Yuba homebuyers face mounting commuting costs

Gracie and Louis Prado moved to Yuba County's new commuter subdivisions later than most people, arriving just 16 months ago from Elk Grove. But they came for the same reason thousands did since 2002: more elbow room and a big house for less money.

Yet the trade the Prados made for a bargain home just south of the county seat of Marysville – a long commute to work in Sacramento – is now chewing on their incomes. As they make their way back and forth on Highway 70, the spike in gas prices is sucking an estimated $200 to $250 a week from their wallets.

"We just didn't think gas would go to $4 a gallon," says Louis Prado, who commutes 104 miles daily from the east Linda neighborhood of Edgewater in a V-8-powered pickup truck to his job as an office manager in Rancho Cordova. Gracie Prado commutes 98 miles daily in a recently bought Saturn to a nursing job in Sacramento.

Michael Roberts, too, never expected these gasoline prices when he and his wife moved from Sacramento to Olivehurst's Plumas Lake two years ago.

"I figured $4 a gallon is as far as it could ever go," he said, standing in the driveway of his single-story house.

Roberts drives 76 miles a day to and from his job as an electrician at Union Pacific Railroad in Roseville. His wife drives 100 miles daily to Rancho Cordova and back.

The housing downturn has hit communities all around the region hard. But as commuters like the Robertses and the Prados suffer individually at the gas pumps in Yuba County, real estate experts are looking beyond mortgage and credit issues and are now starting to ask larger questions about the impact of expensive oil on such far-flung neighborhoods whose futures were tied to a metropolis many miles away:

Could they become a suburban equivalent of ghost towns? Will they languish for years while awaiting local job growth, more fuel-efficient cars and a vibrant mass transit system? Is this the end of that kind of residential growth?

The questions take on new significance even as the housing downturn has weakened Sacramento's closer suburban commuter neighborhoods like Elk Grove, Lincoln and Rancho Cordova. On the other hand, older neighborhoods near job centers downtown have largely held their values.

As distant commuter neighborhoods across the state face similar sharp downturns – the Inland Empire of Southern California and the I-5 corridor of San Joaquin County, to cite two prominent examples – answers vary about oil's potential to make such places decidedly unattractive to homebuyers.

But already there is concern along Highway 70 into Yuba County.

Commuting factor changes

For two decades a single economic assumption has steered plans for 20,000 home lots in the Plumas Lake and Edgewater communities: an affordable commute to Sacramento, Placer County and even to Bay Area cities.

It was magic when gasoline sold for well under $2 a gallon, as it did in 2002 when the housing boom started taking off. By late 2003, as home prices began to soar, more than 2,500 new houses were sold in Yuba County. In all more than 4,000 were sold between 2002 and 2007.

Today, the state Department of Finance says Yuba County has 71,929 residents, up nearly 7,000 since January 2004.

Homebuyers found quick rewards: a new house that at first cost $100,000 less than in Sacramento County and $170,000 less than in Placer County – with a bigger yard. But as demand has grown, the gap has narrowed. The median price for a new Sacramento County home today is just $30,000 higher than in Yuba County.

One reason for the long commutes is Yuba County's job picture. April unemployment reached 11 percent, according to state figures. Beyond Beale Air Force Base, agriculture and the public sector, there are few major employers.

Yuba County Planning Director Wendy Hartman says the county is working to grow the job base.

"Our goal is to bring a jobs-housing balance to Yuba County so folks won't have to worry about commuting into Sacramento, Placer County or the Bay Area for jobs," she says.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Jim Wasserman, (916) 321-1102. Read his Home Front blog at www.sacbee.com/blogs.