Driving Down Real Estate

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  • Posted By: Bruce from DC @ 07/03/2008 10:48:16 AM

    This concept only works for the classic 1950s center city surrounded by a ring of bedroom suburbs -- think New York, Boston, etc. Newer cities, like Atlanta, the big Texas cities, and Washington, DC have dispersed employment locations as well as a "center city." You can live and work in the suburbs. And Los Angeles has no central core worthy of the name. Finally, if you value your time, the cost of a long commute is more than dollaros.

  • Posted By: whs806 @ 07/03/2008 6:58:20 AM

    Jobs will continue to be lost due to USA tax policy that is the 2nd worst in the world. Our tax policy is designed to export American Jobs and import everything else from energy to food. Yes, that includes high gas prices. Congress is against energy development. Don't list to what they say, look at what they do!
    Congress nixes offshore drilling, oil shale development, Clinton nixes ANWR, Carter nixes nuclear. Enjoy your commute while you still have a job. Want to fix it? Implement the Fair Tax Plan

  • Posted By: wildlifeusa @ 07/02/2008 8:12:51 PM

    Just like the author, americans do not know what is important. What is important, is to have a roof, no matter how small it is as long as it is confortable. The main things are shelter and healthy food in life. Without those two, you cannot have a quality of life. Just like driving a big car does not bring happiness. Most people in this country live above their means.
    Also if you want to have an idea of what may happen to the suburbs, google LinkTV.org and watch the documentary named: the end of suburbia. Not a pretty picture!

    Americans have to start seeing small. Small homes, small cars. because in the end, what is important is to be healthy and have a good qualite of life and the dimension of your house or your car, does not give you those.

  • Posted By: Marchbanks @ 07/02/2008 8:06:07 AM

    There were *many* reasons I fought, ten years ago, to buy a house in an older neighborhood in downtown Austin, Texas, and now it appears my choice is vindicated. My home's Walk Score comes in at 63/100, which stacks up very nicely against Mr McGinn's 3/100. Now if I can only get my employer to telecommute, instead of forcing me to drive fifteen miles each way to get to my job (in the suburbs, yes), or find a job downtown.(which I'd really rather have).

    • Posted By: kshortSD @ 07/02/2008 1:41:02 PM

      My older home has a Walkscore of 65. It looks like great minds think alike!

      I drive about 7 miles to work, which is not bad, but I'd love to either telecommute a couple of days a week, or bike to work if I could. But it's not feasible for my route.

  • Posted By: C. MacLean @ 07/01/2008 10:20:43 AM

    Hopefully what this trend will really do is revive trains, not doom suburbs.

    We are so addicted to a lifestyle revolving around driving our own car that even the author doesn't mention the possibility of using mass transit until the very end of the article.

    Where are the candidates talking about this issue, instead of the same tired old arguments about more drilling for oil, cleaner coal plants, etc? Where is the discussion of conservation? In all the hoopla about Obama and McCain's so-called energy platform, there is no mention of conservation or mass transit, specifically, trains, just the same old arguments and the same lack of real solutions.

    Maybe gas will need to go to $6/gallon before America wakes up.

    • Posted By: kshortSD @ 07/01/2008 5:55:21 PM

      I agree with you. This current situation may seem bad, but I really believe this is a good development. Let the price of gas go up, if it will force us to rethink the way we live. Allowing oil companies to start drilling off the California coast is little more than a bandage on a severed limb. Why don't companies start letting people telecommute a couple of days a week to save gas? Why don't we add trains to metropolitan areas that don't have them? Why don't we have more options when it comes to fuel efficient cars?

      • Posted By: Marchbanks @ 07/02/2008 8:10:24 AM

        The difficulty with "reviving trains" (a move which I, personally, would applaud) is that commuter rail, like buses, subways, trolleys, or any other form of mass transit, are predicated upon a dense population, and when you get out into the middle of my home state, Texas, there simply *aren't enough people* to EVER make the numbers come out in black ink no matter how many times nor how many ways you add them up. The same problem obtains all over the West--there aren't enough people per square mile to make any kind of mass transit a feasible proposition.

  • Posted By: jath123 @ 07/02/2008 7:19:44 AM

    Mr. McGinn, you make an excellent point about mass transit. It is a thread of sanity for those stuck making commute from the suburbs to downtown anywhere. But having lived in Boston for a few years myself, I think you protest too much about the commuter rail. It is absolute luxury compared to the cattle cars, er, I mean the Red Line, that I used to take from in from Quincy every day. Bring a cup of coffee and a newspaper, and enjoy the ride.

  • Posted By: kshortSD @ 07/01/2008 5:51:10 PM

    I have so many friends who insisted on buying homes out in the "burbs" because they HAD to have a brand new house with walk-in closets and granite counter tops. Some of them think I'm weird to have bought an older house closer to town, but I've always hated the idea of driving a lot, and now I know I was right! I can always add granite countertops...

  • Posted By: junkmail6 @ 07/01/2008 5:33:41 PM

    Watched the doomed suburbs thing in the early '90s in L.A. Rancho Cucamonga turned from upscale to slum when the housing market collapsed. People paid $30k just to buy out so they didn't have to live there...

  • Posted By: kicbuy @ 07/01/2008 1:57:22 PM

    To add to my last post: I paid $200,000 over the amount that it would have cost me to buy a TH or SF hse in the burbs.

  • Posted By: kicbuy @ 07/01/2008 1:49:07 PM

    I bought a townhouse close to the Wash DC metro area for the reason of alleviating any commute time. After I closed on the house, I tried to justify paying over $200,000 for a TH rather than a TH or SF house in the burbs. Today, I have no regrets. I don't stress out during rush hour, I stretch my full tank of gas of my SUV for at least 2 wks. And my house scored 72 out of 100 on the walkscore.com. I appreciate this article. I have a peace of mind that I made the right decision.

  • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/01/2008 9:26:27 AM

    Home is where the horse lives.

  • Posted By: olderwiser @ 07/01/2008 9:24:14 AM

    We missed the creak of leather and the honest smell of a steed who was part of the family when we retired him to the pasture and cranked the Model-T, not realizing that it would grow into a consumptive giant of an SUV that belches a stench into the very air that we breathe. The SUV doesn't have leather that creaks and it has no soul to blend with the family and when is becomes useless it retires to a pasture littered with unsightly junk after its planned obsolescence renders it dead before its time. What will we ride next? Something will turn up, as it always does, and as we ride in the new conveyance we will look back in our dotage at the good old days when we smelled the newness of the Old SUV as we drove it from the New Car Sales establishment on its laborious and pre-planned obsolescent way to the junkyard, belching corruption into the air that we breathed. But we cannot travel without making some kind of a mess. From horse apples to carbon dioxide, into the new polluter, what will the new mess be? We always find a way.

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