Coping with the cost of the country life

NY Times:

Suddenly, the economics of American suburban life are under assault as skyrocketing energy prices inflate the costs of reaching, heating and cooling homes on the distant edges of metropolitan areas.

Just off Singing Hills Road, in one of hundreds of two-story homes dotting a former cattle ranch beyond the southern fringes of Denver, Phil Boyle and his family openly wonder if they will have to move close to town to get some relief.

They still revel in the space and quiet that has drawn a steady exodus from American cities toward places like this for more than half a century. Their living room ceiling soars two stories high. A swing-set sways in the breeze in their backyard. Their wrap-around porch looks out over the flat scrub of the high plains to the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

But life on the fringes of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable. Mr. Boyle and his wife must drive nearly an hour to their jobs in the high-tech corridor of southern Denver. With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, Mr. Boyle recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel fuel. The price of propane to heat their spacious house has more than doubled in recent years.

Though Mr. Boyle finds city life unappealing, it is now up for reconsideration.

“Living closer in, in a smaller space, where you don’t have that commute,” he said. “It’s definitely something we talk about. Before it was ‘we spend too much time driving.’ Now, it’s ‘we spend too much time and money driving.’ ”

As the realization takes hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a change with lasting consequences, the high cost of fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs.

Across the country home prices have fallen to their 2004 level, now standing at 15.3 percent lower in April than a year earlier, according to the Case-Shiller home price index of 20 major United States cities released on Tuesday.

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to an analysis by Moody’s Economy.com.

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That has definitely not happened in Washington County, Texas which is about 70 miles form Houston. In fact my latest appraisal from the taxing district was up 42 percent over last year. For me the high cost of country living is more about the property taxes than about other cost. Home prices in Houston have remained basically stable during the same time period, so theoretically I could sell this property for a handsome profit and move back to the city, but the quality of life would not be the same. One of the reasons for the stability of prices in Houston is that it was not overpriced the way property on the east and west coast has been.

Heating bills are not as much of an issue down here as they are in Denver too. Maybe that is another benefit of global warming.