I recently moved out of a major city to a small, walkable town so I can get away from the crime, traffic, noise, dirtiness, and car-domination of US cities. It's pretty remarkable to see people and children walk around my neighborhood now -- didn't have that in my major US city before!
Your list of infrastructure issues with rural areas also applies to many major US cities. Let's see:
- no high speed Internet: I have faster internet in a small town than I ever had in any of the major US cities I've lived in. Some cities have fiber in nice neighborhoods, but it's by no means a strong rural/urban divide as you imply here.
- no public transport: Public transit is complete crap in most US cities, with many stuck in a post-covid death spiral thanks to fewer commuters, cut service lines, and rising or perceived-rising crime. There were enough clearly mentally ill people on public transit in my last city that I stopped riding public transit entirely. Where I live now, I can get around entirely on foot or by bike, no need for public transit at all.
- no necessary infrastructure like doctors/pharmacies/grocery stores: I can now walk to the grocery store. I could not in my last city.
- no employment opportunities: Definitely an issue for some fields, but remote work gives more flexibility on this. If anything this is an argument that's weakened over the last 2-3 years.
- schools closing down everywhere: You can only make kids ride so far on the bus in rural America. I know consolidations are an issue in many rural areas, but if you live in a small town, you'll likely be near the only school that remains open. If you live way out in the woods of course you won't have a super close-by school.
On the other hand, rural areas are the only places where many of my non-tech peers ever have a hope of owning a home these days. I suspect their values will perform better over time than million dollar townhomes in rotting city centers with poor internet quality, no walkability, crappy public transit, and lots of quality-of-life issues.
That’s sort of the point. I’d kill myself before I’d live in a small town again instead of San Francisco. I can walk to 10 grocery stores, 20 restaurants, literally find all the food I want, and the public transit is pretty good. Who wants to raise kids in rural areas where there won’t be any opportunities for them?
I'm not interested in raising kids, but if I was, it wouldn't be in SF, Seattle, Austin, Denver, or NYC. I'd raise kids someplace where I could let them walk around and explore in a safe way -- the situation on the street in many US cities is not that. They'd be accosted by the mentally ill or run down by giant trucks and SUVs in no time.
If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you have your answer to why property prices near the cities aren't ever going to match the level of rural properties.
I grew up in a crappy rural area with next to no opportunity, and went to college in a crappy rust belt city with very little opportunity. Moved to NYC the day after graduation to start my career. As far as I can tell, if my life was playing out today, I'd probably pick up a remote gig and move someplace cheaper than NYC where I already know some people -- I simply wouldn't bother with the expensive giant cities because they've never been a good fit for my hobbies and interests. A lack of opportunities definitely shaped my high school experience, but where I live now has a lot more going on than where I grew up, even if they're similar densities. Not all small towns are the same!
And depending on what your kids are interested in, SF, NYC, etc. might lack opportunities for your kids, too -- it's not like they can explore nature, or mountain biking, or sailing, or a million other things easily in your average US city. I guess I'm just trying to say that there are tradeoffs no matter where you live, and we probably shouldn't generalize about "rural" and "urban". There's crappy unwalkable non-kid-friendly rural towns aplenty in the US. But there's also crappy unwalkable non-kid-friendly cities aplenty. The right corner of SF, or the right lively small town can both be good places to raise kids.
San Francisco has some the best access to nature, sailing and mountain biking anywhere in the country. I can drive for 15 minutes and be on the beach, in the mountain. And it's never too cold or too hot.
> I grew up in a crappy rural area with next to no opportunity, and went to college in a crappy rust belt city with very little opportunity
Don't assume the fact that you made it means that your kid would repeat that feat though.
If people looked at this honestly, they would have to admit that relocating from a city into a rural area for the explicit purpose of raising kids is effectively taking a gamble on what thing might look like in the future.
Where I grew up - small town of 4000 with no major city within 3+ hours drive. Nearest “city” was 100k people about 100 miles away.
Even in that - I didn’t feel it was super rural but compared to most people - that is seen as remote. May as well live in the Alaskan wilderness in their eyes.
Some people consider a suburb outside of Indianapolis as “rural”.
For example, I live about 50 miles west of Boston. There's lot of forest and field around me with an apple orchard and a Christmas tree farm next door. It's a small town and I think is technically classified as "exurban." No, I can't walk except to the forest paths but there's no shortage of shops, hospitals, etc. within a fairly short drive--and I can certainly drive into the city for events if I want to.
