The New Suburban Dream
You’re thirty-something with one child and another on the way. It’s time to move to the ‘burbs.
But your search may not lead to the four-bedroom home that defined your father’s suburb or even the voluminous, cathedral-ceilinged 3,000 square footer that your older brother endures a two-hour commute to own.
Young adults – as well as some of their parents’ generation – have new ideas about what constitutes the ideal suburban lifestyle, experts say.
They’re favoring inner suburbs near job centers and are sacrificing land and square footage for that location. In response, builders are purchasing distressed properties or other land that they can acquire in city-adjacent suburbs, says Steve Melman, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders.
Young families may have a new preference for “wanting to be closer to city entertainment and employment and city lifestyle,” Melman says. Another factor is the price of gas – about $4 a gallon, when it “was half that in the boom years,” he adds.
Although single-family detached homes are still the preference, “Consumers are also choosing attached dwellings if it gets them closer to the place they want to be,” says Erik Doersching of building consulting firm Tracy Cross & Associates, Schaumburg, Ill.
Since location is the primary concern, homeowners are settling for fewer rooms. Paul Foresman of the Omaha consulting group, Design Basics, says, “We are seeing homes being built that may be just 20 feet wide. People still want amenities like open floor plans, walk-in closets, pantries and laundry rooms. But they may have just one eating space and no formal living room.”
Demand for the big home in a farther out suburb will rebound “when the economy gets growing again and if mortgage interest rates remain relatively low,” predicts Christopher Niedt of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, Long Island, N.Y.
However, Niedt says that in the long term, there will be a continued desire for denser, close-in living. “It’s not just younger families that want this, but older suburbanites who need to be in places that are transit accessible or more walkable as they age.”
