Market for smart growth stronger
In the current housing downturn, smart growth appears to be performing better than large-lot suburban sprawl on the metropolitan fringe, according to a Reuters report in mid-February. From Washington, DC, to California, close-in suburbs are doing better than distant exurbs in housing price, volume, and the length of time that it takes to sell properties. According to the report:
• Average home prices in Loudoun County, Virginia, 35 miles from Washington, fell roughly 11 percent in 2006, according to the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. By contrast, Virginia’s Arlington County, which hugs the nation’s capital and is generally more compact with better access to transit, saw a price decline of only about 2 percent.
• The average Loudoun County home sold in December spent 101 days on the market, according to the Realtor group. In Arlington, the average was 72 days.
• Home prices in Los Angeles rose a relatively modest 5.8 percent in December from a year earlier, while sales were down 14.5 percent, the California Association of Realtors said. Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which are on the eastern edge of Los Angeles’ suburban frontier, saw a more modest 3.9 percent increase in prices, while sales volume plummeted 40.6 percent. High Desert, about 80 miles from downtown Los Angeles, saw just a 1.3 percent increase in price and a 39 percent drop in the number of sales. A look into the future? These figures may be a preview of things to come.
Arthur C. Nelson, the director of the Alexandria Center of Virginia Tech’s School of Urban Affairs and Planning, believes that market trends strongly favor smart growth in coming decades. Nelson presented compelling data at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Los Angeles in early February. Not only has higher-density housing generally fared better in the current downtown, Nelson reports, but also the overwhelming majority of new housing required in the next quarter-century will be of the multifamily and small-lot single family types.
Compared to what will be required by the market in 2030, the US is already substantially overbuilt in large-lot houses, he says. His studies are based on long-term demographic trends such as aging baby boomers and the increasing numbers of families without children. The biggest opportunity for providing higher-density housing is on “grayfield” sites, or obsolete shopping malls that some new urbanists are turning into mixed-use centers in various parts of the country, he reports. New Urban News will report in more detail on Nelson’s analysis in an upcoming issue.
