When the housing crash ends, how will Sacramento grow?

Some day this housing crash will end. Judging from history, Sacramento's ranks of developers will snap right back into growth mode – building a fresh wave of new homes.

The big question: Will this new wave of growth create a more urban, compact Sacramento, as many community activists and politicians hope? Or will it follow the time-tested pattern of past booms in the late 1970s, the second half of the 1980s and the first half of this decade, pushing ever-larger homes farther into farmland?

Perhaps it's easiest to expect more of the same. Suburban development has for decades been Sacramento's main growth industry, aside from state government.

During this decade's housing boom, builders constructed 156,000 homes, condos and apartments in the Sacramento region – largely on empty land in suburban cities. Much of this last wave of housing on former farmland has proved especially vulnerable to shredded values and foreclosures – a fate far less common in established neighborhoods closer to jobs.

Still, signs of change were starting to emerge even before the housing market fell apart. Loft-style housing projects were popping up all over Sacramento's central city. And construction had begun on two 53-story condominium towers on Capitol Mall.

So might visions of mid- and high-rise living in downtown Sacramento take off where they left off – just as it seemed the city was reaching a new level?

Looking ahead, analysts believe the next wave of residential growth in the Sacramento region – perhaps still several years off – might be different. It's likely to roll in with expensive gasoline, higher home energy costs and lenders' continued insistence on tight credit.

State and federal policies governing the flow of public money increasingly favor more compact, transit-friendly types of development. And as baby boomers age, they are expected to move down to smaller housing units.

All these forces could mean more people in the next wave of growth will live in smaller homes, and more may live downtown. But no one should underestimate the ethos of the Central Valley: People here like yards and space.

Around town, people who build houses and those trying to shape the market think daily about what the Sacramento of the future will look like. Here are some of their thoughts:

Industry tracker

Greg Gross flips open a laptop and counts the lots planned for houses, apartments and condos in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties.

His tally: 106,000.

The number is staggeringly ambitious in a housing crash where builders will be lucky to sell 4,000 homes this year. It speaks to the bullish nature of Sacramento land developers.

Around 91,000 lots are on vacant land and called future inventory, just "cows walking across the field," said Gross. He is a regional consultant with Houston's Metrostudy, advising developers and builders on what buyers want.

These lots are where the capital region's future will be written, assuming it follows the suburban development patterns that have guided the region since World War II. Many could remain undeveloped if patterns change, or could be filled with smaller homes or multi-family housing.

Gross' opinion: "The majority of folks are going to raise their family in a single-family home. There are not millions of people looking for a condo."

Giant publicly traded builders that rule this market will want that, too, he said. Builders need empty land to mass produce houses for a region projected to capture about 9 percent of California's job growth until 2050 – and possibly double its population to nearly 4 million.

Yet the consultant issues a caveat. What people want may become limited by constraints on resources, including water shortages and costly energy.

Downtown developers

Scott Syphax and Steve Goodwin are banking on such limits. They plan 2,900 mid-rise homes in an old industrial area north of downtown Sacramento. It's called Township 9.
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Written by Jim Wasserman, Sacramento Bee