Last modified: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 10:08 AM EDT EDITORIAL: Housing demand calls for new thinking Here's more evidence that today's starter home is a condo minium. Longtime local builder Joe Caponigro has two sizable parcels of land in Attleboro awaiting development. City officials long ago figured these areas would one day sprout homes. They zoned the proper ties single-family residential. One site is off Camp Street, near conservation land. The other is off Newport Avenue, near West Street. Both are attractive spots. The homes there would sell for upwards of $400,000, according to Caponigro. They would proba bly sell well, too, but not to many firsttime home buyers, given the nec essary mortgage. So to help meet the huge demand for housing locally, Caponigro proposes to put two-bedroom condominiums on both sites. These would sell in the $250,000 to $300,000 range. `` This becomes affordable housing, whether for the elderly or young people -- for the hard working people finish ing their lives or the young peo ple starting their lives,'' he told the planning board last week. To win approval for the condos Caponigro will have to persuade the planning board and city council to rezone the sites to gen eral residence. That's a question touching on several matters, including neighborhood opposi tion, traffic concerns and hous ing density. There would be many more condos than houses in these developments. Planners will also need to keep in mind the nature of today's housing market. Prices keep going up and up, making singlefamily houses unaffordable for many. Recently released statistics for August from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, showed single family home prices increased 12 percent and condo prices increased 14 percent in the past year. Home sales were essentially flat, but condo sales zoomed ahead 22 percent. Median home prices were $358,000 and median condo prices were $273,900 in August. What all this says is that more and more people wanting a home of their own are buying condos, and that the prices in Attleboro are typical of the rest of the state, if not ahead of the state average. (New condos in down town Attleboro are selling for $300,000.) Given this reality and the wellpublicized housing shortage, city officials may have to open the door wider for condominiums than they have in the past. Likewise, neighbors who would prefer to be surrounded by unde veloped land and, barring that, single-family homes will have to accept that new housing today will more often come in the form of condominium developments.