Exurbia may not be a term used by the appraisal community, but it has been around for 16-years or more. Maybe we should consider it? Finding Exurbia: America’s Fast-Growing Communities at the Metropolitan Fringe http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/20061017_exurbia.pdf
I once took a SREA class Residential Application at the Univ. of OK, and a lady from AK used a word I had never heard of, one she made up, "Sural".
She lived in a town of 2,500 that was 1 1/2 miles square, surrounded by open fields. Anything in the central core, she called Urban, 1/4 to 3/4 miles out from the central city, she labeled Suburban, and anything on the outside edge of town, she called Sural, and anything out side of town was Rural.
How do you define Rural? In my area, I labeled Barstow Rural, until they widened the I-15 Freeway. Before that even, it was a remote desert town off all by itself in the Mojave Desert. A railroad town and a pit stop on the way from L.A. and Las Vegas.
When they widened the Freeway, commuters moved to town. Now most newcomers commute to the Victor Valley 30-40 miles away to work. Is it still Rural, or is it Suburban now? It is still well outside the 60-Mile Circle of the metro So. CA market area. It is more than 100 miles from L.A.
No, Barstow is not an Exurbia, by anyone's definition! Click below . . . .
In the early 1990s the journalist and social commentator Joel Garreau coined the term “edge cities” to refer to the growing quasi-urban places that were centered around major suburban freeway interchanges. Some fifteen years later, more and more scholars are interested in the movement towards exurban areas, which in many cases, are further distant than many edge cities.
Recently, a team of scholars at The Brookings Institution decided to write a rather compelling report on these fast-growing communities, and this work represents their current thoughts and observations. In this 48-page paper published in October 2006, they present a number of interesting findings based on demographic and economic data from 1990 to 2005. Their findings include a number of geographically informed analysis, such as the fact that the South and Midwest are more exurbanized than the West and Northeast and the residents of the “average” exurb are disproportionately white, middle-
income commuters."
Come to think of it, maybe we can't use the term until it is added to the appraisal dictionary, or the FNMA forms. Or, are we limited in performing our appraisals to what FNMA puts in their forms.
They do not have a check box for Earthquake or Liquefaction Zones, should we not talk about them, report or analyze them as they relate to the subject or comparables?
The point is that the use of good appraisal procedures and reporting, has little to do with the form or format of the appraisal report. I say, report the things that have an effect on value, use good descriptive language to tell where it is located an the effect on value. Although I would not make up names, like "Surban". If you want to bring new words into the lexicon of appraisal terminology, cite published sources.
As such, Exurbia qualifies as being defined and published, but Surban does not
Reference Article: Scout Report, 10/27/06 issue, Volume 12, Number 43 (scout.wisc.edu].
AUTHOR: Steven R. Smith, MSREA, MAI, SRA, Smith Realty Advisors, 936 San Jacinto St., Redlands, CA 92373, Real Estate Appraisals, Consulting, Expert Testimony, Forensic Reviews, Fraud Research and Analysis, Litigation Support, Fraud Training 909-798-8855, fax: 909-798-0139
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