From CEOs for Cities:

Driven to the Brink (PDF)
How the Gas Price Spike Popped the Housing Bubble and Devalued the Suburbs

The collapse of America’s housing bubble—and its reverberations in financial markets—has obscured a tectonic shift in housing demand. Although housing prices are in decline almost everywhere, price declines are generally far more severe in far-flung suburbs and in metropolitan areas with weak close-in neighborhoods. The reason for this shift is rooted in the dramatic increase in gas prices over the past five years. Housing in cities and neighborhoods that require lengthy commutes and provide few transportation alternatives to the private vehicle are falling in value more precipitously than in more central, compact and accessible places.

From the Wall Street Journal:

As Gas Prices Spike, Suburban Home Prices Fall

Rising gasoline prices have affected much of American life –- from the cars we drive to the vacations we take. A new study, however, indicates that increasing gas prices may have the strongest impact closer to home — the houses we choose to live in.

In a report entitled “Driven to the Brink: How the Gas Price Spike Popped the Housing Bubble and Devalued the Suburbs,” released this month by CEOs for Cities, economist Joe Cortright contends that while predatory lending and subprime mortgages had a hand in today’s housing crisis, higher gas prices played a major role –- and will have a much longer-lasting impact on U.S. consumers’ home-buying preferences.

“The rise in gas prices from less than $1.10 in early 2002 to more than $3 today has dealt a major blow to consumer purchasing power and weighs most heavily on those metropolitan areas and those suburbs where people have to drive the farthest,” Mr. Cortright notes in the report.

Higher gas prices negatively impact housing prices by sapping home buyers’ budgets and leaving less to spend on housing, and by making consumers less apt to bid more for homes in less centrally located suburbs, he explains.

The study notes that while initiatives by states and the federal government to ease the housing market’s woes will have some positive effect on the real-estate market in the months ahead, higher fuel costs will permanently impact the suburban landscape as more home buyers choose to reside in closer-in locations that offer shorter commutes and mass transit.

He point out that in metropolitan areas like Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland and Tampa, home prices have fallen more in farther-flung ZIP codes than in close-in neighborhoods. For instance, in Chicago, while housing prices have remained stable in close-in neighborhoods within three miles of the city’s central business district over the past 12 months, home prices have fallen 4% in “distant” neighborhoods 13 miles from the central business district. And in Los Angeles, while home prices have dropped 6% in close-in neighborhoods, they have decreased 10% in distant neighborhoods, according to the report.