Category Archives: Sociology

Few Americans think “it is a good time to buy a house”

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Since 1978, Gallup has asked Americans whether they think “it is a good time to buy a house.” The percentages of Americans agreeing with this in 2022 and 2023 are the lowest figures recorded:

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Twenty-one percent of U.S. adults believe it is a good time to buy a house, down nine percentage points from the prior low recorded last year. The 2022 and 2023 readings are the only times that less than half of Americans have perceived the housing market as being good for buyers in Gallup’s trend since 1978…

Gallup first asked Americans about their perceptions of the housing market in 1978, when 53% thought it was a good time to buy a house. Thirteen years later, when the question was asked again, 67% held that view. The record high of 81% was recorded in 2003, at a time of growing homeownership rates and housing prices…

Opinions of the housing market are bleak and generally similar among all major subgroups, including by region, urbanicity, homeownership status, income, education and party identification. Subgroups in these categories range from 18% to 24% thinking it is a good time to buy a house.

Americans tend to like homeownership. Thus, this data could be interest if it goes toward the direction toward less interest in buying homes and less support for policies that privilege homeownership. If enough Americans are this pessimistic, perhaps they do not think they can pursue owning a home. Perhaps they want policies that provide help for renting or other housing options. Perhaps their inability to purchase a home at younger ages means they will not be able to catch up later.

However, I suspect the pessimism of 2022 and 2023 is tied to current conditions more than it signals a large shift in how Americans think about homeownership. The Gallup data suggests support went down a bit in the mid-2010s and then dropped off in the last two years. It might take another year or two to see if (1) housing conditions improve and (2) support rises. Of course, housing conditions may not improve much and a longer-term run of pessimism could lead to bigger changes.

The bigger question might be this: how many years of negative perceptions about owning a home will it take for patterns to change long-term?

The cities college graduates are leaving, the cities college graduates are going to

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A new analysis suggests college graduates are leaving some of the costliest metropolitan areas and instead moving to other metropolitan areas:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/15/upshot/migrations-college-super-cities.html

Looking at these two lists, several things stand out:

  1. Among the most expensive cities, not all have turned negative regarding college graduates moving in or out. What is different in Boston, Honolulu, Miami, San Diego and Seattle? (Some possible factors: different economic activities, the weather, relative prices, their locations within certain regions, they are not the biggest cities.)
  2. Some of the 41 other large metros are clearly more attractive than others for college graduates. This includes Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Nashville, Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh, San Antonio, and Tampa. The Sunbelt continues to grow? Will these population changes in these cities change the conditions within these cities? Are these the current hot places to be (subject to change)?
  3. Other large metro areas might have cheaper housing and lower costs of living but they are not necessarily attracting college graduates. This includes Buffalo, Detroit, Hartford, Milwaukee, and Rochester. Is it a coincidence that these are Rust Belt metropolitan regions?

Generally, cities and regions want college graduates who can add to the population and the human capital available. But, the sorting of the college graduates across locations could have profound consequences.

Average sales price of houses up over 500% since 1983

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An article on generational wealth transfers in the United States highlighted this significant rise in the average selling price of homes from 1983 to today:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS

From reading the chart, the rise in average prices is over 500% from roughly $90,000 in late 1983 to over $500,000 in early 2023. This, presumably, can be seen in communities across the country.

This is quite the rise. In this time, leaders promoted the ideology of homeownership. Americans came to see housing as more of a financial investment. It was the time of McMansions. Sprawl continued and zoning protected single-family homes.

Now there is a lot of money tied up in homes and real estate plus homes have become an even more important marker of wealth. As the article asked, will the transfer of wealth in these homes simply reproduce existing disparities in housing? Or, might there be ways that the increased value of housing help promote access and opportunities for others?

The suburbs are not having a “surprise revival” as they never went away

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A summary of several recent patterns involving the American suburbs starts with this:

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American suburbia— once marked by dying malls and empty office parks — is thriving.

But, given the already-existing love in the United States for the suburbs, are the suburbs back?

