Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned on housing production, an issue important to many. But despite some accomplishments, the housing crisis is worse now than when he took office.
Does anyone care about this?
Please post any data you have on this. I’d like to see it.
I have seen that FL posted double the hoising permits as California. That’s despite having half the people & 1/3 of the land mass.
Nope. We keep getting told by locals to just leave if we can’t afford it. So I am. Working class no longer able to survive so they can deal with out us.
Newsom has removed all the blocks at the state level.
Unfortunately, there’s not much he can do. In California, local city councils have tremendous power - and it’s usually wealthy homeowners who influence them.
Atherton almost stopped Caltrain from being electrified for 2 years because we needed to cut down a few trees to route overhead power lines for the train. They utilized the CEQA to say that “removing trees would be detrimental to the natural environment”.
Of course, it cost the county millions in legal fees to fight Athertons billionaire lawyers. At the end we won, but it cost us two years.
The same law - CEQA has been used and abused by wealthy landowners to stop any and all forms of construction in California. UC Berkeley tried to build student housing. It was delayed by 6 years because the cities land owning residents got together and filed…yes, another CEQA lawsuit against the UC system saying that the noise and disturbance would be detrimental to wildlife in the area.
Unfortunately there are only so many lawyers in state government and only so much money and time to fight these thousands of cases by wealthy landowners.
These fucking pigs are killing California. And I’m ashamed to say my parents are one of them.
They are from Pleasanton and they voted several times to not allow “low income housing” in town, until 10-15 years ago when the CA Attorney General got involved and forced the city to zone the land for housing. It’s all fucked.
There is plenty of building code reform they can do. Houston allowed smaller lots and changed setback rules which allowed for 88k more homes to be built - land became more affordable and profitable. These were starter homes and affordable pricing too. Houston alone built more house than all of CA did last year
Which is fine, but folks benefiting from prop 13 aren’t gonna let duplexes built around them. Prop 13 turns folks into NIMBYs because their house is the only assets they have and expect the government to keep inflating the price.
Outside of Reddit, Prop 13 remains very popular for homeowners and they won’t give that up anytime soon. I would suggest you look at other actions the governor can try and take since it’s not on the ballot anytime soon
The problem is that prop 13 enables homeowners who otherwise would have been priced out to be dickhead NIMBYs. It’s easy to support building red tape, highly restrictive zoning and CEQA when the $65k salary can pay for the $1k monthly PITI on a now $1.1 million dollar house. But it makes sense why this state loves voting blue, if it didn’t, most of the current homeowners would be quickly replaced by younger higher earning Californians.
But yeah, maybe one day, renters could be united and vote in block to end prop 13. Wishful thinking
He’s done almost everything he can do.
What’s left is thousands of court cases that the limited amount of attorneys the state of CA can either employee or finance need to deal with. It’s just so much.
Because there is no land left.
Take San Diego for instance….
South of San Diego is Mexico…Can’t build there and be in USA.
West of San Diego is the pacific ocean….can’t build on water:
East of San Diego are unbuildable mountains 🏔️
Can’t build there.
NW of San Diego is Camp Pendleton. Can’t build there.
My townhouse I purchased in 2022 was literally built on a gravel Quarry after they were all done mining it for sand and gravel.
The builder said that this will actually be the last new build for single family homes in all of San Diego proper for at least next 10 years because there is no land left.
All the new builds permitted over next 10 years are townhouses and condos only.
Come to SF and show me where land is to build? There are a couple of empty lots but by % of land there really isn’t. People who say “build more” are really saying kick existing people out of their homes so we can build more.
Is that why the city has only approved like 30 new homes this year despite being a high demand area with significantly lower population density than, say, NYC?
Dunno? I can only speculate that buying SFH, tearing down, building apartments on top is just not a profitable business. It’s almost like the build build build redditors don’t understand how economics works.
San Francisco is bound by water on three sides but it's also 1/6th the population density of Paris. Upzone the western third of the city and you could reduce car dependence and improve affordability in a decade. You could double the city's population without much of an issue. Heck, we need thousands of units of housing just to take care of the folks living on the street.
But that doesnt solve the problem.
Everyone is crying because they can’t afford a single family home with a yard or a luxuriant townhouse with a 2 car garage.
The people posting here already live in multi story apartment complexes and are pissed off they missing out on the American dream of home wealth.
Building apartment towers may solve the homeless crisis but doesn’t solve the home ownership crisis in California this article is about. (Only 53% own a home)
I think the right to housing is more important than the right to a very specific type of housing that was made popular almost a century ago by very specific economic conditions that largely don't exist anymore. There is a housing crisis now. The only way to end a housing crisis is by building more units of housing. This will necessarily reduce housing prices and home values. If there is any hope of ending the housing crisis, you should be very glad to not be a homeowner right now. Home ownership is not nor should it ever have been the primary goal of housing policy.
Oh yes, the 3rd biggest country in the world has "no land" to build more houses. There are a couple cities in California where this is a "problem", but thats it. And to slove this you build many high-rise apartments (if people really want to live in the cities). Another "unsolvable" American problem that seems to have been solved in other countries
Japanese jobs are out of 3 regions…outside of those , there’s actually a massive depopulation problem, so much so that people are getting paid to live in certain regions, while Tokyo is $$$$$ to live in.
That said there’s high rise buildings and dense neighborhoods everywhere in Tokyo. SF on the other hand doesn’t even approach the building density of NYC.
Cost are pretty relative. What’s the average salary out there? I’ll give you a hint, it’s nowhere near the average compensation in California. That and dining is nowhere near as expensive as it is here.
