If the price of your suburban home has crashed, you're a victim of more than bad timing. You may have bought into an American way of life that's no longer sustainable.

Between 1984 and 2001, incomes increased by 28 percent, while the cost of car travel fell by 42 percent. Today, incomes are stagnant, and gas is three times as expensive as it was in 2002. That's bad because commutes have lengthened from 20 miles a day in the 1980s to 27 miles a day in 2004.

A plethora of problems is making suburbia less attractive -- traffic congestion, lack of diversity, and new home overbuilding, to name a few, but the real reason your home price may not recover for some time is that too much of your income is going to transportation costs, making suburbia less affordable.

If you live in a Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) suburb, you're paying one-third of your income on transportation, says CEOs for Cities, in a new study called Driven to the Brink, or how the gas price spike popped the housing bubble and devalued the suburbs.

The report claims that housing price declines are more severe in "far-flung suburbs and in metropolitan areas with weak close-in neighborhoods."

Poor use of land in the cities, brought on by the car-dependent culture, has resulted in a flight to the suburbs and increasingly expensive and lengthy commutes.

In 2003, the typical U.S. family spent $2,000 annually on gas. In 2008, a household with two or more cars living in an exurb could easily spend as much as $500 a month on filling gas tanks.

The era of cheap gas is over, warns the report, and so is low-density suburb living. While it's true that despite more than doubling in price since 2004, gas prices are still less than half of what Europeans pay, leading Americans to falsely hope that gas prices will continue to support oversized, land-cheap suburban homes.

The income effect of higher gas prices has caused suburban households to divert more of their earnings to transportation. The price effect is that now these suburban buyers are less willing and able to afford the suburban lifestyle, causing home prices to collapse.

While there are numerous reasons for the divergence of home prices and gas prices, they aren't mutually exclusive. Using zip codes, the report found that neighborhood price declines 12 miles from the central business district are two to four percentage points greater than the home price declines two miles from the CBD.

This is a call-to-action for cities to redevelop in order to offer more attractive urban living opportunities near work centers. Density reduces the number of vehicle miles traveled through mixed-use developments that promote walking, biking and the use of public transportation as alternatives to car use. Cities must actively reverse the decline of their core neighborhoods by improving access to amenities such as shopping, services, parks and recreation.

Home prices in cities with vital urban cores, such as Chicago, New York, Seattle, and Portland have fared much better than areas with weak cores such as Detroit, Phoenix and Las Vegas, according to the Core Vitality Index using data supplied by Zillow and City Vitals. A home one mile closer to the center of Austin Texas was worth $8,000 more than the home one mile further away. Each minute shaved off the average commute time in a city increases a home's value by $4,700, says CEO's for Cities research.

Low density developments are unlikely to recover with continued high gas prices. Supporting redevelopment and higher density in cities will help cut gas dependency, strengthen local economies, reduce the trade deficit, and reduce global warming, says the report. This will help cut gas dependency, reduce the trade deficit, and reduce global warming, says the report.

Published: May 6, 2008

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Blanche Evans is the award-winning senior editor of Realty Times, the Internet's leading independent real estate news service. She is featured daily on the Realty Times Video Network in the "Realty Viewpoint" segment. Blanche has been named one of the "25 Most Influential People In Real Estate" by REALTOR Magazine, and has been twice recognized as a "notable." In 2005, she was named "Top Reporter Covering the NAR" by Delahaye-Bacon's. Blanche is a renowned author of five real estate books. Her newest, Bubbles, Booms and Busts: Make Money In Any Real Estate Market, McGraw-Hill, was rave-reviewed by The New York Times. She was also selected from hundreds of real estate experts to contribute to Donald Trump's book, Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received: 100 Top Experts Share Their Strategies, Rutledge Hill Press, and is featured on page 68. Order Now Review - Honors In 2006, Blanche was selected among scores of candidates to author two consumer real estate guidebooks for the National Association of Realtors: The NAR Guide to Home Buying, and The NAR Guide to Home Selling, Wiley & Sons. She is currently planning two new books for the NAR and its members.       Known for her keen insight into real estate industry issues and for her ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, Blanche is a sought-after keynote and continuing education speaker. Real estate organizations from MLSs, to brokerages, to franchisors, to associations hire her to provide up-to-the-minute analysis of real estate industry news and advice on how to improve revenues. Her passionate delivery, peppered with stinging wit, is a huge hit with audiences and fans. Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Blanche Evans, Richard Courtney, president 2007, GRAR "The GNAR membership meeting last week featured Blanche Evans as the keynote speaker. Her comments and insights resonated extremely well with those in attendance and we have had many requests for copies of her PowerPoint Presentation. She was a terrific part of the membership meeting and convention program!" - Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors Coverage from WSMV, Nashville - 8-14-2007 That Interview Guy - Get Inside The Head Of Today's Generation 2007 AE Institute Session - To purchase 2006 AE Institute Session - Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 HouseValues Mastermind call - Parts 1 2 Blanche's fireside chat with Jeremy Conaway, HAR - Click here. To contact Blanche, email her at . For more articles by Blanche, click here.