Take one of the pieces of evidence cited. A recent survey suggests a good portion of millennials want to settle in the suburbs:

For eight years now, as millennials have entered their thirties and forties, also known as “homebuying age,” Bank of America has surveyed over 1,000 members of the generation once a year for its Home Work series. And for 2023’s edition, it finds a “suburban nation” alive and well. Older millennials (age 31–41) are almost three times as likely to move into a house than an apartment, the survey found, and they’ve got a hunger for the Costco dog, so to speak. 

Migration patterns during the pandemic have clearly established that most homebuyers have wanted to flee big cities, with some “zoomtowns” such as Boise benefiting in particular. But the survey reveals something even more drastic. In a section called “suburban nation,” BofA reveals that 43% to 45% of millennials—of every age—expect to buy a house in the suburbs…

The interest is pervasive across the generation, and maybe means that the suburb is in for a new and better revival. And a 2021 study from Pew Research Center found that one in five adults preferred city life, compared to one quarter of adults in 2018, those who favored the suburbs increased post COVID-19 as well. One of suburbia’s worst qualities or stereotypes was its pervasive whiteness, now with the surge in interest the suburbs are starting to grow to reflect the diversity of the country at large. Big suburbs are actually now more racially diverse than the nation, according to a Brookings analysis. 

I take this less of millennials now really want to go to the suburbs and more of millennials are following the patterns of previous generations of Americans. What exactly the suburbs are today is different – they are more complex – but they are still structured around single-family homes, family life, and attaining the American Dream.

All places go through some fluctuations in conditions and appeal. It will take longer than just a few years to doom the suburbs as Americans have now devoted decades to celebrating and pursuing them.

Who owns a neighborhood? Or, who can make decisions to alter it?

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A discussion of recent housing changes in Arlington, Virginia, an increasingly whiter and wealthier community, included this summary:

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Perhaps the opponents are beginning to accept that their community is not, has never been, exclusively their own domain.

Who owns a neighborhood? In many American communities, the people who live there might feel this way. They expect to provide input and exercise some oversight of what happens in their neighborhood. They want to exercise control over their own properties and those around them.

But, they do not do this on their own. They interact with other property owners and also engage with local governments. These local governments typically represent a broader community and have regulations about what can and cannot be done in neighborhoods.

In this particular case, the residents are single-family home owners and they have money and status. Thus, they really expect to be able to control their surroundings and they have means to back up their interests. Zoning in the United States often privileges protecting single-family homes.

In the end, however, local government has the task of considering the broader interests of a community. These may or may not align with the interests of a neighborhood. The neighborhood residents can respond by not voting for these local government officials and it is relatively easy in a smaller community to express discontent with local officials. But, action may already be underway that cannot be changed.

Or, here is another way to address the same questions: if every neighborhood will change over time, who gets to street this change and/or benefit from this change? Those with means and vested interests will have their own perspective and goals while a broader community might have another point of view.

The ideal American lawn as “ecologically unproductive”

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A description of a homesteader property in North Carolina explains why the lawn had to go:

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When they bought the house, it was surrounded by a picturesque, but ecologically unproductive, lawn of green grass. Building out a homestead that uses available space for growing food almost always means disrupting the lawn, and McClelland and O’Neill dispatched theirs quickly.

The American lawn is often a symbol of social class. But, what if it not just an ornament or a testament to money and effort but is instead a clear suggestion that the property owners do not need to use their land for other uses? What if a green and well-kept lawn is not about presenting a particular verdant image but rather shows that the owner is so wealthy that they acquire their food – and other things they might acquire from the land – elsewhere?

American lawns could be devoted to native plants or covered in stones. They could also be used to grow food. Imagine even half of the lawn space in the United States used to grow food. How much could be produced? Could this help people eat healthier? Could being involved in gardening have positive individual and social outcomes?

Yet, the green lawn says, “I am not needed for food. I am here to look pretty.” Perhaps it is even a form of conspicuous consumption; it broadcasts that the owner can waste the lawn on green grass.