Tokyo median salary is $3,900 a month, $47,000/year
California average salary is $79,000 - about 68% higher
Average 1 bed apartment in California costs a little less than $2k/month - which is about 90% higher.
Yes, it's relative. But Tokyo does not cost "$$$$" to live, in the cost of living is quite reasonable.
Well a lot of California's land is far from job centers. Like New York State has very affordable homes, but in places like Kingston that over an hour from any place with extreme housing prices and two from Manhattan.
Also you can commute into SD and build multifamily in the suburbs. Not everyone can afford to live in the popular areas. This is part of the housing crisis that everyone ignores. The cities will make sure only the rich can live in the popular areas with zoning and taxes. The rest of the people will need to commute in.
There's plenty of land and housing but not anywhere near where people want to live or where the jobs are.
Either zoning and taxes change to fix that and more suburbs spread to connect lower cost areas with HCOL areas.
Depends on location. I live in Ventura county and there is TONS of land but also lots of NIMBYs.
Homes here are 1M easily and we are 40 miles outside of Los Angeles.
Ventura county NIMBY central. Can’t develop farmland even without major approval from the towns residents. It’s a lost cause it’s just a county for boomer homeowners and farm workers squeezing an entire family into a 1 bedroom apartment
This is a cop out because you can buy 1 SFH and convert it to 4-5 townhomes. Even if the cost is 1.2 for the home if you can get 700 for 4 townhomes that’s 2.8.
It’s what, $200 some dollars a sq ft to build? Probably leaves a builder with 150k-200k of profit per lot conversion. Though that’s less than other opportunities rn and it’s higher risk so of course they’re going to do apartments instead.
Way more than $200sqft to build in SoCal. Those townhomes would be more like $900k for a new build.
So, most people STILL couldn’t afford it and now there’s one less detached SFR on the market making detached SFRs even more unattainable.
i told my little sister make sure you call me before you buy your first car.
I get the call the same week she already bought the car, took out a huge loan on the car worth 1/3 of the loan value.
She told me " well i would've called you but the car sales guy said it has a lot of interest and it will probably be sold possibly even on the same day to someone else".
Well i said, yeah no fucking shit that's the oldest sales trick in the book....
Now shes paying finance payments on a car that's 15 years old and has had to go to the garage many times already and she doesn't even drive anymore.
And right now if she just waited she could've got a brand new car for the same car payment now she finished university and has her first real job.
Listen to your older brothers guys!
LMAO.
My friend keeps telling me his estate agent and mortgage broker keeps telling him house prices are only gonna go up and they need to get in and buy a second house asap and build his empire right now before its too late.
I said to him, well yes of course they're gonna say that
it took my friend three years just to get all the permits he needed to build a house on land he already owned
why the hell does one need six different permits to build a driveway?!
Look at off shore wind farms, those are always attacked by coastal land owners and cities, because they don't want the view ruined by the sight of turbines.
Depends on what figure you're using for population but DC proper only has 600k vs 1.3 million for San Diego, so DC has just under half the population of San Diego although it does have roughly twice the population density of San Diego
That's why I personally believe Texas will be the largest state within 50 years. Houston, Dallas and Austin are surrounded by thousands and thousands of square miles of flat plains just waiting to be turned into houses.
FL, CA, NYC/NJ do not have that luxury
Lots of that is farm, Everglades, protected marsh, etc.
If you go to Gatorland in Orlando, they preserved the back half of the property as a nature reserve. And there is a sign there that reminds you that area was what Orlando was before the overdevelopment.
My family owns plots of ‘unbuildable’ land purchased in the 1980s. We are building one at a time. We are finishing up one for my uncle right now. When developers tell you what you mentioned, understand there are exceptions.
I think there is plenty of land left, it's just where people do not enjoy living. I live in the San Joaquin valley and there is plenty of land to build around.
I think we have to reevaluate cities as well. Like building more per square foot and up.
Imagine San Diego built so many units that they actually added a full second San Diego to their population.
And then they did it again.
And then they did it again.
If they built *three more* San Diegos on the same land, they would only be as densely populated as places like:
* Cambridge, MA
* San Francisco, CA
* West Hollywood, CA
Plenty of land and more room for vertical building. Folks who state “no more land” are folks who only see the one story single family house with a lawn, backyard and a garage as the only viable option. It’s not. We can built townhouses, duplexes and fourplexes. Plenty of folks don’t want a lawn. Plenty of folks don’t mind sharing a wall with good neighbors. Plenty of folks don’t want the responsibilities of single family home but don’t want to pay a middleman (landlord).
>Because there is no land left.
LOL that's hilarious.
England has 2x the population and half the land.
There's more than enough land left to quadruple the population, and still only be at the density of England.
The problems are not due to lack of land.
So do you plan on seizing military bases and building houses on them?
Seizing people private homes they own and build high rise towers on them?
Statement makes no sense at all.
The geography and topography of coastal California is nothing like England and all the land that people actually want to live in in places like NYC or California are built out which is why it cost over 1 million USD to buy a home now in those places.
There is no land left unless you want to live an hour away from city in the desert.
>So do you plan on seizing military bases and building houses on them?
>Seizing people private homes they own and build high rise towers on them?
No need, California is huge and does not have a dense population. You can simply use the existing open space.
Plus, you can build high density housing on purchased land, you don't need to seize private homes to do that.
>The geography and topography of coastal California is nothing like England
Having lived in both, it's not hugely different. The Sierras are the main difference but they're nowhere near the coast. Lots of England (and Scotland, and Wales) has steep rolling hills and small mountains, just like coastal California.
