Is There An Accepted Definition Of "suburban" Versus "rural"?

[Doug in NC]

I read on a similar thread about rural having a low % built up rate. Makes sense.

 

[jay trotta]

You can only check (1) box on the form; what happens in a "suburban/rural" location ??

mann that cool aid tasted funny.........

 

[Restrain]

It depends on your market. North of DFW it is low density in some areas,but suburban in nature in that it is a commuting suurb of DFW. Just explain in the 'Neighborhood' section and don't rely on boilerplate.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

North of DFW

I remember when the I35E/I35W fork was out in the country- now its in the middle of a campus.

 

[Meandering]

Transuburban.

Be politically correct.

.

 

[residentialguy]

Suburb...you'll see cats and dogs
Rural...you'll see cows, horses, pigs

 

[JTip]

Fire protection:
More than 5 miles away/volunteer: Rural
Less than 5: Suburban
Less than 1/paid: Urban

 

[norapp]

After living and working on Long Island for most of my life I relocated to Upstate New York just South of the Adirondack Mountains. Many of the outlying areas are indeed rural but I did struggle with the term suburban in the more populated areas where my comps were 1-3 miles. I check suburban on page 1, put a comment in the neighborhood section that the locale is rural/suburban and a comment is sales comparison analysis that comps typically exceed the 1 mile guideline in this rural/suburban neighborhood. That seems to take care of the problem. I did have to chuckle when I was reviewed and was called out because other appraisers put some areas as suburban. I had to wonder if they had ever seen a real suburban neighborhood. To me a real suburban area is one where your comps are almost always under 1 mile. If you find yourself in locales that are more spread out with lot's of land, I just call that rural/suburban.

 

[Doug in NC]

The annoying part is that the suburban/rural ranking is subjective, so why does a lender need to bother with the determination? (And who understands the situation better anyway, the appraiser who's been on the scene, or the reviewer based out of an office somewhere 1,000-2,500 miles away?)

 

[Mike Kennedy]

The US Census Bureau recognizes only urban and rural areas, and assigns specific population requirements to them for classification purposes. An urban area is an area in which the population is greater than 50,000 people, or an area in which the population is between 2,500 and 50,000. A rural area is defined as an area of less than 2,500 people. Suburbs, however, are geographically defined as pockets of populations in the outlying areas of large urban centers. Suburbs are usually classified as urban due to populations of greater than 2,500 and their lack of agricultural focus, though suburbs typically do have open land in the form of parks.