COVID-19, rents, and increases in household formation

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A new paper suggests an increase in household formation during COVID-19 has helped keep rent prices high:

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In this case, Ozimek and his coauthor, Eric Carlson, used heaps of 2021 census data to illustrate how housing markets in large cities were caught between two powerful, competing forces. The first was outbound migration, which led to weaker housing demand in city centers. Previous work by Stanford researchers Arjun Ramani and Nicholas Bloom found there was a “donut effect” earlier on in the pandemic, in which housing demand fell in dense urban areas as people moved to the surrounding residential areas and suburbs. Between July 2021 and June 2022, New York City lost a net 194,000 residents to migration, while Los Angeles lost 109,000, Chicago lost 88,000, and San Francisco shed about 20,000, an analysis of census data by John Burns Research and Consulting found. In the case of New York City, EIG’s latest analysis of data from the US Postal Service confirmed there hadn’t been a subsequent surge in people moving back to the city.

Instead, the sudden flight to the burbs was counteracted, Ozimek and Carlson said, by an equally startling surge in household formation. A household refers to any group of people living together in one unit — a family of five in a suburban home counts as one household, as does a group of three roommates living in an urban apartment. If those three roommates move out and each gets a one-bedroom unit, the net effect is two additional households. Before the pandemic, US household formation was on the decline. Between 2010 and 2020, the increase in the number of households was the lowest on record, an analysis by Pew Research Center found. Slow population growth and an increase in the number of adults living with their parents, perhaps as a result of the economy’s choppy recovery, meant there were fewer people striking out on their own. That changed shortly after the pandemic hit — household formation jumped by 2.5% nationally in 2021, more than double the fastest rate since the Great Recession.

This surge in household formation caused an increase in the “extensive margin of demand” — essentially, the total number of housing units that a given population desires. But EIG’s latest paper goes one step further, saying there was also an increase in the “intensive margin,” or the size and quality of units that people demand. Put another way, remote work led to an increase in the number of people wanting not only places of their own but also bigger homes. A couple might seek to upgrade from a one-bedroom to a two-bed, or they might look for a one-bedroom with more square footage. This desire to trade up is evident in the rent payments of people who shifted to remote work: Becoming a remote-work household in 2021 was associated with a 20% increase in rent payments, or about a $500 increase each month, the EIG researchers found.

Of course, those effects weren’t felt equally everywhere. To return to the “donut” analogy, the hole in the center — the most densely populated, expensive part of a metropolitan area — was likely to lose population as a result of more people working remotely. But it was also more likely to see a greater increase in household formation.

The headline for the story suggests this is about people wanting to live alone but the summary of the paper suggests people adjusted to changing work and economic conditions by seeking out more space for themselves. Did people seek their own household to get away from others or to have more space for themselves and work? If money was no object, would American residents prioritize more space or living with people?

I wonder how this connects to longer-term patterns of more American living alone.

American sprawl consequential because of its scale

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An environmental activist in New Jersey describes suburban sprawl in his state in ways that hint at its vast scale:

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The origins of this devil-may-care approach to development stretches back decades. “One of the things we’re going to look at is all that development in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, where we just sprawled out along the highways, built office complexes in the middle of nowhere, and built these five acre McMansions on farm fields. With all those policies, we’re going to have to reverse them at some point where we need to develop in a smarter, better way: places that are more walkable, fewer cars, more green space, less pavement. It’s not going to be easy because we, in some ways, have to fix the mistakes of the past, like on stormwater, where so many of our cities and towns are already paved, how do you go back and retrofit them? How do you break up these heat island effects in places like North Jersey? With planting trees, putting in more green space, green roofs, and stuff like that. That’ll take some money and it takes political will in New Jersey. I’ll just say that we have a flood of problems and a drought of action on some of these issues. We need to have the political will to make some of the tough choices and then make those kinds of investments. So far, we just keep kicking the can down the road.”

By the 1960s, Americans had a history of suburban homes stretching along railroad lines, streetcars lines, and roads. The ideal of the single-family home was well established. Plenty of people had fled cities. New transportation options provided speed and opened up new land for development.

