I subscribe to Google news.  Call me crazy, but I like to stay informed.  I have Google e-mail me all of the stories about real estate each day. 

In the last several days, I’ve seen three that echo a theme I think we’re going to start hearing a lot more about: how pain at the gas pump is reverberating throughout the economy.  Check them out:

CNN: Gas drives real estate buys

ABC News: A New Kind of Housing Cycle

LA Times: Gas prices latest worry for real estate market

LA can serve as an important lesson for Phoenix, if we let it.  Southern California has long been known for far-flung suburbs and horrendous commutes.  With suburbs stretching 70 miles or more from downtown Phoenix, the Valley is headed in the same direction.

But according to the LA Times article, things in SoCal might be changing.  “Outlying areas have long appealed to people who were willing to accept a burdensome commute for the chance to own a better house.  But buyers are increasingly factoring gasoline costs into their purchase decisions,” the article reads.

In Greater Phoenix, people traded short commutes for bigger, less expensive houses in the suburbs.  The cost was the extra time spent in the car, but a lot of families found it a worthwhile tradeoff.  Not so much as gas rise about $4 per gallon.

The CNN article told of a man who bought a house near an Amtrak station because commuting by car to his job in the San Francisco area would be too expensive.

“That represents a fundamental shift in the way more Americans are approaching home buying in this era of ballooning gas prices,” the article reads.  “Home buyers are placing more importance on cutting their gas bills and commute times than they have since the oil shocks of the 1970s.”

In Europe, sky-high gas taxes make the bill at the pump much more expensive than in the US.  In the UK, for example, the gas tax alone is $5.50.  Yet people in the UK aren’t made ridiculously poor by those high gas prices. 

The fundamental difference is that public transportation in the UK is very good.  And people live much closer together – think New York rather than LA.  In the US, in contrast, cities were built for an era of cheap gas prices (with far-flung suburbs, dispersed economic centers, and poor public transit systems).  And Americans became very cozy with gas-guzzling SUVs, much different than Europeans’ Smart cars and scooters.

But high gas prices in the US are pushing Americans to want to live more like Europeans.  From the CNN article: “Homes in cities and neighborhoods that require long commutes and don't provide enough public transportation alternatives are falling in value more quickly than more central locations, according to a May study by CEOs for Cities, a network of U.S. urban leaders.”

ABC News reports a startling trend in Colorado: people are actually riding their bikes instead of driving.  In that article, the reporter tells of a real estate agent in Boulder who conducts home tours by bicycle.

On many fronts, then, if $4-per-gallon prices are here to stay, look for a dramatic shift in Americans’ ways of life.