Kaid Benfield's Blog
More on declining home prices and sprawl
April 21, 2008
Posted by Kaid Benfield in Living Sustainably
National Public Radio's Morning Edition has joined the chorus of observers who are finding that sprawl locations may be suffering disproportionately from the turmoil in the nation's housing market:
"Morning Edition, April 21, 2008 · Median home prices across the nation continue to decline, but some experts are noting a link between falling housing prices and commuting distances. Suburbs where commuters drive an hour or more to work are seeing some of the sharpest drops in prices."
The report is entirely consistent with my post from yesterday. In particular, persons interviewed on the broadcast point out that, in the Washington, DC metro area, prices have fallen in the suburbs (citing an 18 percent drop in one Loudoun County, VA location) while prices in the city actually have risen 3.5 percent.
In addition, an analyst with the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, considered an industry leader, tells listeners that, in six metro markets that he examined - Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and San Diego - he found a clear relationship between location and change in home values, places with longer commute times consistently showing the steepest drops. This is due in part to a growing awareness of the locational costs associated with home ownership, as reported here, which are becoming increasingly important to consumers.
Listen here to the 6-minute broadcast.
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- Kaid Benfield
- Director, Smart Growth Program
- Washington, DC
- I was raised in the mountains of western North Carolina, surrounded by some of the...
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