Housing values dropping faster in sprawled areas

In a development that doesn't bode well for Missouri cities, which tend to have a high sprawl quotient, values in neighborhoods with a long commute or distant from transit connections seem to be losing value fastest. According to an article on NPR.org:

. . . some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And a pattern is emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.

The ones with short commutes are faring better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what has long been inexorable — urban sprawl. . . .

Jonathan Hill, vice president of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which tracks home sales, sat in his office recently, clicking through page after page of price data sorted by ZIP code. There were a lot of negative numbers, but not in places that are close in or near public transit.

The 20912 ZIP code, for example, showed almost a 10 percent increase in average sales price, Hill said.

David Stiff, chief economist for the company that produces the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, saw the trend in other cities, as well — including Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, San Diego, Miami and Boston.

Stiff recently matched home resale values against commute times and found that in most of these major metropolitan areas, the trend is the same. The longer the commute, the steeper the drop in prices.

One of the cases we have been making to MoDOT and communities around the state is that it makes good economic sense to create communities and roads that are bicycle and pedestrian friendly, allow access to transit, and allow access for all users--young and old, able and disabled.

When fuel prices start to go up, these things start to be a very concrete part of what makes one community desirable to live in and another, far less desirable.