Excerpts: The U.S. hasn’t had a formal definition for what constitutes a suburb. A new data analysis comes closer to defining America’s most popular neighborhood type. (Suburban appraisal definition is tricky.) What’s the appraisal definition for suburban?
The United States is a land of suburbs, with just one problem: No one’s quite clear what a “suburb” is.
It’s a question of semantics with real-world implications, as government programs, political campaigns and developers try to spend money in the “suburbs,” where a majority of Americans say they live despite the category having no formal definition.
For some people, it’s obvious: A suburb is a smaller city on the periphery of a larger city. Or it’s a sprawling neighborhood filled with vast swathes of single-family homes. Still other more dated conceptions of suburbia in the popular mind involve the people who live there: allegedly white, middle class and socially homogenous.
Now a new team of researchers believe they’ve cracked the code…
To read more, click here
My comments: Of course, if you do residential lender appraisals this is a Very Big Issue due to lender “requirements” such as no rural properties. Lots and lots of online discussion about this for a long time. Post this topic on your favorite Internet chat site or email list… and wait for the wide variety of opinions!!
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My Favorite Definitions
(This has been floating around for many years…)
Rural Suburban Urban
- If you stand naked on the front porch and the neighbors can’t see you… it’s rural.
- If you stand naked on the front porch and the neighbors call the cops on you… it’s suburban.
- If you stand naked on the front porch and the neighbors ignore you… it’s urban.
There are other variations, of course, that are not suitable for this newsletter ;>
