There are plenty of folks who work in construction who are not in the 1% but still love it. 
Nobody come to Seattle to escape California prices because you’ll be disappointed. Our property values are skyrocketing mostly as a result of Amazon’s domination of the south Lake Union area and our traffic rivals yours.
We’re also getting a lot of Chinese investment in the Seattle area. I recently read an article in a local business journal that Chinese financiers are building high rise condos in Bellevue (across the bridge from Seattle and adjacent to Redmond, home of Microsoft) and getting permanent green card status via the EB-5 visa.
You mean by all the rain?
Home prices can’t be as bad as the Bay Area. The Median price of a home in Santa Clara County (which basically is Silicon Valley) is > $1M. That’ll get you a 2 bedroom home in an OK area, maybe 1800 Sq Ft. I don’t even want to think of what the media price is in SF County.
One thing to add to that, if a homeowner is 55 or older, they can move to a house of equal or lesser value and maintain their basis. This enabled older people to be able to afford to downsize and free up inventory for families starting out.
Haven’t gotten to that point yet so I was not aware of that exemption. We are busy improving our house because I don’t want to pay an additional $4000/yr in property taxes if we moved.
I’m about a year and a half away but I love where I live and I won’t be leaving any time soon.
I live in a tract neighborhood. The guy next to me bought his house in 1961 when it was new. He pays probably $1000 per year. I bought in 1993 and pay a bit over $3000. The guy across the street pays over $10k.
Jeez, not bad.
In the town where I grew up, the local doctor sold his house for about 450k. It had maybe 6 bedrooms and 6 baths, an outdoor pool and who knows what else.
It’s hard to overstate the degree of dysfunction that has enmeshed the entire Bay Area housing market. Every time you think you’ve reached the bottom of the mess, there’s an even deeper level of fucked upness to uncover.
You’re talking about not triggering building code changes which is different from not triggering CEQA. Someone I know wanted to add a 3rd story to their 2 story house (cut down from the original 4 because of a different complaint) recently which was a CEQA change and was defeated in courts because, no shit, the houses on his street formed a descending pattern of heights which was aesthetically pleasing and his house being 3ft higher than his neighbour would break the pattern and change the distinctive characteristic of the neighbourhood.
He had over 50 statements and affidavits from the neighbours saying they welcomed the change and a chance to improve the neighbourhood but a single complaint was enough to get the SF housing commission to deny his change.
This is a huge key and one reason housing in Metro Atlanta is so (relatively) inexpensive. From downtown Atlanta north to the Blue Ridge mountains is about 100 miles, south to the ocean is about 250 miles. There is literally nothing in between, from a geological perspective, to stop the creep. People who want cheaper housing just move farther (and farther) out. 30 years ago the city where I live was “in the boonies”. Now we’re solidly In the Atlanta MSA - which encompasses 29 counties and over 6,100 square miles, virtually all of it buildable.
That’s why I said it was “largely not true” rather than “not true”. Your example would be exceedingly rare. Go back and read the part that I quoted. You made it sound like the norm rather than the exception.
I don’t know about those restrictions. In Sunnyvale there are a lot of new high-density units being built.
Enough to affect the supply significantly? For those not familiar with the area, most of what we call “the Peninsula” (the area Southwest of the SF Bay) is pretty much built out. What vacant land there is is either set aside for open space, or up in the Santa Cruz mountains and not open to development anyway. There’s lots of new housing being built in the East Bay, out in the Tri Valley (Livermore area) and to some extent down south in Gilroy or San Benito County.
But the West side of San Jose and north up the SF is pretty much done. And “everyone” wants to live there, if they can. The other trend we’ve seen in the last 10 years or so it’s that the young folks are flocking to SF proper, and driving rents and housing prices to heights that are hard to comprehend. Once you have kids, it’s bye-bye SF, and good luck finding a place in the 'burbs.
Geography is an issue, but NIMBYism and politics are just as big of one. There’s plenty of buildable space from Hunter’s Point up through Dogpatch, or if they just tore shit down in the 'Loin. There’s even more space in the suburbs, but good luck building there. Marin even blocked a BART line.
Well the area around the new(-ish) Pac Bell Park has improved dramatically in the last 20 years!
Is there any place in the US where so many people from all over the world are desperately trying to get to? NYC, maybe, but nowhere else that I can think of that even comes close.
LA & DC are the other two big ones.
What kind of improvements? It was my understanding that improvements will be assessed at the new value.
It depends. If it’s a bathroom or kitchen remodel where you don’t pull permits, there is no re-assessment. If it’s a big one where you need a building permit, you are re-assessed but your basis only goes up for the difference in value that the improvement makes.
Because they’re not Chinese families trying to get a toehold in the US’s economic prosperity. They’re Chinese millionaires trying to invest some of their wealth in the stable US real estate market.
If you’ve decided to invest $5 million of your net worth in U.S. real estate, do you want to buy 2 houses in silicon valley, or a whole town of shacks in the mid west?