Prescription for the burbs: no more cul-de-sacs!

One of the problems with the way news is reported these days is that we often fail to put individual stories into their larger context.  Doing so requires a lot of work by reporters who are already pressed for time and it asks them to make certain leaps or conjectures that may not turn out to be true. That is a risk that I’m willing to take in the effort of starting a larger conversation of how we as a society can make more sustainable choices.

A story in today’s Inquirer about the failure of a pretty big housing developer in the exurbs of Montgomery County is news in that it has left a number of families either without their deposits or facing the prospect of living in a half-completed neighborhood.  So in and of itself, the story is useful to the us the readers in that it (a) let’s us know that some of our fellow Philadelphia region residents are in trouble so that we can choose to help out in some way and (b) serves as a warning for all of us to avoid being on the hook for such a large sum of money with no apparent recourse for getting it back.

But perhaps this story is also part of the larger story of the beginning of the end of sprawl.  What planners and elected officials failed to do (curb sprawl and strengthen the region’s core) may soon be accomplished by the… the market.  T.H. Properties L.P. didn’t go out of business because the environmental and household costs of their core product became too high.  No. We’re not quite there yet.  They went out of business because they were expecting a certain return on money they had borrowed and discovered that they weren’t going to be able to cover that.

Folks aren’t really buying houses anywhere in big numbers.  For T.H. Properties, it was just bad timing.  They’re home builders in an economy where no one is buying homes.  Could happen to Westrum or anyone else who builds regardless of whether they build McMansions on farmland, condos in the urban core or actual mansions on the Main Line.

However, when the economy does start to pick up, most economists and pundits agree that oil prices are going to skyrocket causing gas prices to go through the roof.  Energy prices are down because fewer people are working not because we suddenly found some huge new deposit of oil (and we won’t.)  High gas and energy prices will finally make people realize how expensive it is to live in one of the neighborhoods and houses that were the core of T.H.’s business.  If T.H. had survived this recession, it’s unlikely that they would have been around for much longer if they hadn’t changed their product.  That’s the bigger story.

My advice (which I gave in the comments of the Philly.com story under my pseudonym), if you’re a younger person looking to buy, don’t buy in a neighborhood that hasn’t been built yet.  Don’t buy on a cul-de-sac.  Don’t buy on a piece of land that was grazed by cows less than 15 years ago. I just can’t see how such houses will increase in value over the long run.  Instead, find an inner ring suburb or city neighborhood that you like where there is sufficient density, connection to transit and where you can walk to retail and food sources.

Get in now and you may find that as more people follow, the housing value will increase, the schools will improve with an influx of higher achieving students and engaged parents and crime will decrease.  It’s like a virtuous ponzi scheme where you got in early and made some sacrifices but you get paid back because you didn’t have buy in for a lot.