Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
I'm from the northeast. They are pretty rare up there too. Yes, you get the odd masterplannend community where the deed restrictions call for some massive house on some acreage but the vast majority of these far flung communities are just your typical sprawlburb with modest houses on modest lots. You might see more of this near NYC because of the wealth and the population but they're an outlier in every possible way. I lived in metro Boston and of course Upstate NY and rarely saw these communities apart for some rich family buying up a piece of property and building their own house.
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It isn't an outlier, it's the norm. Look at the exurban areas around the Northeast and all will have exurbs dominated by multiacre minimum lot sizes and multifamily bans. It's true in NY, Boston, Philly, DC and Baltimore. All these exurbs are having huge demographic issues.
The Northeastern suburbs that are doing well are all denser, older, mixed-use suburbs on transit lines, with small(er) homes and walkability.
You can pretty much predict the relative property gains by measuring the distance to the nearest rail station or bus hub with direct service to Manhattan. Case in point - when NJ Transit built the Montclair Connector (a direct rail line through a corridor of older suburbia) around 20 years ago, property values exploded, while the property values stagnated in towns a few miles further from the rail, and cratered in the woodsy backcountry towns.