A new online calculator can help Washington-area residents factor in transportation costs to determine the true expense of their homes.
The Urban Land Institute debuted the site, www.uli.org/CostCalculator, on Monday in tandem with a study that found regional residents who move farther out in the suburbs for more affordable homes may end up losing those savings on increased transportation costs.
The calculator lets users plug in their home address and their work addresses, then compare the costs with other job or home locations.
Consumers can personalize the settings to include the average miles per gallon of their cars, their incomes and whether they own or rent their homes.
“Until now, individuals only knew the cost of housing when moving into a new neighborhood,” said Peter Haas, a research scientist with the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago that helped develop the calculator. “But this tool allows consumers to estimate transportation costs as well.”
The site also helps calculate what percentage of one’s income is spent on housing and transportation. Experts consider housing to be affordable if it consumes 30 percent or less of income, but the study found that housing and transportation costs combined make up 46 percent of the Washington area’s median household income of $78,221.
Haas said families who choose neighborhoods near transit, services and jobs can reduce their monthly expenses with lower transportation costs that offset a more expensive house.
However, the Web site does not take into account some other major concerns people consider when they choose where to live: schools for their children, the safety of the area, property taxes and the quality of the housing.
“It’s an important part of the equation we are not able to capture,” said Jeffrey Lubell, the executive director of the D.C.-based Center for Housing Policy, which worked on the project. “We understand that people’s decisions are complicated.”
But he noted that public policy often doesn’t take into account the effect transportation makes on local residents’ pocketbooks. Public officials could reconfigure development, zoning and tax policies if they considered the costs of transportation, he said, while employers could encourage telecommuting.
