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Gasoline prices: Ending sprawl?
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Publishing date: 07.07.2008 |
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More and more people are realizing it: it’s cheaper to pay a rent for a second home closer to work than filling and refilling the tank for long (and boring) trips to and from it.Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, July 06, 2008
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Carol and Robert Miles recently realized that they were spending nearly $800 a month on gasoline. For that money, they figured they could buy a second house. So they did.
The Mileses drive lots of miles. They live in De Soto and work in the city of St. Louis, a 100-mile daily round trip. They spend nearly an hour on the road each way. When gas was cheaper, the time was worth it. "We bought in DeSoto 15 years ago and it's beautiful. We have a lake lot, and it's peaceful, and I love it," says Mrs. Miles.
Soon they'll see their De Soto home only on weekends. The monthly payment on their small, two-bedroom South St. Louis pied-à-terre will be $500, almost $300 less than their gasoline bill.
The Mileses are an extreme case, but the sky-high price of fuel may be starting to have an effect on the housing market, although changes haven't shown up yet in St. Louis-area real estate statistics. Real estate agents, however, say buyers are factoring the price of gas into decisions on where they'll live and what they'll pay for a home.
Over time, these are the kinds of factors that could cause people to move closer to where they work. More immediately, it could cause people to have second thoughts about moving to distant suburbs. Urban sprawl — a 50-year trend, encouraged by constant road-building, that saw homeowners moving ever farther from the central city — finally might meet its match.
It's not clear what that would mean for the St. Louis region. Today, the city of St. Louis is home to only 17 percent of the jobs in the metropolitan area, about the same percentage as in St. CharlesCounty. The rest are scattered widely, from Boeing in NorthSt. LouisCounty to the Granite City steel works to thousands of smaller businesses in industrial parks and office buildings along the suburban interstate highways. The rising price of gasoline could send people moving in a lot of directions, not just back to the city.
But if real change happens, it will happen slowly. "We have a huge investment in where we are now," notes Les Sterman, executive director of the East-West Gateway Council of Governments. If their kids are happy in school, their home is lovely and their streets are safe, families may put up with higher gas prices.
The Miles' children are grown, which gives them more flexibility. But Carol Miles remains in love with their four-bedroom home in DeSoto. "I can't give it up. It's nice country out there," she says.
On average, gasoline costs only about 4 percent of personal after-tax income, according to federal statistics. Of course, that percentage jumps much higher for people with low incomes or long commutes.
But even long-distance commuters have options other than moving. "You sell the SUV and get a vehicle that gets twice the gas mileage," says Mr. Sterman.
Higher gas prices have fringe suburbs in the Metro East paying more attention to "smart growth," says Stephanie Tonnies, chief executive of the Realtors Association of Southwestern Illinois. They're zoning for shops within walking distance of new subdivisions. "I think you're going to be seeing much more of that," she said.
It's difficult to separate the price of gas from other woes weighing on the real estate market, including rising foreclosures, a credit crunch and rising unemployment. But so far at least, the outer suburbs don't seem to be suffering disproportionately.
New-home construction is down 55 percent this year in LincolnCounty, at the northwestern edge of the metro area. But it's down 49 percent in closer-in St. Louis and St. Charles counties. Home-building is down only 30 percent in JeffersonCounty on the expanding southern end of suburbia.
In May, median home prices in LincolnCounty were down 17 percent for the year, which might indicate less tolerance for long commutes. But prices also were down 17 percent in the city of St. Louis. Prices fell only 4 percent in St. CharlesCounty and 5 percent in JeffersonCounty. Prices dropped 7 percent in St. LouisCounty and 5 percent to 6 percent in the Metro East.
If there's a silver lining to higher gasoline prices, this may be it: Less time on the highways, more at home. Or homes.
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