The Next Slum?
Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025—that’s roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.
Hmm… I wonder if there’s still time to move to the city. (Actually I expect that a lot of the issues raised in the article apply more to suburbs than to people who live in the woods, but there’s still that whole “rising cost of gas driving people into the urban core” thing.)
