The high cost of commuting and regulation
The high cost of commuting bodes well for the future of infill development. From a recent BusinessWeek article:
“A new report from the Washington-based Center for Housing Policy finds that in major metropolitan regions around the country, the money you save on housing by moving away from the city is about the same amount you will spend on additional transportation costs.”
But whether you are commuting or walking to work, you’re still hit with big hidden costs. While they aren’t paying as much for their commuting expenses, infill buyers are shouldered with tremendous regulatory costs passed on to them by their builders and developers via the pricing of in-town houses and condos.
Reason Magazine recently outlined the big costs associated with the regulatory process, and pointed out that the real losers are the folks who can least afford it:
With so much wealth created by government-exacerbated scarcity, the housing market has become increasingly politicized, to the detriment of the people who can least afford it. “A century of experience with regulation of various kinds has taught us that regulation typically favors the affluent and the organized over the less affluent and less organized,� said American Enterprise Institute fellow Steven Hayward, testifying before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 1999. “There are few groups less organized or represented than the people who would benefit from houses and jobs that do not yet exist.…I think we are being naïve if we fail to recognize that growth management schemes can easily become the machinery of negation by existing residents.