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

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Mike Kennedy said:
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.
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What do they use for the "area" though? Here in New Mexico once you get outside of a city there is generally very little in the way of housing. Outside the Rio Grande valley it's common to not see a single house for 20-30 miles along some of the highways as it's nothing but rangeland or desert. Take Roswell, NM for instance. The population inside the city limits is a bit below 50,000 but the county is about 65,000. Outside the City of Roswell however the county extends 30+ miles in every direction with maybe 2-3 small towns/villages and everything else is either agricultural or desert/range land. That single county is bigger than Connecticut at about 6,000 square miles but there are maybe 10,000 people spread out over 95% of the county with all the rest in the one city.
 
Based on their determinations above "maybe 10,000 people spread out over 95% of the county with all the rest in the one city." 1 Urban city, remaining areas with less than 2500 population- Rural (assuming the maybe 2-3 small towns/villages are not adjacent to the Urban limits of the City). They include what we call "suburban" in their Urban zones if population exceeds 2500 - not including the flying saucers in Roswell.
 
in the big city, rural is when all the houses on the block have been torn down. the closest i came to rural was a "T" split in the road with both roads having the same street sign name. that was before GPS. i used the term "rustic suburban" when i saw developments & small farms together.
 
EddieB said:
Fannie denotes urban if comps are blocks. Suburban if comps are within a mile and urban beyond that. I add comments if comps exceed two or three miles stating that distance does not determine neighborhood designation. That works for me at least since I rarely have all comps within one mile
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I live in a 29 sq. mi. equestrian subdivision of 1-10 ac sites with central water, and 7-10 minutes from shopping, services, government, medical, hospital etc. Comps in here frequently exceed 1 mile and its really unusual if they don't. This is the whole problem with check boxes: the world just isn't simple enough to make the generalities I've read throughout this thread.
 
Doug in NC said:
Client is asking me to explain why my comps are over 2 miles away from the subject, but I have listed the house as being suburban.
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Yes, the problem with checkboxes.

I usually use the "is it on acreage?" acreage, to me, but I'm a city boy, is rural (not always). My wife grew up on 20+ acres and my uncles have land in upstate NY of about 10 acres. That's "rural" in my book. Yet, me, my current house has about 1/3 of an acre...that's a lot of land to me!
 
Doug in NC said:
Client is asking me to explain why my comps are over 2 miles away from the subject, but I have listed the house as being suburban. The house is in a defined neighborhood with other similar high-value houses on multi-acre sites, with HOA dues for light and street maintenance.

I can count on one hand the number of times I have described a property as being rural in my quarter century of appraising. I don't recall ever being taught what a rural property is exactly, but I have always thought of it as being a property that is maybe ten miles from the center of the nearest town with few other houses in sight, because most properties around would involve farming of 100+ acres of land. I guess 2 miles is the arbitrary distance set by someone in the lending industry to attempt to differentiate suburban from rural huh?
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Your client is an idiot. Then again , this should not be that hard to explain. Houses on larger sites, ( 2-5 acres, as an example), are not necessarily rural, if their location is near a town, have access to services, and the sites are not used for growing crops/ag use. Simply explain that due to sites sizes of X acres, the market area is spread out over a 2 mile radius, and the comps share similar services, amenities, PUD, etc
 
My area in Door County WI has 300 miles of built up waterfront (90%), but it is not urban. I've seen some appraisers mark suburban, but suburban by definition is the area that abutts to an urban area. The closest urban area is a small city of about 10,000. A house 10 miles away doesn't fit. So I go by the census definition. I use to put that definition in my report becasue I did appraisals in towns of about 700 with public water and sewer and they wanted me to mark suburban. I told them, "NO WAY." It is a rural village. Then I asked them to tell me what urban area it abutts to and they are quiet. I also can't use private well and septic as the standard for rural, because the urban area of 10,000 has private well and septic within the city limits. If it is on the edge of town I might call it suburban.

Bottom line the definitions aren't that difficult, but sometimes applying them can be a little tricky.
 
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