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Soaring gas prices an incentive for compact living
Rising gas prices and transportation costs may drive the further devaluation of sprawling suburban homes.
The Seattle Times
by Elizabeth Rhodes
A Portland economist predicts that buyers soon will choose where to live based on what they would spend for gasoline.
That, eventually, will devalue suburban housing while strengthening in-city home prices, says Joe Cortright, whose Portland consulting firm, Impresa, recently released a report saying as much to U.S. mayors.
"The new calculus of higher gas prices may have permanently reshaped urban housing markets," said Cortright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., think tank. "What this really means is that as people move, they're going to look for places that enable them to drive shorter distances and avoid places where they have to drive a lot.
