From the AP via MSN/Money:
Teardowns Slowing As Home Market Cools
It was a rare occurrence in a community with a national reputation for tearing down old houses: A developer bought the historic cottage at 327 S. Oak St. but didn’t bulldoze it into oblivion.
The norm in this leafy Chicago suburb and affluent communities around the country has been to allow builders to demolish older homes to make way for far larger, far flashier houses — dubbed “McMansions” by critics.
But a teardown tide that surged for a decade has begun to turn, largely due to a housing-market slump, but also thanks to the growing influence of preservationists.
As a five-year real estate boom fizzled this year, teardowns plummeted by at least 20 percent nationally, roughly corresponding to the drop in housing starts, said Stephen Melman of the National Association of Home Builders.
At the same time, though, preservationists across the country have exerted increasing influence in a quest to protect historic neighborhoods.
“The whole issue of preservation is more on the radar of all communities,” said Genell Scheurell, a Chicago representative for the Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation. “It absolutely wasn’t the case 10 years ago.”
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