>The geography and topography of coastal California is nothing like England and all the land that people actually want to live in in places like NYC or California are built out
That's exactly how it was in England generations ago. People always want to live in the places that are already built out.
>There is no land left unless you want to live an hour away from city in the desert.
Ah yes, so there IS actually lots of land left, it's just further from the places that are really popular to live. Just like every other country, ever.
There is literally NEVER a situation where popular land is cheap and available, anywhere, ever. You either need to increase density, create new towns and cities, or sprawl out the existing ones. You can either build roads or public transit to make those choices more feasible.
Incontrovertibly, California has SHITLOADS of land available. There is no land shortage.
How will building houses 1-2 hours away from San Diego make San Diego housing more affordable?
Spoiler alert: it won’t.
There is also no open land in San Diego that is not owned by federal government.
>How will building houses 1-2 hours away from San Diego make San Diego housing more affordable?
Some people who would like to live in San Diego will instead choose to live in the city with new, much cheaper housing instead.
That reduces demand for housing in San Diego, lowering prices.
You have completely changed the conversation.
The original commenter said the reason house prices are expensive is because people are not building enough houses to increase supply .
(supply vs demand effects prices)
I said there is no land left in California to build on.
(San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Orange County beaches, Santa Barbara)
You laughed and said California is a big state with plenty of land.
That is really an irrelevant argument because people are upset about the housing situation in the major cities along the coast where all the jobs and wealth is at. The places everyone wants to live.
You suggest building houses hours inland in the desert where there is no infrastructure, jobs, water supply, shopping, etc is the answer to the problem when its not.
That would have zero effect on what a house cost in San Diego.
Just like building a house in Northern Scotland would have zero effect on the housing situation in London.
>That is really an irrelevant argument because people are upset about the housing situation in the major cities along the coast where all the jobs and wealth is at. The places everyone wants to live.
Those places will ALWAYS have very high prices, because they have very high paying jobs. If gluts of new houses are created in those areas, prices will not fall much, the will simply see an influx of new immigrants.
Plenty of room to build in California. Plenty of opportunity to build more dense housing in the areas of California that don't have greenfield or brownfield sites. But popular places with high paying jobs will not see large decreased in house prices, unless those jobs go away in something like a recession.
>Just like building a house in Northern Scotland would have zero effect on the housing situation in London.
Building a couple million new homes CLOSE to London but outside it would definitely have an effect. However, London being a very attractive place to live (globally speaking) would mean a very tempered effect.
Lol
No one wants go live on the desert. Thats basically Nevada.
When people say California they mean the 30 mile strip between the pacific ocean and the mountains that run from the mexican border up to San Francisco.
Firstly, no it doesn't. Apartment rents and SFH prices are not strongly linked in California, because there's already a massive disparity in cost between owning and renting.
Secondly, this thread is about homeownership rate. You're not going to increase the homeownership rate by putting more people into rentals. That's the exact opposite, in fact.
No because they sell them immediately upon vesting so they can afford that cool Mercedes (or Tesla) and Italian leather laptop bag.
Source: I’m a tech bro
Owning a home in California is getting tough. Even though salaries are high, house prices are much higher. This means that even well-paid Californians are struggling to afford a home. While other states offer a much better affordability ratio, California's housing market is outpacing wage growth.
Rampant inflation is clearly an issue of the workforce being unskilled! Everyone should just go be doctors, lawyers and shareholders. A Redditor told me so.
Just remember that owning a $500k home in California is THOUSANDS of dollars cheaper a MONTH than Texas because of property taxes and insurance
…and that’s before the cost of utilities. In California, there is an electric surplus due to solar, while Texas has a privatized electrical grid
Sorry but energy prices in California are SIGNIFICANTLY higher than other places. For example: Texas averages like 15 cents per kWh and my current PGE rates are over 60. In my last state, I only paid 11 cents. Gasoline is another example of higher energy prices. CAs regulation costs something like 1.20 per gallon. Side note but: The higher gasoline prices burn a lot of people’s buns but I’ve never gotten it. For the average vehicle, with the average commute, we’re talking about less than $10 a week. On the flip side, with electricity, we’re talking about a difference of $100 (TX) to $400 (CA) or 200 to 800 on the same power usage. I mean I’ve had $1000 PGE bills in a 2 bed house which is just a fucking insane. To be clear, my point here isn’t to dump on renewables (you mention solar) it’s just to say that power in CA is absolutely more expensive (and by a large margin.)
That aside, yes, property taxes in Texas are higher. So are some of their other taxes. That’s basically because they have “no income taxes” but they still need money so they get it elsewhere. If you include the total tax burden for an individual in both states, the middle class is somewhat close. Though things vary and generally speaking, the “poorer” you are, the better your tax situation will be in California whereas the richer you are, the better it will be in Texas. As an example of why: if you owe 20k a year in Texas property taxes, then you owe that money regardless of your income (ex 60k or 1 million.) In CA, more of your tax burden is tied directly to your income so the less you make the less you pay and vice versa.
They’re way higher than other states and it doesn’t make sense. There are even examples of better rates in state. For example, SMUD in Sacramento [has rates](https://www.smud.org/en/Rate-Information/Residential-rates) as low as 11 cents per kWh and maxes out at 34 on peak in summer. [Lodi](https://www.lodi.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1545/Residential-RatesPDF) is similar. All the big boys like PGE and [Southern California Edison](https://www.sce.com/residential/rates/Time-Of-Use-Residential-Rate-Plans) are just killing us on prices.
