High Housing Prices In Tech Cities Are Now Raising Home Prices In Other States (bloombergquint.com)

Tech cities and their high housing prices are apparently now driving up home prices in other states. An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg: For some Californians, the state's punishing housing costs, high taxes, and constant threat of natural disaster have all become too much... In the second quarter, only 26 percent of homebuyers in the state could afford to purchase a median-price single-family house, which was almost $600,000, according to the California Association of Realtors... They're making their escape to areas such as Boise, Phoenix, and Reno, Nevada, fueling some of the biggest home-price gains in the country... Almost 143,000 more people left the state than arrived from elsewhere in the U.S. in 2016....

Boise is becoming an alternative to traditional havens for Californians such as Portland and Seattle that have also gotten too pricey, says Glenn Kelman, chief executive officer of Redfin Inc., a national real estate brokerage that recently opened a Boise outpost. About 29 percent of the Idaho capital's home-listing views are from Californians, according to Realtor.com... In Nevada, where Californians make up the largest share of arrivals, prices jumped 13 percent in August, the biggest increase for any state, according to CoreLogic Inc. data. It was followed closely by Idaho, with a 12 percent gain...

[Boise]'s been particularly attractive to Californians, who accounted for 85 percent of net domestic immigration to Idaho, according to Realtor.com's analysis of 2016 Census data... The median existing-home price in Boise's home of Ada County was $299,950 last month -- up almost 18 percent from a year earlier, but still about half California's. The influx is great news for people who already own homes in the area, says Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com. "But if you're a local aspiring to homeownership, it feels very much that Californians are bringing high prices with them."

Comments

Absolutly

[skam240]

Mod up a hundred times.

Unfortunately our states Leftist have forgotten that being a leftist means first, second, and third, looking out for those with less money.

Developers are evil (never mind all these people's homes were built by them). California will always be an attractive place to live so building more homes won't do anything (never mind the laws of supply and demand). We can't build upwards because we have to protect our community! (never mind that your community is full of working class people who will suffer and your kids will probably never be able to buy a home near you unless you do it for them).

This is all bullshit I hear from local Leftists living just north of SF where property values are certainly going insane (and for the record I'm fairly left wing). All this is personally great for me because I'm a home owner although it does make most things a bit expensive. What really bothers me is all the working class people suffering because no one will own up to the only solution. It's all rent control and low income housing which do nothing to solve our massive housing shortage and in some ways exacerbates the problem.

Plus, I was one of these people once and was lucky enough to live around here when a single working class person with a roommate could live comfortably.

California expats flush with cash

[nehumanuscrede]

Long term residents of CA who purchased their homes long ago at a reasonable price can now sell said home for ludicrous amounts of money.

This allows them to move out of State and easily pay cash ( far in excess of the asking price ) for homes where home prices haven't gone full stupid yet.

As the number of homes in an area start selling for insane amounts of money, it drives the asking prices up for all the homes in the area.
It also raises your tax appraisal values so you get to pay more in property taxes every year. Pretty soon, no one local can afford housing in the
area because the asking prices and taxes are so inflated.

Texas median household income is around the ~$60k mark yet, there is a new subdivision full of homes nearby that -start- at $500k.

It's insanity.

** The amusing part is watching folks move into one of these $500k+ homes only to learn that Texas property taxes are uncapped and can
increase by 10% every year. The State loves to advertise that we have no State Tax, but those property taxes more than make up for it. **

Re:We need to BUILD MORE HOUSING

[ShanghaiBill]

You think conservatives should be for this tax?

Yes. It is called Land Value Tax, and fiscal conservatives are not only for it, we are the champions of the cause. It is progressives who are usually opposed, so I am not sure why that somehow got inverted here on Slashdot.

It is the least bad tax, and the best and most economically efficient form of taxation. Milton Friedman was an advocate, as was Ludwig von Mises, both demigods of economic freedom.

Unless you are an anarchist, you should accept that some taxes are necessary. Land Value Tax is fair, unavoidable, and unlike many taxes that disincentivize productive activity, LVT actually encourages enterprise.

It has been implemented many places, including Singapore and Denmark. It works well, which is what you should expect, since Milton Friedman was never wrong about anything.

Re:We need to BUILD MORE HOUSING

[dryeo]

I don't know about California, but around here there's a lot of money laundering, mostly by foreigners, who are happy to sit on vacant property rather then have the hassle of actually renting it out. For a Chinese billionaire, having assets in the west that their government doesn't know about is the important thing.