Tag Archives: suburbs

Trying to predict the 2017 housing market

Posted on by

This summary of predictions for housing in 2017 includes 17 different estimates from various groups. Here is the one I’m most interested in:

Most observers expect home sales and prices to moderate in the coming year. They say suburbs will make a comeback while the days of low mortgage rates are over.

Suburbs will make a comeback you say? Perhaps there will indeed a Donald Trump effect for suburbs. Here is one more specific suggestion that might contribute to this:

The percentage of people who drive to work will rise for the first time in a decade as homeowners move farther into the suburbs seeking affordable housing.

Cheaper gas probably doesn’t hurt either.

Looking through these 17 predictions, few explicitly apply to suburbs. Most are about two things: millennials (with some help from baby boomers) are driving the housing market and there will be a slow rise in housing values.

One bonus summary statement:

One prediction you can always count on: No matter what’s happening with the economy, NAR is always going to say it’s a great time to buy. Its fourth quarter Housing Opportunities and Market Experience survey found that 70 percent of people say now is a good time to buy a home. NAR also predicts the rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage will rise to 4.6 percent by the end of 2017.

Perhaps there is one prediction missing: will the homeownership rate rise after dropping in previous quarters?

And who is going to check to see if these predictions for 2017 were successful?

“Move to a leafy suburb to cut cancer risk”

Posted on by

A new Harvard study suggests the risk of getting cancer decreases when people live around more greenery – such as in suburbs:

People whose homes are surrounded by the most greenery are 13 per cent less likely to die of cancer. Their risk of dying from respiratory disease also drops by 34 per cent, the biggest ever study into green spaces and health has shown.

Overall mortality was 12 per cent less for people who had the most greenery within 250 metres of their homes during the eight year follow-up period.

It is thought that being surrounded by vegetation improves mental health and lowers depression. It also allows people to get out and about more, giving more opportunities for exercise and social engagement, both of which are known to be protective against disease. The lack of air pollution in green areas also plays an important role…

More than 100,000 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Survey were followed between 200-2008. Scientists used satellite imagery from different seasons and years to monitor how much greenery surrounded their homes.

The early suburbs of England and the United States were popular in part because of their health benefits compared to the growing dirty industrial cities. The suburbs then featured much more greenery and the idea of having a small house in the midst of nature. I’m not sure today’s suburbs can truly compare, particularly those closer to the central city. I’m reminded of James Howard Kunstler’s commentary in this TED Talk about the “nature band-aid” that is often applied in suburbs today. But, this study suggests that a greener setting – even if it is heavily modified by humans in suburban settings – can help.

Row houses popping up in suburban downtowns

Posted on by

For the last twenty years or so, condos or luxury apartments have been constructed in numerous suburban downtowns in the Chicago region. The communities may have now moved on to row houses:

What’s in vogue now, at least in upscale living, might just be the row house, say developers of a six-unit project called Charleston Row.

These $1.1 million to $1.3 million row houses will have two or three bedrooms, two- or three-car garages, 3½ or 4½ bathrooms, a basement, a large mudroom, not one but two rooftop terraces and even their own private elevator…

After years of building new homes on the sites of teardowns in Wheaton, Glen Ellyn and Naperville, Charleston leaders said they started hearing a new trend. They noticed a desire for something other than the 5,000-square-foot luxury house, standing on its own with a good-sized yard in a subdivision on the outskirts of suburbia.

What these buyers want instead, Van Someren said, is what Charleston Row offers: convenience to a downtown with dining, night life and shops, a low-maintenance lifestyle without a massive lawn to mow, and luxury features such as custom staircases and tile work, hardwood floors, a butler’s station, a breakfast nook and countertops made of granite, marble or quartz. The fancy stuff.

