Huntsville Replaces Mobile as Second Largest Metro on Pace to Challenge Birmingham (Auburn: real estate, home)

[spidac]

Huntsville Passes Mobile In Population, Set To Challenge Birmingham | WHNT.com — Huntsville News & Weather from WHNT Television News19 HD

[cpg35223]

Congrats, Huntsville. But I think the bit about challenging Birmingham's metro area is way premature. Maybe by about 100 years.

[bluebeard]

The article confuses metro and city. Its a possibility the city will pass Birmingham city in 10 years from now. It would have to more than double to pass the Bham metro population, so that's extremely unlikely.
Its only a challenge if you feel like its one. Personally, I don't know that I'd like the metro area to explode. I'd like Birmingham city to rebound some.
In the not too distant future people will have to get over the idea of more population being a dominant measure of a region's success.

[cpg35223]

Triple, actually. Look, I'm not taking a thing away from Huntsville. But Birmingham is no danger of being surpassed by Huntsville in my life time or that of my children. If anything, a lot of the seeds of Birmingham's future growth have been planted in the past five years.

[Reactionary]

I don't know what HSV Mayor Battle was thinking by making a BHM comparison; he was doing so well before that - suggesting manageable growth of population and infrastructure. Battle suggested a goal of 180,000 population in the near term - a sinkhole would have to swallow most of BHM for HSV to pass.

WHNT did no favors writing a sensational headline - buncha idiots.

HSV's economy is more diversified now but still relies on defense and NASA (~50% of economy). Defense cuts are looming and the 2012 elections could really hurt (Missile Defense cuts are likely with Obama re-election).

[AuburnAL]

Originally Posted by Reactionary

I don't know what HSV Mayor Battle was thinking by making a BHM comparison; he was doing so well before that - suggesting manageable growth of population and infrastructure. Battle suggested a goal of 180,000 population in the near term - a sinkhole would have to swallow most of BHM for HSV to pass.

Huntsville already has 180000 people. If it doesn't add another person this decade and Birmingham shrinks as much as it did in the last decade Birmingham would only be 2000 people or so larger in population than Huntsville. So even if Huntsville drops off its growth of the last decade by quite a bit and Birmingham loses significantly less people this decade than it did last then it is still not outside the realm of possibility for Huntsville's population to be larger than Birmingham's population in 2020.

The city of Birmingham has a number of well known and longstanding problems. I think the surprising thing is that you can find such a large number of people in the city of Birmingham with the desire and means to flee to the suburbs. You have to think that at some point everyone who wants to leave the city proper will have left, and moreover that the lack of demand will drive home prices low enough that people will begin migrating back to the city for the cheap housing.

[Reactionary]

AuburnAL - I was unthinkingly responding to the article - Battle must have been referring to the growth from 2000 to 2009 (+13.5% to 180,000 population). Remind me not to doubt Battle again...

BHM has 230,000 population but shrunk -5% over the last decade. For some reason I thought that BHM had more than 600,000 people; I must have been thinking JeffCo.

Using those rates HSV could have 204,300 population in a decade; BHM could have 218,500. HSV would need +21% growth to equal BHM.

I stand corrected, thanks for the diversion.

[AuburnAL]

Originally Posted by Reactionary

AuburnAL - I was unthinkingly responding to the article - Battle must have been referring to the growth from 2000 to 2009 (+13.5% to 180,000 population). Remind me not to doubt Battle again...

BHM has 230,000 population but shrunk -5% over the last decade. For some reason I thought that BHM had more than 600,000 people; I must have been thinking JeffCo.

Using those rates HSV could have 204,300 population in a decade; BHM could have 218,500. HSV would need +21% growth to equal BHM.

I stand corrected, thanks for the diversion.

No problem. I was going by the population numbers of Wikipedia. They have Birmingham at around 212000 people with a decline of about 30000 people over the last decade.

[bluebeard]

Right, but note the title says metro. The Huntsville metro will not pass Bham anytime soon, if ever. The city limits, possibly. Not the metros.
However, given a much larger proportion proportion of the Huntsville metro area is made up of the city, compared to the Birmingham city and metro. In fact, Huntsville city area is much larger than Birmingham city area. So its a bit of an apples to oranges comparison.

[happybuddha]

Didnt even read the link. But are there are many major real estate players interested in that area ?
Those fellas will do anything to boost hype in the market and create some inflationary rates.