But for sake of pretending that the house is actually on the market as the show represents... they ought to discuss the added cost of the commute vs. difference in the price of the house, rather than pretending that an extra half hour of commuting each day has no monetary cost.
But don't most people pretend it doesn't? I think the notion that commute actually represents a cost is a very MMM realization.
That's kind of my point. They never discuss the other ongoing costs entailed in buying the various homes - commute and utilities make for boring TV I guess.
Well on HH, they do usually discuss if commute TIME is significantly different. They ignore the cost, because quite frankly, the cost is nowhere near as significant for most people as MMM likes to pretend it is.
For instance, I'm an extreme example. I recently traded a 30-mile one-way commute for a 7-mile on. I am not going to ride my bike, so either way it's by car. By far the biggest change is in gas, but even that isn't THAT much:
30 miles x 2 trips x 5 days x 52 weeks = 15,600 miles / 25 mpg = 624 gallons x $3 = $1872
7 miles x 2 trips x 5 days x 52 weeks = 3,640 miles / 25 mpg = 146 gallons x $3 = $437.
Difference is $1435/yr or $120/mo.
Is that nothing? Obviously not. Is it what I'm going to make a $XXX,XXX decision based on? Also no. Yeah, you can try to justify a bigger change based on the gov't mileage reimbursable rate, but really, most people will just change their lifestyle to accomodate (keep a car longer, for instance) rather than realize a large change in cost.