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Do Commuting Costs Make Your Home Too Expensive?

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Barry Ragin over at Dependable Erection pointed me to this neat Housing and Transportation Affordability map. It lets you peer into metropolitan areas and compare the traditional affordable housing areas [median home price less than 30% of median income] with their new index — housing plus transportation costs less than 45% of median income. It’s an interesting look at how commuting costs change the true cost of housing.

The site also have several maps looking at fuel costs, greenhouse gas emissions, total commuting time and just about any other factoid relating to housing and transportation. It’s worth taking a few minutes to play around with it.

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Phoenix Home Sales Decline — A Model for Durham?

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

While reading various blogs, I came across this post on TheStreet.com about August home sales in Phoenix. It’s certainly worth a read. Not for the numbers themselves — the Phoenix market has been one of the hardest hit during the collapse of the housing industry, while Durham has been relatively untouched, so there is no direct comparison. What might be similar, however, is the effect that a dwindling supply of foreclosed properties has on the number of sales and the price of homes. In Phoenix, a declining number of foreclosures has led to a drop in the number of sales, but a stiffening of home prices [although, to be fair, all of those effects are relatively small at the moment].

Might this be a indicator of how other markets will react as the foreclosure crisis eases? It makes sense — a declining number of “super inexpensive” homes leads to a drop in sales figures and an increased average price. Again, Phoenix isn’t Durham by a long stretch, but this might be something to look out for over the next few months.

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The End of the McMansion?

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Insight, one of our REALTOR® trade magazines had the following interesting tidbit;

From 1973 the square footage of houses built in the United States grew steadily – until last year when the size of the typical home shrank by 11 percent. “People are realizing ‘Hey, I don’t need the Lexus anymore’” says Wayne Elde of the Development Group, builder of the Terraces in Yuma, AZ. “I can live with the Camry.” About 90 percent of the homes that members of the National Association of Home Builders are building this year are smaller now than in decades.

If you think about it, you can certainly see this trend in Durham, especially in starter homes. In older neighborhoods, like Northgate Park and parts of Parkwood, the average home is a two bedroom with 1,000ish square ft. home, sometimes renovated later to three bedrooms. As we went into the Eighties, the starter home became 3 bedrooms and about 1,500 sf, like Villages of Cornwallis or the later parts of Parkwood. In the early part of this decade, that starter home started to have a fourth bedroom and was getting close to 2,000sf.

Will this trend towards smaller homes continue? How has the financial crisis changed your view of a “typical home?’

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