The weather is so mild in California I never use heating and rarely use AC except for a week or two in September when there is a santa anna heat wave.
Its the end of June and have not ran AC once yet in San Diego while rest of country is dying from 90 degree heat.
The ocean really moderates temperatures.
It depends a lot where you are located in the state. Many of the places with a super temperate climate are way more expensive. For example, in SF, the temp averages 60-70 degrees year round. Median home list price is also 1.3 million (single family homes 2.5 million.) To get a substantial discount on housing costs, you need to go out to the valley (more like ~450k) where highs are currently over 100 degrees. Even in the valley, weather is still more comfortable and consistent than my last state (ex only rains in the winter in CA), but I absolutely pay waaaaaaay more for power. Again, I’ve had $1000 PGE bills here. ~$200/month for electric and gas was pretty common in my last state where my house was larger and the weather was worse.
FWIW, it’d also warn against hand waving 4x the power costs as “well we don’t need it.” When you do need it, you will pay for it. And that impacts everything from air conditioning and heat to the states zero emissions goals. For example, in Texas it might cost you $7.50 to charge your Tesla and at California power rates it might cost $30. It only costs me $32 to fill my Prius. So incentives to switch like fuel savings are going out the window.
Not everyone but probably 80% of states population lives in San Diego, OC beaches, LA, Malibu, Santa Barbarba, Oxnard, SLO, Monterey, San Francisco etc.
Must be nice, out here in Northern California we are getting deep fried. Couple that with PGE rates and you have $500-1000 PGE bills that are becoming more common. California has no right to brag about energy rates
People downvote you for telling the truth lol. Most people don't use AC or heating in California. Maybe on some hot summer days they run it a few times a day, but that's usually it.
Majority of people in California live on the coast. Yea in some niche areas is gonna be hot. But even still you aren't running the heater during the winter, even in Riverside. Everyone in SD, Bay area, LA pretty much never use their cooling. Except for some days in July and August.
Purchases reset the property taxable amount then it is typically 1 through 2 percent per year of that new purchase amount. Thereafter it can't rise more than 2% per year so over time your effective rate goes down. For people who purchased before the big rise in they lock in a tiny effective rate. Those who purchased in the 80s etc pay pathetic amount of property tax. My neighbor pays less than 1/10th for the same value property
Edit: This is important because while property taxes are near-fixed in California from purchase date, you are going to pay a lot more than others...
Texas is bad for retirees and fixed income because the property tax can fly up like it did with skyrocketing valuations over past few years.
In California they’re going to charge based on income…
Despite having solar my costs are going to be 5x what they are now when that goes into effect.. middle class fucked again.
You didn’t mention income tax. It’s the total package.
California has a local oil grid unlike Texas, which is part of the reason our gas prices are higher.
Then we gotta talk about water. I pay more for water than electricity.
I don’t think home ownership is a very meaningful metric. In the world of the recent past it would signify financial stability. But stability is slow & sticky. Economists would prefer to see ownership rates lower- renters should be more able to make dynamic choices in the markets and take advantage of housing, job, education, and investment opportunities when they come up. Maybe it’s a metric of the “American Dream” which is soon-to-be inaccurate and nostalgic.
Interesting graph. Seems like expectations are the thing that's changing the most in California...
[https://www.ppic.org/blog/homeownership-trends-in-california/](https://www.ppic.org/blog/homeownership-trends-in-california/)
San Francisco condos are at their 2017 prices, SFH at 2019 prices
Assuming wages have risen in the bay area, homes there are relatively more 'affordable' than they've been in a bit - ignoring interest rate change which affects the whole of the US
Nuh uh, rampant inflation is clearly an issue of the workforce being unskilled! Everyone should just go be doctors, lawyers and shareholders. A Redditor told me so.
Gov. Gavin Newsom campaigned on housing production, an issue important to many. But despite some accomplishments, the housing crisis is worse now than when he took office. Does anyone care about this?
Houston built more homes last month than all of California last year
Please post any data you have on this. I’d like to see it. I have seen that FL posted double the hoising permits as California. That’s despite having half the people & 1/3 of the land mass.
Nope. We keep getting told by locals to just leave if we can’t afford it. So I am. Working class no longer able to survive so they can deal with out us.
Newsom has removed all the blocks at the state level. Unfortunately, there’s not much he can do. In California, local city councils have tremendous power - and it’s usually wealthy homeowners who influence them. Atherton almost stopped Caltrain from being electrified for 2 years because we needed to cut down a few trees to route overhead power lines for the train. They utilized the CEQA to say that “removing trees would be detrimental to the natural environment”. Of course, it cost the county millions in legal fees to fight Athertons billionaire lawyers. At the end we won, but it cost us two years. The same law - CEQA has been used and abused by wealthy landowners to stop any and all forms of construction in California. UC Berkeley tried to build student housing. It was delayed by 6 years because the cities land owning residents got together and filed…yes, another CEQA lawsuit against the UC system saying that the noise and disturbance would be detrimental to wildlife in the area. Unfortunately there are only so many lawyers in state government and only so much money and time to fight these thousands of cases by wealthy landowners. These fucking pigs are killing California. And I’m ashamed to say my parents are one of them. They are from Pleasanton and they voted several times to not allow “low income housing” in town, until 10-15 years ago when the CA Attorney General got involved and forced the city to zone the land for housing. It’s all fucked.
