The mortgage crunch is good for us. Really.

Easy for me to say, I know.  Sorry about that.

But the good news is that exurban development is slowing to a near-halt, while smarter, closer-in locations are holding their value.  And, unlike the situation with previous problems in the mortgage market, this one is accompanied by higher gasoline prices.  These forces are combining to favor smart locations over sprawl for future development.

So says Eduardo M. Peñalver at Cornell, and he may be on to something: 

“With credit tight and the demand for housing drying up (sales of new homes fell last month to the lowest level in 12 years) new construction in the exurbs is grinding to a halt. The result is a decline in the building industry's appetite for rural land on the urban edge. The question now is whether that decline will last. In the past, a sudden drop-off in demand for housing in the exurbs would have represented merely a hiatus. Builders would have bided their time until the housing market recovered, and the outward push would soon have begun again.

"But persistently high gas prices may mean that the next building boom will take place not at the edges of metropolitan areas but far closer to their cores . . . as gas prices climb, long car commutes become a rising tax on exurban homeownership, and the price people are willing to pay for homes in remote areas will fall . . .”

Read the full article here.