Real estate market trends in the first new urbanist town: Seaside, Florida

Abstract

The Town of Seaside, Florida, built 40 years ago, is arguably still the highest-profile project of the New Urbanism Movement. Its significance as the original New Urbanist town persists despite the widespread adoption of many of the underlying design principles promoting walkable, ecologically sustainable, and economically diverse neighborhoods worldwide. Four decades provides a significant sample size to investigate sale price trends and fluctuations in single-family residential homes in Seaside. Morphological analysis of the town within the larger Walton County context serves as a background to this investigation. Based on the results, we find that high-price, large residential homes in Seaside were less resilient to sale price fluctuations than nearby smaller, lower-priced homes. We suggest this could offer evidence of the benefit of smaller homes for stabilizing housing markets during periods of economic downturn and distress.