But, the sprawl of the postwar era happened on a scale beyond these earlier efforts. Completely free of railroads and streetcars, potential homeowners could reach any property with a car. Large-scale builders could construct new subdivisions or communities in a relatively short amount of time. Metropolitan regions expanded out and small communities outside the city could grow very quickly. A whole lifestyle around homes, driving, and suburban day-to-day life for millions emerged.

Reversing these significant changes will require significant shifts in different directions plus time. Forget New Jersey; would Americans as a whole, particularly the majority of residents who live in suburbs, want to reverse these patterns or do they enjoy suburban life (or dislike the alternatives) so much that they would resist major changes? Either way, the consequences of sprawl will continue to affect society for decades to come.

Basketball “from suburbia to Serbia”

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An NBA Playoffs commercial touting “playoff mode” includes the line “from suburbia to Serbia, it’s unbelievable” alongside this image of suburban basketball:

What stands out in this depiction of suburbia? A few things:

  1. Outdoor basketball with palm trees on a beautiful day of sunshine. Is this southern California? I assume this is a good spot to play basketball outdoors for most of the year. Not all places in the United States can claim this.
  2. This is a hoop in the driveway of a single-family home. The two players are not at the park playing basketball; they are playing in a private setting (though the street is presumably just out of view).
  3. How many players can dunk on the hoop set up in their driveway? It is hard to tell from the angle of the shot – the camera is just a foot or two off the ground – whether the hoop is at ten feet.

It does look like fun is being had with two guys playing hoops in the American suburbs…or a studio backlot made to look like one. While the line in the commercial tries to drive home the appeal of playoff basketball in two places with alliterative names, are the driveways of the American suburbs one of the key sites for basketball?

Fighting for suburban voters ahead of 2024, Carmel, IN edition

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A mayoral race in a well-regarded suburb hints at suburban voting patterns for 2024?

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Tuesday’s electoral results show in miniature the national Republicans’ weakening grip on the suburbs. Come November, the race will also be a key post-midterms bellwether for both parties. Democrats made big gains in suburbs nationally in 2018 and 2020.

Nowhere else is that more apparent than Carmel. Slowly, this city has become more diverse and seen an influx of younger, more moderate voters who flock here for its award-winning school system, public art, affordability and culture (it’s home to a $126 million concert hall drawing national acts like the singer and songwriter Jason Isbell, and boasts more than 138 roundabouts, more than any other city in the U.S.). Students of the public school system speak 65 languages from 55 countries. Though many of its communities are gated, it’s not been walled-off from social change: Black Lives Matter marches snaked down the Monon Trail in Carmel amid $1 million townhouses and an upscale steakhouse in the summer of 2020…

Now, the Indiana Democratic Party is eyeing Carmel as a potential pickup this November. Mike Schmuhl, Pete Buttigieg’s former campaign manager and the state party chairman, is targeting this suburb in hopes of flipping it blue.

“The city has changed a lot,” Schmuhl said over lunch today at Fat Dan’s Chicago Deli in Carmel. “This used to be a rock-ribbed, Republican, conservative area but the Republican Party has changed a lot, too. So what you have up in Carmel is a lot of development, a lot of families, educated voters, hard working people, and the Democratic Party’s values appeal to those people.”

As someone who studies suburbs, four things I would note about Carmel that are relevant for this story:

  1. It is regularly named a Best Place to Live in Money’s list.
  2. It is right outside the combined Indianapolis-Marion County unigov arrangement. While that move was intended to help the city capture some suburban growth, Carmel sits right outs Marion County in neighboring Hamilton County.
  3. The population growth since 1960 has been astounding as it had just less than 1,500 residents in the 1960 Census. The suburb has had more than 25% population growth every decade since then and now has just under 100,000 residents.
  4. It has plenty of white-collar jobs due to corporate headquarters and offices.

Carmel exemplifies complex suburbia where larger suburbs can be more diverse, have more economic activity, and experience rapid growth and change. This can include changing political patterns at the state and national level but within communities where many do not vote in local elections.

The number of suburbs – or communities overall – that look like Carmel is small. At the same time, these larger suburbs have a higher status ad get more attention. As the political parties continue to fight over suburban voters, pundits will continue to look to growing and changing suburbs to see which ways the winds are blowing.