In addition to the factors cited above, I wonder if a few other forces are also at work here:

  1. Row houses may connote a more luxurious or trendy setting than condos or single-family homes. One of the examples cited in the article suggests this: row houses may inspire images of similar higher-end dwellings in London. (On the flip side, these row homes do not remind suburbanites of the row houses in poor neighborhoods such as depicted in Baltimore on The Wire.)
  2. Row houses offer similarities to single-family homes but with densities that builders, suburbs, and opponents of suburban sprawl can appreciate. Builders would like them because they can fit more (expensive) homes on the same amount of land. Suburbs like them for similar reasons; the housing is contained in attractive locations. (I’m guessing not too many suburbs want block after block of these row houses – that would be too monotonous.) For those who dislike sprawl, these might be symbols of denser suburban housing that is ultimately better than continuing to build new subdivisions way on the suburban fringe. (At the same time, such row homes are often not cheap and are not within the reach of most suburbanites, continuing to push them further out.)

We’ll see how long these continue to attractive to the parties cited above.

Should Trump promote a third wave of American suburbanization?

Posted on by

Walter Russell Mead suggests Donald Trump could help usher in a new wave of suburbanization:

What President-elect Trump has the opportunity to do now is to launch a third great wave of suburbanization, one that can revive the American Dream for the Millennial generation, produce jobs and wealth that can power the American economy, and take advantage of changing technology to create a new wave of optimism and dynamism in American life.

There’s a confluence of trends that make this possible. In the first place, the Millennials, like the Boomers, are a large generation that needs both jobs and affordable homes. Second, the shale revolution means that energy in the United States will likely be relatively abundant and cheap for the foreseeable future. Third, both financial markets and the real economy have recovered from the shock of the financial crisis, and, whatever hiccups and upsets may come their way, are now ready for sustained expansion. Fourth, revolutions in technology (self-driving cars and the internet) make it possible for people to build a third ring of suburbs even farther out from the central cities, where land prices are still low and houses can be affordably built.

For national politicians, this is a huge opportunity. Creating the infrastructure for the third suburban wave—new highways, ring roads and the rest of it for another suburban expansion—will create enormous numbers of jobs. The opportunity for cheap housing in leafy places will allow millions of young people to get a piece of the American Dream. Funding the construction of this infrastructure and these homes gives Wall Street an opportunity to make a lot of money in ways that don’t drive the rest of the country crazy.

This approach meshes very well both with the President-elect’s economic instincts and with the economic interests of the people who voted for him. It also works for the Republican dominated states around the country. It capitalizes on one of America’s distinctive advantages: less densely-populated than other advanced countries, the United States has the elbow room for a new suburban wave.

There are all sorts of fascinating things going on with this argument. Let’s just pick out a few.

To start, this argument suggests Eisenhower and Reagan were great because they helped make the suburbs happen. How much did they do in this regard? By the early 1950s, suburbanization was well underway with a postwar housing shortage and lots of developers and local officials interested in building out. The Federal Highway Act of 1956 certainly helped the process and is often credited for helping urban residents flee cities (even though highways were already under construction in many places). This is a good example of presidents getting credit for things that don’t have much direct control over.

Second, this equates Republicans with suburbs. There are certainly patterns here: suburbanites have tended to vote Republican for a long time (particularly the further out one gets) and both Republicans and Democrats have argued more sprawl leads to more Republicans. At the same time, not every conservative loves suburbs nor does every Democrat love cities. If you had to summarize Republicanism since World War II, would suburbs come to mind or other things?

Third, it sounds like this argument is in favor of government spending to promote a certain way of life. In other words, the federal government should subsidize more suburban growth because it helps generate jobs and housing. While this may fit older images of moderate Republicans (Eisenhower was one, Reagan not so much), it doesn’t fit well with more libertarian/small government Republicans. Why should the government promote certain ways of life?

