Posted on 04/26/2012 6:44:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If there’s one asset the world has little use for, it’s an American single family home priced above 250K, reachable only by car.
The great, post-war buildout of America’s suburbs relied upon the continuance of a favorable arbitrage between rising wages, and low transportation costs. Now that this profitable scheme has come to an end, it should be no surprise that Robert Shiller remarked this week that housing “may not recover in our lifetime.”
While some stabilization has been seen since the start of the US housing bust, Case-Shiller data showed this week that many cities hit new price lows. Interestingly, Robert Shiller is now himself noting the energy and transport cost pressure on US housing, and used the phrase “walkable cities.”
To illustrate how I see the future price path of homes in non-walkable cities, I made up the following graphic:
Walkable cities are very nice indeed, and I’ve been fortunate to live in several of them: Boston, New York, San Francisco and now my present city, Portland.
But the majority of American homes, in order to capture any future increase in value, will need to benefit again from rising wages and flat to falling energy costs. At the current juncture, those are two trends unlikely to appear any time soon.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Yes, because packing us all into Soviet-style apartments is so much better. /s
Walkable = CCW
Inaccessible to flash mobs is going to add value, very soon.
That fact is no accident.
Mike
Some people were just not meant to live like 'rats.
Get to the point Gregor.
All you are predicting here is a continuance of the crippling and destructive environmental fascism that current dominates energy issues in the USSA.
There is PLENTY of energy to be harvested in the USA alone for INTELLIGENT people to drive 400 HP SUVS at will for the next 500 years.
exactly. The reason people wanted a home in the ‘burbs was to have a yard and some peace and quite. If they wanted to live in stacked boxes there are plenty of places they could have chosen
Also, the author neglects to mention the increasing viability of working from home due to technology that would negate any rising transportation costs for many Americans.
I am on a project where I worked strictly from home. I was on the same project 5 years ago, and traveled back and forth to NYC from Pittsburgh.
“Agenda 21”
If I wanted America to fail...
Yes it is easier to control masses of people when they are packed in city type compounds. No Thanks I live in the sticks and will stay there.
Our small scenic valley holding about 100 homes, each on at least one acre, mostly retirees, 45 mins from the nearest big town, is suddenly having a crime wave. Many older residents have been forced to move closer to town because of the price of gas and as a result there have been foreclosures, and homeowners who can’t sell are renting to undesirables who are keeping these rental homes and outside areas in deplorable condition. Three burglaries, two within the last week. One the homeowner interrupted while burglary was in progress, and was beaten, shot, and hospitalized. The local sheriff has too big an area to cover to come here in a timely fashion when incidents occur. I foresee self policing, vigilante style, if things keep happening, which could be as alarming as the crime.
Bingo!
It is! It makes it so much easier for the block captains to spy on the tenants and report their activities to the commissar.
>> Walkable cities are very nice indeed, and I’ve been fortunate to live in several of them: Boston, New York, San Francisco and now my present city, Portland.
That, plus his asinine pedantic graphic, is all I needed to add this fool to my “ignore forever” list.
Anybody whos says...”Walkable cities are very nice indeed, and I’ve been fortunate to live in several of them: Boston, New York, San Francisco and now my present city, Portland.” is a flaming lib.
How many homes are reachable by air, doofus? Sounds like an ad for the futuristic but laughably incapable Terrafugia, which most recently flew for eight entire minutes and reached an altitude of 1400 feet.
"There is living space for 13 families in this one house."
In the Exurbs, the American Dream Is Up for Rent
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123845433832571407.html
Recall, in America’s past, that civil defense was utilized by citizens in the event of disasters or invasion.
Independent people can form associations when necessary for the preservation of life and liberty.
Typical commie lib.
Mass transit for all.
Cubicle apartments for all.
except them.
The only truth in this article is that home prices will not soon recover to pre-2008 levels.
Walkable cities are very nice indeed, and I’ve been fortunate to live in several of them: Boston, New York, San Francisco and now my present city, Portland
####
Most Americans have a strong aversion to living in your, “walkable”, overrated “hip”, liberal sh!tholes. We feel “fortunate” to not go anywhere near them.
Oh, and lose the poseur cigarette holder. It might be difficult, as it is likely scoring you major fairy points, as the the latest cool accessorization for smarmy, condescending EuroQueers.
I have a use for MINE. And the world does have a use for what I produce (blood analyzer software); a nice house is a fair use of the profits.
Average Price In New York City
$ 977/sq.feet!
I can drive a lot of miles for ONE sq/ft!
Would my allocated housing unit include 0.5 acre* of land, 1/3rd forest, a private pond and play area, garden space, 2000 sq ft living space, 3 bedrooms, and fireplace? These are my non-negotiable minimums, and the cheapest implementation thereof is "reachable only by car" and costs around $250k.
My target configuration is >20 acres (my family's FAIR share of world land mass), half forest, large pond & play field, 1+ acre garden & 1+ acre livestock (so we can be SELF SUFFICIENT on food), 4000 sq ft living space (just 0.5% of our FAIR share of land), 1 bedroom per family member (arrangement leaving 1 for guests), 2 wood stoves, well, cistern, and solar/wind electricity augmentation.
"Walkable" sacrifices any semblance of self-sufficiency, to wit SUSTAINABILITY. My target is SUSTAINABLE, a self-sufficient unit not negatively impacting anyone.
Re. #25:
Boston forbids ownership of firearms. Residents have no way to protect themselves there from the large, violent, heavily armed (!) permanent underclass.
I lived in subdivisions with “next door neighbors” all my life.
After I sold my business and commenced to think seriously of retiring, I began to realize that living in a subdivision really sucks. Little real privacy*, peer pressure to “conform,” etc. That’s when I started searching for some land.
