postgresql - Creating a spatial PostGIS table as a result of a PostGIS query

When I want to store the results of a spatial query as another PostGIS table, what should I do? I am interested in identifying all residential buildings that fall within a set of parcels:

CREATE TABLE residentialBuildings AS
SELECT buildings.the_geom
FROM parcels as p
JOIN buildings as b
ON ST_Contains(p.the_geom, b.the_geom)
WHERE p.residentialarea > 0;

This seems to work, but it does not return a spatial result - instead the table has the binary representation of the geometry. I'm not sure what I should be doing to create a table as a result. Do I need to first make a table, and then convert the result into a geometry?

(I have read the documentation, but I feel like I'm missing the right search terms as I feel this must be a fairly obvious thing to do).

I realize that there are many commands to make a geometry

ST_GeogFromText 
ST_GeographyFromText 
ST_GeogFromWKB 
ST_GeomCollFromText 
ST_GeomFromEWKB 
ST_GeomFromEWKT 
ST_GeometryFromText 

ST_GeomFromGML 
ST_GeomFromKML 
ST_GMLToSQL 
ST_GeomFromText 
ST_GeomFromWKB 

but I don't know which option to choose from, or if this is the correct approach.

Answer

You can manually register Geometry Columns in geometry_columns. Something like:

INSERT INTO geometry_columns (f_table_catalog, f_table_schema, f_table_name, f_geometry_column, coord_dimension, srid, "type")

VALUES ('', 'public', 'residentialBuildings', 'the_geom', 2, , 'MULTIPOLYGON')