It isn't some new discovery that
housing costs tend to decrease as you move away from employment centers, but the big question is whether people accurately take the increase in commuting costs into account when they make their home location choices. I certainly don't know the answer to that, but I suspect that people tend to see automobile costs as largely fixed, not variable, and while they might factor in some of the additional cost associated with living in the exurbs, they underestimate that amount.