Today I live on 15+ acres in beautiful Aiken County, SC. Oh, I still have neighbors. The nearest one lives almost 1/4 mile away. And we socialize... when we want to.
* My definition of privacy: Would you feel comfortable going outside and walking around your house stark naked? Yes? Then you’ve got privacy!
“People live where they do for a reason. If you make the cost of gas prohibitive, they will find alternatives, but they won’t move...”
I like my job and also my home. I happen to drive 30 miles each way to work. (Both would be hard to replace).
If they engineer the price of gas to $9/gallon, I’ll telecommute, work at the closer local offices or spend a couple of nights a week at a local hotel near my work.
But I am not going to move to a “Walkable” city. I grew up in a place like that and have worked very hard to get away from there.
People in places like that have a tendency to make their problems, your problems.Where I live everyone is friendly and doesn’t bother you.
Walkable city, NO THANKS.
Walking is the absolute last resort for mobility!
I put my bicycle, including it’s Whizzer engine, in the trash on my 16th birthday.
For the price difference between the article’s lamented $250k car-required home and the same-floorspace NYC price, you could drive an SUV 9 million miles. (That’s not rhetoric, that’s how the math works out.)
The telephone will end loneliness as people will get to know one another.
The automobile will end loneliness as people will get to know one another.
The internet will end loneliness and eliminate war as people will get to know one another.
Obama will end loneliness and eliminate war as people will get to know one another.
The end of suburban housing will end loneliness and eliminate war as people will get to know one another.
Walkable. Those cities? Walk them after dark and come back and tell me how "walkable" they are.
Leftism is little more than size envy. It starts in childhood with “No fair! His cake is bigger than mine!” and matures into “No fair! His house/car/SUV/boat/TV/family/pet/cigar is bigger than mine!”
Oh, I miss my previous private country home.
I salute those who stay off the grid and those that carry. We're on the same team, but have different approaches.
I for one love a walkable city. I absolutely love walking to shops and activity, without having to start the car. Love it, love it.
The problem is that most cities aren’t planned for it. The walkable cities tend to be old urban centers that are in or near poor dangerous neighborhoods and the middle class would not accept living there. Suburban areas tend to be unplanned bedroom communities with very little supporting infrastructure besides the occassional strip mall, so nothing is walkable.
I would love to live in an upscale European style village or town where shops and activities are strewn throughout the living centers and transit is at your doorstep. The problem is, previous US attempts at walkable areas are more like Soviet blockhouses rather than European villages. Also, any planned upscale village built today would be required to be “diverse” and would offer Section 8 housing, so there goes the neighborhood right off the bat.
But yes, I would kill to live in a small European style village where all of the shops and activities I use on a weekly basis were within a 6 block walk of my front door, with light rail to a larger city within 2 blocks of my door, and all of it upscale with very low crime.
No disrespect to those who love rural living but it is not for me. I would love to live in a small upscale walkable village and I would gladly suffer a bit of density to have it. There is space in the USA to cater to both those who want 20 acres and those who want a large lavish high rise apartment in a beautiful urban setting with a solid economy and low crime.
Build it and I’m there. This hardly exists in America becasue it is done wrong almost every time. I can’t think of a planned community in the USA that would feel like living in a French or German village, sans language barrier and nation-specific architecture.
True. Neighborhoods like you describe are not possible in a multi-cultural country.
I watched that video last night. Then had my wife, who heard most of it the first time, come watch it. Then posted it to Facebook, and I never do anything like that. The folks that produced that need to come up with some commercials for election season.
I started a home business that will some day be “sustainable,” despite the commies. I like seeing birds and trees outside my house. Imagine that.
-—Yes, because packing us all into Soviet-style apartments is so much better. /s——
Read Gropius’ theory behind the apartment building. It’s eye-opening, to say the least.
Whoever wrote this did so from outside suburban planning experience. Major corporations adore the idea of huge planned shopping districts, easily accessible to the delivery of goods, but nowhere near housing. Which is why they need huge parking lots.
But this is not the only way to do things. A suburbs is a golden opportunity for small and single proprietor businesses to have a piece of the economic pie as well, trading inventory diversity for convenience. They locate snug against a suburban area and in some cases in an urban area, which strongly undermines the giant corporate model.
Yet this drives major corporations nuts, because despite their huge inventories, their bottom line is based on selling those common items sold by mom & pop stores. Putting the M&Ps out of business by undercutting their prices is a big part of the corporate operations.
Importantly, when some city sets up a “downtown” district to feature small, local businesses, giant corporation franchises are there in a heartbeat to take advantage of the opportunity as well. But in the process they poison it, because they strip any local color away for their mass produced products made with minimum wage workers.
They will even go to court and spend a fortune to get access to such places, which are often designed to keep such corporate franchises out. It is less that they want in, than to keep local competition out.
Walking is not healthy in any city that has a large, hostile underclass. Those thugs are predators, just like hyenas.
There was a years-long wait for new apartments. It sometimes happened that a couple would get divorced and both stay in their apartment, and then both remarry, and you'd end up with four adults living in the one apartment, along with any kids or rug-rats, dogs, cats, or anything else.
Moreover the Soviet empire was always a curious mixture of communism and feudalism. In order to move from Moscow to Novgorod for instance, you had to find somebody in Novgorod who wanted to move to Moscow. That was because, otherwise, the mayor of Moscow would have to figure that his old buddy, the mayor of Novgorod, had just gone one (peasant, i.e. you) up on him.
The language in fact retains a lot of stuff from medieval times. The 'to jinx' for instance (каркать/накаркать) is borrowed from crow language ("carrrr") since common belief held that a human being could not pronounce a jinx or curse and a wizard with any ongoing need to put curses on people needed a crow or raven to pronounce them.
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