It's the nimby karen land
California is screwed until prop 13 is repealed
There is plenty of building code reform they can do. Houston allowed smaller lots and changed setback rules which allowed for 88k more homes to be built - land became more affordable and profitable. These were starter homes and affordable pricing too. Houston alone built more house than all of CA did last year
Which is fine, but folks benefiting from prop 13 aren’t gonna let duplexes built around them. Prop 13 turns folks into NIMBYs because their house is the only assets they have and expect the government to keep inflating the price.
Outside of Reddit, Prop 13 remains very popular for homeowners and they won’t give that up anytime soon. I would suggest you look at other actions the governor can try and take since it’s not on the ballot anytime soon
The problem is that prop 13 enables homeowners who otherwise would have been priced out to be dickhead NIMBYs. It’s easy to support building red tape, highly restrictive zoning and CEQA when the $65k salary can pay for the $1k monthly PITI on a now $1.1 million dollar house. But it makes sense why this state loves voting blue, if it didn’t, most of the current homeowners would be quickly replaced by younger higher earning Californians. But yeah, maybe one day, renters could be united and vote in block to end prop 13. Wishful thinking
He’s done almost everything he can do. What’s left is thousands of court cases that the limited amount of attorneys the state of CA can either employee or finance need to deal with. It’s just so much.
There are many things that failed or went to no vote because of money. He could have done more but special interests tied his hands
this is the answer
Should be overhauled not repealed.
55% ownership in CA. The majority will be incentivized not to repeal it.
CA just doesn’t build enough.
Because there is no land left. Take San Diego for instance…. South of San Diego is Mexico…Can’t build there and be in USA. West of San Diego is the pacific ocean….can’t build on water: East of San Diego are unbuildable mountains 🏔️ Can’t build there. NW of San Diego is Camp Pendleton. Can’t build there. My townhouse I purchased in 2022 was literally built on a gravel Quarry after they were all done mining it for sand and gravel. The builder said that this will actually be the last new build for single family homes in all of San Diego proper for at least next 10 years because there is no land left. All the new builds permitted over next 10 years are townhouses and condos only.
... there's tons of land left to build on the problem is that our local governments simply refuse to issue permits unless you grease the wheel
Come to SF and show me where land is to build? There are a couple of empty lots but by % of land there really isn’t. People who say “build more” are really saying kick existing people out of their homes so we can build more.
Go North across the Golden Gate or East across the Bay Bridge
Yea agree
More like "Allow an apartment building to be built here if the homeowner agrees to sell."
Most SFHs in S.F. are RH2 and even RH3 zoned. Nobody is stopping your idea from happening.
Is that why the city has only approved like 30 new homes this year despite being a high demand area with significantly lower population density than, say, NYC?
Dunno? I can only speculate that buying SFH, tearing down, building apartments on top is just not a profitable business. It’s almost like the build build build redditors don’t understand how economics works.
San Francisco is bound by water on three sides but it's also 1/6th the population density of Paris. Upzone the western third of the city and you could reduce car dependence and improve affordability in a decade. You could double the city's population without much of an issue. Heck, we need thousands of units of housing just to take care of the folks living on the street.
But that doesnt solve the problem. Everyone is crying because they can’t afford a single family home with a yard or a luxuriant townhouse with a 2 car garage. The people posting here already live in multi story apartment complexes and are pissed off they missing out on the American dream of home wealth. Building apartment towers may solve the homeless crisis but doesn’t solve the home ownership crisis in California this article is about. (Only 53% own a home)
Owning a home does not mean owning a house. We can build condo towers, it doesn’t have to all be apartment buildings.
I think the right to housing is more important than the right to a very specific type of housing that was made popular almost a century ago by very specific economic conditions that largely don't exist anymore. There is a housing crisis now. The only way to end a housing crisis is by building more units of housing. This will necessarily reduce housing prices and home values. If there is any hope of ending the housing crisis, you should be very glad to not be a homeowner right now. Home ownership is not nor should it ever have been the primary goal of housing policy.
The logic portion of my brain hurts after reading your thoughts.
Oh yes, the 3rd biggest country in the world has "no land" to build more houses. There are a couple cities in California where this is a "problem", but thats it. And to slove this you build many high-rise apartments (if people really want to live in the cities). Another "unsolvable" American problem that seems to have been solved in other countries
Japan is like WHAAAT?
Japanese jobs are out of 3 regions…outside of those , there’s actually a massive depopulation problem, so much so that people are getting paid to live in certain regions, while Tokyo is $$$$$ to live in. That said there’s high rise buildings and dense neighborhoods everywhere in Tokyo. SF on the other hand doesn’t even approach the building density of NYC.
>while Tokyo is $$$$$ to live in. 1 Bed, Lounge, Dining Room & Kitchen units have an average rent of $1,100 Get out of here.
Cost are pretty relative. What’s the average salary out there? I’ll give you a hint, it’s nowhere near the average compensation in California. That and dining is nowhere near as expensive as it is here.
Tokyo median salary is $3,900 a month, $47,000/year California average salary is $79,000 - about 68% higher Average 1 bed apartment in California costs a little less than $2k/month - which is about 90% higher. Yes, it's relative. But Tokyo does not cost "$$$$" to live, in the cost of living is quite reasonable.
Well a lot of California's land is far from job centers. Like New York State has very affordable homes, but in places like Kingston that over an hour from any place with extreme housing prices and two from Manhattan.
Also you can commute into SD and build multifamily in the suburbs. Not everyone can afford to live in the popular areas. This is part of the housing crisis that everyone ignores. The cities will make sure only the rich can live in the popular areas with zoning and taxes. The rest of the people will need to commute in.
No desirable land means no land to OP...
