Market trends favor NU
New Urban News Article with graph, 4/1/2007
As national real estate sales slow, demographic and preference trends make smart growth and New Urbanism a good bet.
At a time when real estate in its sprawling forms appears to be losing value more quickly than compact urban development, analyses of the market for New Urbanism and smart growth are relatively favorable. GfK Roper Consulting recently released a report called “Modern Communities” that stated that new urban neighborhoods are the most desirable places to purchase homes. Meanwhile, Arthur C. Nelson, codirector of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, asserts that every house built between today and 2030 will have to possess smart growth/new urbanist characteristics if we are to meet consumers’ demands.
The US population will grow by 70 million between 2005 and 2030, so substantial housing construction is needed, Nelson points out. Simultaneously, a huge and continuing demographic shift will increase the percentage of households without children — to 73 percent in 2030 from 52 percent in 1960. With the aging of the Baby Boomers, the annual number of Americans turning 65 is going to triple in the next few years, to nearly 1.5 million a year by 2012. It was less than 500,000 in 2005.
About one-third of buyers want smart-growth features in their housing, Nelson says, citing research by Robert Charles Lesser & Co. real estate consultants. This preference appears to be on the rise, as indicated by the GfK Roper study, which finds that so-called “influential” people like many aspects of New Urbanism. The National Association of Realtors and Smart Growth America report that preferences for specific smart-growth traits range from 40 to 70 percent.
