The New Look — and Location — of Housing

Home builders are responding to demographic trends in the wake of the housing collapse, with young Millennials and older baby boomers seeking to live close to city centers and public transportation and desiring houses on smaller lots to minimize maintenance and landscaping duties. Increasingly, builders are abandoning the far-flung suburbs and concentrating new development in urban areas; and they are redeveloping foreclosed golf courses, former industrial sites, and closed military bases as part of the shift from “greenfields” to “infill” development. According to Census data, growth in fringe counties ground to a halt during the year ended July 1, 2011. However, in the years just prior to the recession and housing collapse, 85 percent of growth was in central metro counties — a figure that has since jumped to 94 percent. | Read More