"We just need to annex canada and mexico then we'll have enough land" - some politician 5 years from now
There's plenty of land and housing but not anywhere near where people want to live or where the jobs are. Either zoning and taxes change to fix that and more suburbs spread to connect lower cost areas with HCOL areas.
Depends on location. I live in Ventura county and there is TONS of land but also lots of NIMBYs. Homes here are 1M easily and we are 40 miles outside of Los Angeles.
Ventura county NIMBY central. Can’t develop farmland even without major approval from the towns residents. It’s a lost cause it’s just a county for boomer homeowners and farm workers squeezing an entire family into a 1 bedroom apartment
This is a cop out because you can buy 1 SFH and convert it to 4-5 townhomes. Even if the cost is 1.2 for the home if you can get 700 for 4 townhomes that’s 2.8. It’s what, $200 some dollars a sq ft to build? Probably leaves a builder with 150k-200k of profit per lot conversion. Though that’s less than other opportunities rn and it’s higher risk so of course they’re going to do apartments instead.
Way more than $200sqft to build in SoCal. Those townhomes would be more like $900k for a new build. So, most people STILL couldn’t afford it and now there’s one less detached SFR on the market making detached SFRs even more unattainable.
Can confirm, if I would be a builder would say the same.
i told my little sister make sure you call me before you buy your first car. I get the call the same week she already bought the car, took out a huge loan on the car worth 1/3 of the loan value. She told me " well i would've called you but the car sales guy said it has a lot of interest and it will probably be sold possibly even on the same day to someone else". Well i said, yeah no fucking shit that's the oldest sales trick in the book.... Now shes paying finance payments on a car that's 15 years old and has had to go to the garage many times already and she doesn't even drive anymore. And right now if she just waited she could've got a brand new car for the same car payment now she finished university and has her first real job. Listen to your older brothers guys!
That stupidity seems like it might be in you too though. Just remember
how
LMAO. My friend keeps telling me his estate agent and mortgage broker keeps telling him house prices are only gonna go up and they need to get in and buy a second house asap and build his empire right now before its too late. I said to him, well yes of course they're gonna say that
Policy is why there is no land left. And that red tape is miles thick.
it took my friend three years just to get all the permits he needed to build a house on land he already owned why the hell does one need six different permits to build a driveway?!
The american way.
NIMBY laws, zoning, and HOAs stop land usage that's why.
too much power was ceded to government
There is so much land. It is more because people refuse to build tall enough and all the nimbys
Look at off shore wind farms, those are always attacked by coastal land owners and cities, because they don't want the view ruined by the sight of turbines.
You could build denser. San Diego has under half the population of the District of Columbia, despite DC having no skyscrapers.
Depends on what figure you're using for population but DC proper only has 600k vs 1.3 million for San Diego, so DC has just under half the population of San Diego although it does have roughly twice the population density of San Diego
That's why I personally believe Texas will be the largest state within 50 years. Houston, Dallas and Austin are surrounded by thousands and thousands of square miles of flat plains just waiting to be turned into houses. FL, CA, NYC/NJ do not have that luxury
The Hudson Valley is full of empty land
Yeah and one of the worst tax burdens in the country
Yeah but the deranged Jesus freaks don’t run the state.
Give it 10 years lol NY will be the Rs Georgia
I’m not forcing my daughter to live somewhere like that for 10 years for money
Nobody is talking about that but ok
Florida has tons of low density developable land left. People just try to squeeze into South Florida.
Lots of that is farm, Everglades, protected marsh, etc. If you go to Gatorland in Orlando, they preserved the back half of the property as a nature reserve. And there is a sign there that reminds you that area was what Orlando was before the overdevelopment.
> Lots of that is farm Sure and that's what many of the mega communities were before too.
My family owns plots of ‘unbuildable’ land purchased in the 1980s. We are building one at a time. We are finishing up one for my uncle right now. When developers tell you what you mentioned, understand there are exceptions.
I think there is plenty of land left, it's just where people do not enjoy living. I live in the San Joaquin valley and there is plenty of land to build around. I think we have to reevaluate cities as well. Like building more per square foot and up.
Imagine San Diego built so many units that they actually added a full second San Diego to their population. And then they did it again. And then they did it again. If they built *three more* San Diegos on the same land, they would only be as densely populated as places like: * Cambridge, MA * San Francisco, CA * West Hollywood, CA
Have to increase density. There are SFH all over LA right next to 20 story office buildings.
Plenty of land and more room for vertical building. Folks who state “no more land” are folks who only see the one story single family house with a lawn, backyard and a garage as the only viable option. It’s not. We can built townhouses, duplexes and fourplexes. Plenty of folks don’t want a lawn. Plenty of folks don’t mind sharing a wall with good neighbors. Plenty of folks don’t want the responsibilities of single family home but don’t want to pay a middleman (landlord).
Ever driven up highway 5? Clearly not
You mean the land owned by the marines that will never be built on ever?
There is little "desirable" land left. Inland California has tons. No one wants to be there.
>Because there is no land left. LOL that's hilarious. England has 2x the population and half the land. There's more than enough land left to quadruple the population, and still only be at the density of England. The problems are not due to lack of land.
So do you plan on seizing military bases and building houses on them? Seizing people private homes they own and build high rise towers on them? Statement makes no sense at all. The geography and topography of coastal California is nothing like England and all the land that people actually want to live in in places like NYC or California are built out which is why it cost over 1 million USD to buy a home now in those places. There is no land left unless you want to live an hour away from city in the desert.