To conclude, it is clear that all of this requires an optimistic view of suburban life. It is the fulfillment of the American Dream. This is a common American image. Does it match all of reality? Are the suburbs open to all? Would the new spending even further from cities open new opportunities for non-whites, immigrants, and the lower class (who are increasingly in the suburbs) or would it allow whiter, wealthier residents to flee even further from urban problems? What are the environmental costs of another ring of suburbia? What does it do to civic life to continue to promote automobile driven culture (even if those self-driving cars are safer and more environmentally friendly)? These are not easy questions to answer even if many Americans would enjoy a third wave of suburbanization.

The suburban mall of today is an entertainment center

Posted on by

Stores alone are not enough to attract people to malls; they are now full of additional entertainment options including restaurants and movie theaters.

“The traditional mall with four department stores as their primary traffic driver is no longer the best model,” said Joe Parrott, a senior vice president with the Chicago offices of CBRE, a commercial real estate company…

“A lot of these big entertainment players are coming,” Parrott said. “And the malls are interested in bringing tenants that are more experiential and broaden the appeal of the mall beyond just department stores.”…

Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale is a perfect example of the changing dynamic. The mall is launching a multimillion-dollar renovation and tenant improvement project that features both interior and exterior improvements at the 1.3 million-square-foot center. It’s a continuation of an earlier renovation that included the 2014 opening of Round One, a 40,000-square-foot entertainment center that features bowling, billiards, numerous video games and karaoke…

Experts with California-based Green Street Advisors have predicted that 15 percent of malls nationwide will close or be repurposed over the next decade. But that doesn’t apply to successful malls listed in the “A” and “B” category.

On one hand, the major changes in retail – big box stores, online shopping – mean malls have to adjust as do a lack of public spaces in many suburbs – which can be approximated by private entertainment spaces at the mall.

One expert cited in this article says, “Bad malls disappear.” Within the next decade or two, we might expect to see fewer shopping areas in the suburbs overall but the ones that do survive becoming behemoths. This could have some interesting consequences for communities that are home to these entertainment complexes as well as for those who lost out on the chance to have a mall decades ago.

Suburbs ask grocery chain to fill vacant stores rather than leaving them empty

Posted on by

The leaders of eleven suburbs held a press conference yesterday intended to prompt Albertsons to allow former Dominick’s sites to be used:

The damaging effects of keeping these spaces vacant is very difficult for a lot of these communities,” Naperville Mayor Steve Chirico said. “We need to do a better job working together and putting the community first, and right now the communities are not being put first. We’re asking for their help. We need to see some participation.”…

However, leases on 15 vacant Dominick’s continue to be paid for by Albertsons. On Thursday, municipal officials said they want the practice of extending those leases to cease.

“When you’re leasing a space that doesn’t have a tenant and you’re renewing that lease for five years purposely so you can control whatever goes in there, that’s where we’re having an issue,” Bartlett Village President Kevin Wallace said.

Romeoville Mayor John Noak said there is interest in the vacant spaces and willingness from suburban leaders to work with Albertsons to get them filled, but the company is not cooperating.

Two quick thoughts:

  1. It is interesting to see under what circumstances suburban leaders are willing to cooperate. Common economic matters could be at the top of this list.
  2. The worst outcome for many suburbs would be that the abandoned properties are not maintained and whoever owns it is doing nothing or the bare minimum. Such buildings are not just empty; they are an eyesore and many suburbanites would say it reflects poorly on their community. This isn’t exactly the case here: Albertson’s has the leases, is paying for the property, and the sites themselves aren’t in terrible shape – they are just empty. But, large grocery stores often occupy prime retail space at busy intersections and it makes sense that communities would eventually want to see the space put back into the retail market both for appearances and sales tax dollars.

See earlier posts on this subject here and here.

When libertarians run a suburb

Posted on by

What would happen if libertarians had the majority in a suburban government? A suburb of Minneapolis offers a case study:

It paid $13 million in cash when it needed a new public works building, taking the money from its savings accounts and shrinking the city’s reserves by nearly one-quarter.

