2008′s $4-a-gallon gas seemed to be the trigger and now even moves to the suburbs are slowing drastically.
Francine Lindala began making the one-hour commute from Princeton to Roseville in the days when gas was cheap. As the cost of fuel steadily rose beyond what Americans had ever seen, she and her husband toyed with the idea of selling.
Wondering what their home would fetch, they ordered up an appraisal. The answer shocked them. “There were no comparables,” she said. Houses like hers simply were not selling. So they’re staying — for now.
It’s an illustration of what’s happening all over the once-booming Twin Cities fringe. A metro area once considered one of the nation’s most sprawling is now strengthening at its center while its outer rings wither.
New estimates suggest that the movement into suburban and exurban counties within commuting distance of Minneapolis and St. Paul has stopped cold for the first time in recent memory.
For many years, the combination of robust growth, a multitude of freeways and plenty of open space helped ignite an explosion in exurban living. People were commuting for hours from towns such as Mora, Glencoe and Owatonna. National experts classed the Twin Cities as having the nation’s third-largest exurban flight from 2000 to 2005, ahead of even sprawling Atlanta.
But the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest estimates — the first to reflect the impact of 2008′s $4-a-gallon gas — suggest that:
•With people abandoning foreclosed and unsellable homes, the two-state ring of exurban counties is hardly growing. For these counties as a group, 2009 marked the first time more people left than moved in.
•In the five big suburban counties closest to the center (Dakota, Scott, Carver, Anoka and Washington), new arrivals have slowed to a standstill. With a wave of baby boomers sitting on empty nests in older suburbs such as Eagan, and new construction all but extinguished in once-booming counties such as Scott, growth is half what it was a decade ago.
•The two big core counties of Hennepin and Ramsey, losing tens of thousands of people a year as recently as five years ago, are on the rebound. Growth is gaining by the year.
Stuck on the fringes
Tim Eiler, who has lived in St. Bonifacius, in the southwestern corner of Hennepin County, for more than a decade, is seeing that transition happen. His town of 2,300 has seen its share of foreclosures, he said, and it sometimes seems that “it’s been mostly people moving out of town.”
But a few are moving in, and the ones who are doing so “are moving in from outer exurbs,” Eiler said. “Several people came from places like Silver Lake or Glencoe. People who have chosen to live very far have now moved halfway.”
All these trends would be much more pronounced, say some who live in outlying towns, if by some stroke of magic they could leave: if they were not upside down on their mortgages and forced to write $20,000 checks to escape.
“We’re stuck there,” said Jason Hanson, who bought a townhouse in Farmington with his wife in 2005. At the time, moving farther out was a way to get more space for less money. Now with a baby and a dog, the distance from work and everyday amenities has turned into a drag.
They want to move to Lakeville or Eagan, closer to a freeway and transit to carry him to his job in Minneapolis. But, Hanson said, “a lot of people want to sell and they can’t.”
The transit factor
One possible game-changer is commuter rail. People anywhere near the new Northstar Line from Big Lake to Minneapolis are much likelier to find exurban living manageable. Those not near it curse that fact.
Mary Janselde drives 11 miles north from Buffalo in order to pick up the train to downtown Minneapolis.
“I love it,” she said. “It’s really nice. We used to have to drive 40 minutes to a park-and-ride in Plymouth to take a bus. Now I nap on the train, read or listen to my iPod.”
Christopher Schanus, of Howard Lake, is jealous. “For us, Long Lake is the first place to pick up a bus,” he said.
He suspects the lack of transit plays some part in the dismal reality he sees around him: The house he bought for $150,000 is worth $25,000 less, and “many of the newer houses are just sitting. Subdivisions where there’s a house here and there but empty lots in between. The houses never followed. It’s going to be a long time. And if $4 gas comes back, that’ll make it even harder.”
Still, many of the people who moved to far-flung towns say they don’t regret it. For Tina Meeker of Zimmerman, long commutes are offset by clear views of the stars, wildlife sightings, a small-town feel and wide-open space.
“It’s really a transformation from the day-to-day grind,” Meeker said. “It’s just a really peaceful environment.”
A national trend
The declines in some areas come against a backdrop of a cooler economy that has all of Minnesota losing people to other states — so much so that the state is in serious danger of losing a seat in Congress.
But the shifts that the Twin Cities metro area is seeing reflect changes across the nation. A national analysis by the Brookings Institution finds that growth rates in counties it classes as exurban began a nosedive in 2006 as gas prices crept higher. Growth rates in suburban counties nationally have been falling for two years now, while urban counties have strengthened for three years in a row.
Brookings demographer William Frey blames the “triple whammy” of the housing industry bust, the banking and credit crisis, and the recession. He thinks exurban cities will recover.
“The bubble we saw was an exaggeration,” he said. “We’re not going to get back to that. But once people calm down a little bit, things will get back on track. And the fundamentals of the economy in Minneapolis-St. Paul are strong.”
Locally, though, experts warn of underlying shifts in demographics that create doubt.
George Karvel, a professor of real estate at the University of St. Thomas, said retiring baby boomers looking to downsize may leave some suburban areas in limbo.
“They drove a lot of the demand for larger, bigger, suburban homes out in Eden Prairie,” Karvel said. “Those homes are going to come back on the market. The question we all have is, what’s going to happen to their values? Who is going to buy those properties?”
Source: Star Tribune