>So do you plan on seizing military bases and building houses on them? >Seizing people private homes they own and build high rise towers on them? No need, California is huge and does not have a dense population. You can simply use the existing open space. Plus, you can build high density housing on purchased land, you don't need to seize private homes to do that. >The geography and topography of coastal California is nothing like England Having lived in both, it's not hugely different. The Sierras are the main difference but they're nowhere near the coast. Lots of England (and Scotland, and Wales) has steep rolling hills and small mountains, just like coastal California. >The geography and topography of coastal California is nothing like England and all the land that people actually want to live in in places like NYC or California are built out That's exactly how it was in England generations ago. People always want to live in the places that are already built out. >There is no land left unless you want to live an hour away from city in the desert. Ah yes, so there IS actually lots of land left, it's just further from the places that are really popular to live. Just like every other country, ever. There is literally NEVER a situation where popular land is cheap and available, anywhere, ever. You either need to increase density, create new towns and cities, or sprawl out the existing ones. You can either build roads or public transit to make those choices more feasible. Incontrovertibly, California has SHITLOADS of land available. There is no land shortage.
How will building houses 1-2 hours away from San Diego make San Diego housing more affordable? Spoiler alert: it won’t. There is also no open land in San Diego that is not owned by federal government.
>How will building houses 1-2 hours away from San Diego make San Diego housing more affordable? Some people who would like to live in San Diego will instead choose to live in the city with new, much cheaper housing instead. That reduces demand for housing in San Diego, lowering prices.
You have completely changed the conversation. The original commenter said the reason house prices are expensive is because people are not building enough houses to increase supply . (supply vs demand effects prices) I said there is no land left in California to build on. (San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Orange County beaches, Santa Barbara) You laughed and said California is a big state with plenty of land. That is really an irrelevant argument because people are upset about the housing situation in the major cities along the coast where all the jobs and wealth is at. The places everyone wants to live. You suggest building houses hours inland in the desert where there is no infrastructure, jobs, water supply, shopping, etc is the answer to the problem when its not. That would have zero effect on what a house cost in San Diego. Just like building a house in Northern Scotland would have zero effect on the housing situation in London.
>That is really an irrelevant argument because people are upset about the housing situation in the major cities along the coast where all the jobs and wealth is at. The places everyone wants to live. Those places will ALWAYS have very high prices, because they have very high paying jobs. If gluts of new houses are created in those areas, prices will not fall much, the will simply see an influx of new immigrants. Plenty of room to build in California. Plenty of opportunity to build more dense housing in the areas of California that don't have greenfield or brownfield sites. But popular places with high paying jobs will not see large decreased in house prices, unless those jobs go away in something like a recession. >Just like building a house in Northern Scotland would have zero effect on the housing situation in London. Building a couple million new homes CLOSE to London but outside it would definitely have an effect. However, London being a very attractive place to live (globally speaking) would mean a very tempered effect.
Total BS. Look at a map. Tons of land, but in reality too many people already for the state. They hate building infrastructure because its not sexy.
Lol, California is nothing but land
Lol No one wants go live on the desert. Thats basically Nevada. When people say California they mean the 30 mile strip between the pacific ocean and the mountains that run from the mexican border up to San Francisco.
Building apartments doesn't help the ownership rate.
SFH ownership rate or *home* ownership rate?
Condos give you all the costs and responsibilities of ownership with very few of the benefits.
Building an apartment lowers rent, which lowers the cost of other houses. Of course, that’s assuming a stable population.
Firstly, no it doesn't. Apartment rents and SFH prices are not strongly linked in California, because there's already a massive disparity in cost between owning and renting. Secondly, this thread is about homeownership rate. You're not going to increase the homeownership rate by putting more people into rentals. That's the exact opposite, in fact.
Look into single family home rentals.
Wait, all Californians aren’t tech bros flush with RSUs? /s
No because they sell them immediately upon vesting so they can afford that cool Mercedes (or Tesla) and Italian leather laptop bag. Source: I’m a tech bro
Revise zoning laws
Owning a home in California is getting tough. Even though salaries are high, house prices are much higher. This means that even well-paid Californians are struggling to afford a home. While other states offer a much better affordability ratio, California's housing market is outpacing wage growth.
Sacramento building like crazy
Trash paywall article
Rampant inflation is clearly an issue of the workforce being unskilled! Everyone should just go be doctors, lawyers and shareholders. A Redditor told me so.
Just remember that owning a $500k home in California is THOUSANDS of dollars cheaper a MONTH than Texas because of property taxes and insurance …and that’s before the cost of utilities. In California, there is an electric surplus due to solar, while Texas has a privatized electrical grid
Sorry but energy prices in California are SIGNIFICANTLY higher than other places. For example: Texas averages like 15 cents per kWh and my current PGE rates are over 60. In my last state, I only paid 11 cents. Gasoline is another example of higher energy prices. CAs regulation costs something like 1.20 per gallon. Side note but: The higher gasoline prices burn a lot of people’s buns but I’ve never gotten it. For the average vehicle, with the average commute, we’re talking about less than $10 a week. On the flip side, with electricity, we’re talking about a difference of $100 (TX) to $400 (CA) or 200 to 800 on the same power usage. I mean I’ve had $1000 PGE bills in a 2 bed house which is just a fucking insane. To be clear, my point here isn’t to dump on renewables (you mention solar) it’s just to say that power in CA is absolutely more expensive (and by a large margin.) That aside, yes, property taxes in Texas are higher. So are some of their other taxes. That’s basically because they have “no income taxes” but they still need money so they get it elsewhere. If you include the total tax burden for an individual in both states, the middle class is somewhat close. Though things vary and generally speaking, the “poorer” you are, the better your tax situation will be in California whereas the richer you are, the better it will be in Texas. As an example of why: if you owe 20k a year in Texas property taxes, then you owe that money regardless of your income (ex 60k or 1 million.) In CA, more of your tax burden is tied directly to your income so the less you make the less you pay and vice versa.
was about to call bullshit on your pge rate but looked at mine and its at 53 cents per kwh.
