Two issues to your logic here.
First, the "Exurbs" or extreme outlying suburbs of a major employment center, are typically where folks end up as they head further and further afield, in seach of affordable housing. Like a lot of recently developed rural areas, 2-3 hours away from a major city, nothing here is expensive or remotely upscale. As I stated in an early post on this thread, at the start of this boom, housing was literally 2/3rd to 3/4s LESS than the areas adjoining NYC. Real estate taxes were a joke, often folks were paying less in a year than they would of per month in a similar home located 80 miles closer in. Currently affordablility for young families wanting to move to this area hardly a issue. There are large homes, in great condition and often on several acres, selling for < $50/sq.ft The issue is a change in thinking. Kids graduate from here and never even check their mirror on the way out of town. Millennials, as a group, are not going to go down the same path their parents did, and the ones raised here, who watched their parents give their lives to a 14-15 hour work day because the chose to live two states away from there job, are saying hell no.
The other issue is the "no big deal" response to imploding enrollment. When a state education department determines that you will go from your current enrollment to 150% of that figure in the next five years, you are required to plan for, and build to accomodate that influx. The scale of the pre 2008 influx was so great that a nearby district once had over four hundred NEW students show up on the first day of school with no prior warning. This doesn't include a larger number with parents that were intelligent enough to pre-register their newly enrolled spawn. Once the collapse occured, the region was stuck with billions of dollars in loans on school buildings that aren't even close to being fully occupied, as they abandon all the older buildings, and attempt to consolidate. When a rapidly declining population is attempting to fund a school system that was build for 3X as many students, it gets ugly. The buildings don't go away, the staff can only be reduced to a certain level, the buses still travel thousands of miles a day, and the giant construction bonds still need to be paid.
The larger point to all this is that, from the beginning of the recession, there were a handful of experts out there who said that mega-commuting would fall out of favor, and that many exurbs were going to fail to recover, and instead continue a long decline as the remainder of the county extricates itself from our current economic mess. Unfortunately it looks like it's happening here and now. Fortunately, as a 'stachian I have no debt, and bailing on this mess will be a matter of finding a buyer for my real estate holdings. Property is still moving, but the 'values" naturally have been adjusted to this new reality. That said, it's time to move on. I doubt that the next decade will be all that kind to this market.