Pay-as-you-go wisdom or long-term financial folly? However it eventually works out, the decision is just one example of how the Crystal City Council approaches civic issues a bit differently. The reason: A majority of its seven members are Libertarians or are sympathetic to the party’s philosophy of maximum personal freedom and minimum government…

In addition to paying cash for civic improvements, Crystal has undertaken a cleanup of the municipal code to get rid of ordinances considered outdated, unenforceable or just plain silly. And it has all but eliminated the city’s human rights commission. At the same time, in a seeming departure from Libertarian principles of thrift, the city has raised property taxes and water and sewer fees…

Critics said the tax increases are a direct result of the Libertarians’ financial mismanagement: Their use of cash to pay for infrastructure has depleted reserves and left the city unable to produce the kind of investment income that for years helped hold down taxes.

Two quick thoughts:

  1. As the article notes, local government members tend to be officially non partisan even if they align with particular political beliefs. So, is it to this group’s advantage to be something different – libertarians – even in a place where people don’t really want to talk about parties? On the flip side, is it worth seeing this as a test case for libertarianism in practice if local government is supposed to be non-partisan?
  2. The article suggests the new group has a new approach or outlook but also has made some decisions that may not fit libertarian ideals. This reminds me of the the claim many big-city mayors make: local governments simply have to get things done and can’t worry as much about abstract ideology. For example, you may not want to have to take on bonds to fund necessary infrastructure but if the alternative is terrible, you may not have the option.

One final mini-thought: cleaning up local ordinances that don’t make sense or are expired plus officially getting rid of a committee that has no members requires the tag of libertarianism? Any political party might find some advantage to getting rid of pieces of government that are non-functional but asking the established parties to get rid of anything might be too much to request these days…

A better interpretation of crime statistics for Chicago suburbs

Posted on by

The Daily Herald looks at recent crime figures in Chicago area suburbs. How should we interpret such numbers?

Violent crimes increased last year in half of 80 suburbs, says a new report by the FBI we’ve been analyzing.

Property crimes increased in more than 40 percent of the suburbs.

The Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s 2015 report shows Rosemont had a 94 percent increase in violent crimes, from 18 in 2014 to 35 in 2015. Most are assaults, but the category also includes rape, homicide and robbery. The village had a 29 percent increase in property crimes, which include arson, burglary and vehicle theft.

Other more populous suburbs had larger numbers of violent crimes in 2015, including 650 in Aurora, 261 in Elgin and 128 in Naperville.

Violent crimes remained largely flat in Palatine, with 36; Des Plaines, with 50; and Arlington Heights, with 42; while some communities saw crimes decrease across the board. Buffalo Grove saw an 80 percent decrease in violent crimes, to 2, and an 18 percent decrease in property crimes, to 234, while Prospect Heights saw a 33 percent decrease in violent crimes, to 14, and a 29 percent decrease in property crimes, to 112.

What I would take away:

  1. Looking across communities, there was not much change as half of the suburbs did not experience a rise in violent crimes and property crimes increased in less than half of the suburbs.
  2. It is interesting to note larger jumps in crime in certain communities. However, these should be interpreted in light of #1 and it would be more helpful to look at crime rates in these larger suburbs rather than just relying on occurrences.
  3. The last paragraph notes some major changes in other suburbs. But, some of these suburbs are smaller and a large decrease (80% in Buffalo Groves means a drop from 10 to 2) or increase could be more a function of not many crimes overall rather than indicate a larger trend.
  4. There is little indication of crime figures or rates over time which would help put the 2015 figure in better perspective.

All together, the headline “40 suburbs see spike in violent crimes in 2015” is not the most accurate. It may catch the attention of readers but neither the headline or article sufficiently discuss the statistics.