They’re way higher than other states and it doesn’t make sense. There are even examples of better rates in state. For example, SMUD in Sacramento [has rates](https://www.smud.org/en/Rate-Information/Residential-rates) as low as 11 cents per kWh and maxes out at 34 on peak in summer. [Lodi](https://www.lodi.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1545/Residential-RatesPDF) is similar. All the big boys like PGE and [Southern California Edison](https://www.sce.com/residential/rates/Time-Of-Use-Residential-Rate-Plans) are just killing us on prices.
The weather is so mild in California I never use heating and rarely use AC except for a week or two in September when there is a santa anna heat wave. Its the end of June and have not ran AC once yet in San Diego while rest of country is dying from 90 degree heat. The ocean really moderates temperatures.
It depends a lot where you are located in the state. Many of the places with a super temperate climate are way more expensive. For example, in SF, the temp averages 60-70 degrees year round. Median home list price is also 1.3 million (single family homes 2.5 million.) To get a substantial discount on housing costs, you need to go out to the valley (more like ~450k) where highs are currently over 100 degrees. Even in the valley, weather is still more comfortable and consistent than my last state (ex only rains in the winter in CA), but I absolutely pay waaaaaaay more for power. Again, I’ve had $1000 PGE bills here. ~$200/month for electric and gas was pretty common in my last state where my house was larger and the weather was worse. FWIW, it’d also warn against hand waving 4x the power costs as “well we don’t need it.” When you do need it, you will pay for it. And that impacts everything from air conditioning and heat to the states zero emissions goals. For example, in Texas it might cost you $7.50 to charge your Tesla and at California power rates it might cost $30. It only costs me $32 to fill my Prius. So incentives to switch like fuel savings are going out the window.
Not everyone in CA lives within 10 miles of the coast…
Not everyone but probably 80% of states population lives in San Diego, OC beaches, LA, Malibu, Santa Barbarba, Oxnard, SLO, Monterey, San Francisco etc.
Must be nice, out here in Northern California we are getting deep fried. Couple that with PGE rates and you have $500-1000 PGE bills that are becoming more common. California has no right to brag about energy rates
People downvote you for telling the truth lol. Most people don't use AC or heating in California. Maybe on some hot summer days they run it a few times a day, but that's usually it.
Lol it’s going to be in the high 90s all week out here in riverside and you better believe we’re running our AC. Not everyone here lives on the coast
Majority of people in California live on the coast. Yea in some niche areas is gonna be hot. But even still you aren't running the heater during the winter, even in Riverside. Everyone in SD, Bay area, LA pretty much never use their cooling. Except for some days in July and August.
Lol you’re from the bay right? Because in socal it can get over 100 in September and a lot of LA wouldn’t be considered “on the coast”
Purchases reset the property taxable amount then it is typically 1 through 2 percent per year of that new purchase amount. Thereafter it can't rise more than 2% per year so over time your effective rate goes down. For people who purchased before the big rise in they lock in a tiny effective rate. Those who purchased in the 80s etc pay pathetic amount of property tax. My neighbor pays less than 1/10th for the same value property Edit: This is important because while property taxes are near-fixed in California from purchase date, you are going to pay a lot more than others... Texas is bad for retirees and fixed income because the property tax can fly up like it did with skyrocketing valuations over past few years.
Have you ever seen a pge bill wtf are you talking about.
There aren’t any $500k homes in any of the big Cali metro areas. There are tons of $500k homes in the Dallas and Houston areas
In California they’re going to charge based on income… Despite having solar my costs are going to be 5x what they are now when that goes into effect.. middle class fucked again.
You didn’t mention income tax. It’s the total package. California has a local oil grid unlike Texas, which is part of the reason our gas prices are higher. Then we gotta talk about water. I pay more for water than electricity.
You mentioned property tax. What about income tax and sales tax?
Income isn't a big deal. There are plenty of cash buyers.
I don’t think home ownership is a very meaningful metric. In the world of the recent past it would signify financial stability. But stability is slow & sticky. Economists would prefer to see ownership rates lower- renters should be more able to make dynamic choices in the markets and take advantage of housing, job, education, and investment opportunities when they come up. Maybe it’s a metric of the “American Dream” which is soon-to-be inaccurate and nostalgic.
Interesting graph. Seems like expectations are the thing that's changing the most in California... [https://www.ppic.org/blog/homeownership-trends-in-california/](https://www.ppic.org/blog/homeownership-trends-in-california/)
Land-use laws have hurt the middle class more than opiates have.
I bet if you start pushing the homeless and crime into the country clubs and wealthier neighborhoods then you'll start seeing rapid change.
This is a pretty bad idea - are you suggesting a Ron Desantis deport them from FL to Martha’s Vineyard to get your way?
San Francisco condos are at their 2017 prices, SFH at 2019 prices Assuming wages have risen in the bay area, homes there are relatively more 'affordable' than they've been in a bit - ignoring interest rate change which affects the whole of the US
Nuh uh, rampant inflation is clearly an issue of the workforce being unskilled! Everyone should just go be doctors, lawyers and shareholders. A Redditor told me so.
Prop 13. Solves this.
Prop 13 exacerbates this.