's I'm told. This is was a town of 1200 people, and the average income of 12K a year in 84.
I hesitate to even post this - but it warrants discussion. In 2001 and 2002 I was shuttling back and forth amongst various northeast locations (including most of the urban areas between Richmond, VA and Portland, ME) for work reasons.
Whenever I travel, I ALWAYS read the local classifieds - specifically the employment and real estate sections. I came across a folder recently that had various clippings from my travels during that time frame.
Looking back on it - there seems to have been an abrupt trend in many areas towards moving away from urban centers and into the suburbs. Prices in the suburbs and ex-burbs seem to have accelerated far faster than prices within the city. Suddenly ("only 50 min from ") became a popular term within real estate ads from 2002 onward.
Certainly I mean no disrespect, but my limited data suggests that there seems to have been be a noticeable (and understandable) cause and effect whereby people re-evaluated their station in life after the events of late 2001, and in doing so, tended to move away from the cities and into the suburbs - thereby adding to the other forces (low rates, loose lending etc.) already hand.
Given this hypothesis (the pronounced trend of people moving out of cites into the surrounding suburbs / ex-burbs) can we still expect prices to revert to the mean for the outlying portions of a given MSA - or does this presupposed shift in demographics result in prices bottoming out at a higher point than they would have had "normal" appreciation occurred for the suburbs and ex-burbs?
Also, perhaps some of you have some reputable data to support or refute this hypothesis - all I have is anecdotal data from my travels.
#housing