Housing prices drive punk music to the suburbs

Posted on by

Punk music is associated with gritty urban life – until that urban life becomes too expensive:

Shows like that are increasingly common in Santa Rosa, and it has a lot to do with the prohibitive cost-of-living in nearby San Francisco. “I had every intention of moving down to the city,” said Ian O’Connor, 23, who organized the gig. “But when the time came, it was too expensive.” Instead, in the last three years, he has booked dozens of all-ages gigs in Santa Rosa, mostly at unofficial venues: detached garages, living rooms, lobbies of sympathetic businesses. The scene thrives on the participation of people like him, area natives in their early 20s who, not so many years ago, would’ve likely moved an hour south to Oakland or San Francisco…

One hallmark of punk’s inception in the Bay Area and throughout the Pacific north-west was the notion of cities as places of possibility, so hollowed out by eroding tax bases and selective civic neglect that they seemed “deserted and forgotten”, as music journalist Jon Savage wrote of his 1978 trip to report on San Francisco punk bands such as Crime and the Dead Kennedys. “It was there to be remapped.”

But with the same cities stricken by intensifying affordability crises – premiums on space that make somewhere to live, let alone rehearse and perform, available to a dwindling few – they don’t beckon young punks like they used to. And though reports of music scenes’ deaths tend to overstate, news of shuttering venues (see eulogies for The Smell, The Know, and LoBot) deters some of the intrepid transplants needed for invigoration. Dissipating metropolitan allure, however, helps account for the strength of scenes in outlying towns…

According to Samantha Gladu – bassist in the feminist, wrestling-themed hardcore band Macho Boys and chief advisor to state senator Chip Shields – recent revelations about what a state investigation found to be cripplingly over-burdensome nightclub regulations have done little to calm the Portland punk scene’s nerves: “Rising rents and recent reporting on the city government’s apparent selective regulation for venues leave punks with the impression that not only can they not afford Portland, they aren’t part of some officials’ vision for Portland.”

Given that more urban features – including denser housing, more non-white and less wealthy residents, and urban issues – have moved to the suburbs, it isn’t too surprising that artistic ventures could move there as well. Yet, I imagine this is not easy for many artists or others who dislike the suburbs and celebrate cities. Can places that are still criticized for conformity, whiteness, and materialism nourish new artistic ventures? Can suburban communities tolerate people who go against convention or who seek space to spread out and explore? If given the resources, I imagine that most bands would want to be in the big city where there is more energy, similar artists, and venues.

However, this represents an opportunity for suburbs to pursue a more creative vision. Many suburbs hold and promote festivals and fairs committed to the arts, both as a way to generate revenue as well as a way to signal openness and engagement. It is something different to have permanent venues devoted to some ventures; could a middle to upper-class suburb give its blessing to a punk music music site? Or a collaborative of experimental artists? In other words, if cities and/or certain neighborhoods are too expensive, numerous suburbs could join the competition to attract musicians and artists and possibly transform their own communities.

Haunted McMansions vs. creepy unfinished construction sites

Posted on by

I posted Wednesday about a claim that McMansions appear haunted because of their poor architecture but I think unfinished construction present their own horrors. See this suburban example:

img_20160520_183358037

This is an early evening image of a new residential construction project not too far from our house. All that is standing at this point are elevator shafts. Imagine being trapped in such a project late at night with shadows and wind. There are piles of debris and materials all around. The only escape may be to climb up…shafts that go nowhere. It could be an outdoors, David Bowie from Labyrinth sort of scene. All within sight of a wealthy suburban community with nice homes and lively commercial areas. Yet, it is difficult to imagine how someone might end up in such a situation where they are wandering around such a site.

In contrast, McMansions and other homes may be easier to consider haunted because we associate warm, fuzzy feelings with single-family homes and creepy or evil beings and happenings seem to be such opposites. From the beginnings of the American suburban single-family home, this space was to be a domestic refuge from the outside world or any other intrusions.

But, an empty construction site or unfinished project presents different problems. Is there anyone around? Was the project abandoned for a good reason or some unknown or unspoken reason? Are these ruins or a work in progress? In the end, does the unknown – the construction site – or the familiar – the single-family home, however weirdly designed or old it is – present a more problematic situation?