During the housing boom, home builders snapped up hundreds of thousands of acres in and around U.S. cities.
They went tot he suberbs when land supply ran short, and then to the distant, and cheaper, tracts known to planners as the exurbs.. The housing bust, and then phenomenal collapse of the home building industry that began in 2007, helped cool the sprawl frenzy.
According to census data examined, the household growth in the 2000s was mostly concnetrated outside of cities-city cores only accounted for 21% of growth, compared with 38% in the suburbs and 41% in the exurbs..This was largely driven by prices..a trend that is likely to continue. The current pause in exurban housing development has more to do with cooling demand caused by the downturn than with a major change in lifestyle choices.
And despite all the building, most undeveloped land is still in areas outside of cities, not in them, and thus there is every reason to believe that the exurbs will once again capture a disproprtionate share of growth once residential construction activity resumes.
Economic woes have also put a cap on new household formation, a key formation, a key metric for home builders. last year 30% of Americans were doubling up or combining households to deal with the difficulties of the economy.
The prediction is when the economy improves enough for people to move out of their parents' basements; there will create a need for 1.6 million new units of housing per year....
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