I work remotely but my local office is actually nearer my house than it is to Boston and that's true of a lot of tech-adjacent companies in Massachusetts which weren't historically in the city.
>If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you have your answer to why property prices near the cities aren't ever going to match the level of rural properties.
If the opportunities are mostly in the city, don't expect the cost of city dwellings to approach the cost of rural dwellings.
I grew up in a rural community and the path is quite simple. Grow up there, leave for university, go where the jobs are or go back and work remotely.
Cities will always be more expensive, but that is to be expected.
All you're really missing then is the connection to the nearest urban center - if it takes an hour to drive into town it's not much different than taking an hour to drive across town, after all.
Rural for others is 40 acre plots. For some it's 400-1000.
Having your houses this far apart will result in extremely high infrastructure costs.
That said, in The Netherlands, these places have also increased in prices. GP is underestimating correlation between rural and urban. If prices explode in the urban area, rural will generally see some increase too.
There's also a lot between a city center and true rural wilds of Wyoming (especially the way the US Census defines it). There's a lot of pretty affordable housing and land within an hour or two of most major cities with decent infrastructure, hospitals, etc. No there's not much public transportation but that's true of anywhere that people are spread out.
I also have issues doing my job if I can’t stream audio/video due to speed issues- and this happens even with a hardwired connection on occasion.
Yes? My internet from Comcast is pretty good but it's not flawless. Power is even better but can go out. And I have very marginal cell reception without WiFi assist. That's 40 miles outside of major Northeast city. I'm frequently on calls where someone or other has network issues and can't present or need to drop. Life goes on. If my Internet goes out for an hour or two I find something to do that doesn't require Internet.
I'm semi-rural and I still get 2-4 times a year where my cable drops out, which I suspect is due to moisture in the lines as it seems to usually happen during spring thaws.
They're bringing in fiber at some point soon.
>I also have issues doing my job if I can’t stream audio/video due to speed issues- and this happens even with a hardwired connection on occasion.
What on Earth are you streaming that causes issues on a hardwired connection? I never have had speed issues with meetings, on Starlink or broadband at previous residences. I do have occasional latency spikes, but those seem to be getting better.
If people stop believing housing is a good investment then prices will fall.
People need something to live in though, and as long as the demand for places to live is higher than the supply, rents and purchase prices will keep going up.
Children are expensive AF - childbirth alone is a risk of dozens of thousands of dollars, you need more living space, clothing, diapers, food, more doctor visits, the person bearing the baby may not be able to work for a time which means less income, you need babysitters, ...
The government has completely failed its job of monetary policy, which in broad strokes is to provide back pressure on capitalism's natural tendency to have money move upward. Today there is way too much money at the top and it has nowhere to go. The economy is less and less resembling a healthy marketplace and more medieval feudalism, with lords stuck in their opulent castles while the peasants farm dirt. The more evenly money is spread across the entire spectrum of society the better the markets work. This is one of the side effects of highly progressive taxation and strong social programs--a healthy economy.
Instead our politicians have been focused on reducing taxes for the ultra rich and this has only accelerated the consolidation of money at the top, which is why our economy is getting heavily distorted and why for people on the bottom they have only been getting poorer. Once you factor in rent/mortgage, health care, and inflation versus wage growth the average American is backsliding and has been doing so for many years now. This is a massive failure of fiscal policy, but nobody in Washington cares because the lobbyists and special interests are happy.
It's a description of a linear trend over a period that rises and falls. Why the trend falls (or how sharply) is not related. A housing "hump" isn't the preferred metaphor, although it's more apt. People like to think that a trend bubble has to "pop" because they imagine a physical bubble instead of a hump in a line.
Isn't the definition of a bubble that it has the capability to pop and then eventually pops? At least for urban housing, I see no way of that even being remotely possible, neither for the US nor here in Europe. Rural areas simply are too far left behind to support decent human life - no high speed Internet, no public transport, no necessary infrastructure like doctors/pharmacies/grocery stores, no employment opportunities, schools closing down everywhere and that's just the short list of issues.
As a consequence, the rural flight can and will only accelerate - I see no way ever for politicians to approve the absurd amount of expenses for bringing rural areas back to speed, not with the aftermath of covid and the current Russian invasion having strained anyone's budgets to the limit.