Posted on 08/16/2006 3:25:03 AM PDT by quesney
When a high-cost commute reaches the point of no-return, home buyers will start finding houses closer to work. In fact, some already are.
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Rising fuel costs are being blamed for everything from soaring utility costs to lower retail sales and higher airline tickets. And now, experts say high gas prices could reshape U.S. cities.
"Most analysts believe that crude oil prices in the $50s and $60s will be with us for some time," says Stuart Gabriel, director of the Lusk Center, a think tank at the University of Southern California devoted to studying real estate forces and trends. There's even talk of crude hitting $100 per barrel -- or 10 times what it sold for in the summer of 2005.
Once the realization soaks into the American consciousness that high-cost gas is here to stay, Gabriel predicts, those high commute prices will pull more homeowners -- even young families -- to live in central cities and create a push for more public transportation.
Gabriel already sees change in car-centric Los Angeles, where the commuter culture has for years pushed mile upon mile of city sprawl into neighboring towns and farmland. But now Gabriel says KB Home is leading the way to a new type of neighborhood.
Once thought of as a first-home builder, KB in June launched KB Urban to develop high-density, mixed-use projects. The first such project will be a 2-million-square-foot complex of luxury hotels and private residences built in partnership with hotelier Marriott International and sports-and-entertainment company AEG, owner of L.A.'s Staples Center. This kind of development, Gabriel believes, will help make L.A. a denser, European-type central city. It is celebrated in a 2004 film called "The End of Suburbia."
(Excerpt) Read more at realestate.msn.com ...
telecommute.
Well, my taxes have gone up 3 straight years, and A HELL of a lot more than the price of gas & my suburban town is thriving.
If you can't get to the city from the suburbs, bring the city to them. There is plenty of room in the suburbs to build office buildings. Its being done, so what is the big deal?
My exact thoughts. While they are at it, stop coming to Lake Geneva and clogging my lake and my roads.
Gas in Indiana is DOWN this week...from $2.72 to $2.84....
I live 25 miles from where I work, out in the country on a private two acres in the woods. While my move here was calculated years ago based on $2.00/gal gas, now that it's $3.00/gal, the thought of moving into the cesspool of the city (Seattle and it's immediate suburbs) has never crossed my mind. Even if it goes up to $5.00/gal, we're not talking thousands of dollars a year - we will adjust the budget and make do.
I'm sure people in exurbia can't wait to buy a three bedroom hovel in Detroit.
The copper wire will be installed by Friday afternoon and stripped out before the Saturday sunrise. And your new $400 toilet is now a hole in the floor. What happened to my light fixtures? Gee, look at the drafty holes where my Andersen windows once were. Look honey, the lawn is gone. Where's my roofing bundles? Didn't we build a porch in back?
Eventually, as gas prices keep rising, people will begin to buy smaller cars with higher gas mileage. They will drive less, spend vacations closer to home, car pool, own one car per family, and take other measures to reduce driving.
Notice, Oil companies will continue to make a bundle from rising prices. If you can sell less of a product at higher prices your profits are even greater than when the volume was higher but prices lower.
Eventually too, Americans will force the government in Washington to make America energy independent. Remember, oil is of absolutely no value to Arabs without the American market. Forget China and Asia who have their own vast oil deposits which they will exploit before using Arab oil.
Your right and your wrong. The devlopers will now make these dense new housing projects that people will buy. Once the oil starts flowing due to drilling, better ways to extract from shale, etc, they will move back to the suburbs for their big homes and more elbow room.
Then start the cycle again, oil prices up, people move closer to jobs into denser housing projects. Oil goes down, people move to suburbs.
Sure. The suburbanites are going to move back into the city ghettos to save gas money. Not likely.
Another one word
impossible
If we can outsource, we can d@mn sure telecommute (not all but many).
Yes. Good that you mentioned that, too.
Dude, don't EVEN get me started on this. The media's "God", Alan Greenspan, f'd up in a HUGE way by continuing to raise rates when it was obvious to even line employees like me that the economy was softening up way too fast, and sales were falling. This is one of the under-reported stories of that decade, and likely one of the many reasons Bush beat Al Gore.
Agree with the first part (and "The Maestro" screwed up a second time by leaving rates too low for too long which has led to the inflationary cycle we're in now). I just think W beat Algore because Algore is an idiot. Yes, the economy was softening, big time, but it was not a well reported story by the mainstream press at the time of the election. I think only the supply-side economists and certain industry stocks felt it was "bad" in November of 2000.
I certainly wish I was able to.
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