The more prohibitively expensive California (and the Bay Area in particular) becomes, the better it is for the rest of the country - entrepreneurial talent has already started to relocate elsewhere, and I expect this trend to continue, perhaps even accelerate, in the future. There are advantages to having a single, super-dense concentration of business, marketing, and engineering talent but there are also (in my opinion, greater) advantages to having multiple regions competing fiercely for that talent.
I agree with you, that it can help to have things spread apart. But, the competition for talent isn't nearly as high as people say it is. I still see companies trying to set up shop in SF and palo alto. VCs still prefer having companies in SV, even if it means double the labor cost. There's a slow migration of a few companies setting up satelite shops outside of the bay area, but it's not a mass migration. So even with this crazy housing situation, there still seems to be more than enough talent to hire up in the bay area.
I live near Waterloo, Canada. It feels very good for us as we have always struggled to convince people to come live in the snowy abyss rather than cozy California.
A recent conversation with a co-worker really drove this home: what's crazy to me is how comically short-sighted folks are. We've priced our children out of the towns we raised them in but it doesn't seem to bother anyone.
And we've slapped a huge amount of college debt on their backs, just to be sure.
50K isn't that much if we are talking about a development where that cost is spread over dozens of homes. It's possible they just misspoke, but the quote about Chico did not say "per home."
Meanwhile in my home town of Fremont, a developer is putting in hundreds of new homes in North Fremont, and the school district has no way to charge those homes enough to actually build a school for them. The four nearest elementary schools are over-capacity, so the buyers will have the fun of commuting over five miles to school.
Consider the source: the linked article is from a Home Builder Industry magazine.
The national average is $21k, so really it's $29k you're out over what the rest of the country charges.
Which is not ideal, but on a $600k+ ($29k is 5% or less) home, let alone a $1m home, that simply isn't the primary cost driver.
========
The whole article seems like it's poorly written or actively attempting to mislead. It's not until 1/2 way through that you learn:
Prop 13 stymies local tax increases, which means housing is an enormous cost for cities because they can't recoup their costs through property taxes. Instead, taxes go to the state government.
I dunno, could you imagine that severing the link between new development which increases local costs (schools, roads, utilities, police) and local income could affect cities' interest in building housing? Unlike complaints about environmental impact costs, this seems like a much more plausible explanation for the lack of housing.
Then the article finally explains that building impact fees are the only way local cities have to recoup their direct costs, which explains their rise. Why wasn't that in the first 1/2 of the article?
Also, prop 13 means rising prices are all to the good for home owners. In most (all?) other states, rising property prices mean homeowners pay more tax, which creates an incentive for homeowners to oppose too large an increase in home prices.
Finally, the complaining about the Zero Net Energy mandate is misleading as well when it presents it only as a negative. A few minutes research will show that it's intended to curb the growth of energy requirements. Power plants are big, expensive, and tend to pollute a lot. If we want to have 45m people in CA, we have to be judicious about how much pollution our state can withstand. And someone has to pay for those new power plants we will have to bring online if we don't curb power usage growth.
"Typical fees in San Francisco are $72,600 per home; in Sacramento, they’re $62,000. And for the six California markets highlighted in the Zelman & Associates report, the average is $51,650. "
I built a few homes in a new (didn't really exist in 1998) city in Utah. Fees were about $20,000. I thought that was high! Most of those fees went to the infrastructure that was put it so people had a lot to build on. Getting water power and gas out there isn't cheap and the city owned the power, water and gas utilities - so they had to pay the bonds with something.
Since then I built in the middle of nowhere - no city, no inspections (except electrical) and it costs about $20,000 to get water (a well and equipment) and power. Anything much more than that and it seems like it is well beyond recovering the costs.
“Cities will tell you that from a property tax perspective, housing is a loser,” says David Cogdill, president of the [California Building Industry Association].
I was trying to make this point a few weeks ago here on HN, in a discussion on Prop. 13, and got pushback. I take this quote as evidence that it's common knowledge among people in the housing industry. Prop. 13 disincentivizes cities from adding housing.
Prop. 13 needs to be fixed. The way it should have been done is this: in a year in which property values increase by more than 2%, instead of limiting the tax to 2% more than the previous year's, we limit the payment due to 2% more than last year's payment due. The locality receives a lien on the difference, but that lien does not become due until the property is sold.
So in an area in which property values have been rapidly rising, a homeowner who sells their property will have to share their windfall to some extent with the locality. But those on fixed incomes are still protected: their annual tax payments don't increase any faster than they would today.
Common objections:
"People will take out home equity loans that will have to be repaid at sale, leaving them with a cash loss."
A property tax lien is a public record. Banks will take the liens into consideration when deciding how large a loan to offer. This is standard practice already.
"The liens will accumulate to the point that they will be greater than the owner's gain on the property, giving them a strong disincentive to sell."
No, this wouldn't happen, because the lien is only on 1% of the excess gain (the amount the value increased over 2%). If, for one example, the value jumped in the first year and then went flat, the payment would continue to grow at 2% annually until it caught up to the value. The only scenario that generates a lien larger than the owner's gain is if the market has been up but then drops sharply just before the owner wants to sell -- in short, if there was a bubble. Well, bubbles produce lots of dislocation; I don't think they make for a good argument against this proposal.
"Prop. 13 will never be modified."
Well, it certainly won't if no better alternative is put forth!
> Prop. 13 disincentivizes cities from adding housing.
disincentivizes cities from adding low-density housing
Once you start piling them up into high-rises, the revenue stream doesn't look that bad.
But for multi-family high rises different cities have a number of additional requirements. Minimum parking spaces, minimum number of feet from the sidewalk, minimum footage of "green zones" consisting of lawns or trees - all great things hypothetically speaking, but costs add up pretty fast, so any high-rise building is now a "luxury condo tower" when in theory increasing density should lead to decrease of cost per square foot, not increase.
Of course a disincentive to sell will be created by your proposal! Any lien that comes close to offsetting or canceling out the owner's gain will do that. The lien doesn't have to exceed the gain to create a disincentive. Why would anyone sell for little to no gain? Any time the potential gain is decreased, a disincentive to sell is created.
Furthermore, not only does this create a disincentive to sell, it also creates a disincentive to buy. Buying property becomes a lot less attractive when the same disincentive that applies to the current seller will apply to buyer in the future, when the buyer decides to sell the home.
Started out with an every-man appealing headline and quickly showed its stripes of being a developer funded prop 13 hit article - totally separate from the horror show environmental impact has turned into.
The examples given are completely out of whack and strawmen. prop 13 allows for effective tax increase through reassessment of value, but that reassessment is capped so when the market goes crazy people aren't driven out of their homes - the increases effectively keep pace with inflation which should handle increased outlays on part of the localities.
Prop 13 creates an incentive for homeowners to oppose development, since their housing values will rise with no drawback on property taxes. It also means that the government is forced to raise sales and income taxes in order to raise revenue. It is harmful for society to have high housing prices which falls especially on younger workers and workers moving into an area, in order to benefit a small number of incumbents.
No other good is treated like housing this way. We don't say it's good if your computer or cell phone goes up in price, or if cars are more expensive every year.
Proposition 13 is a massive subsidy provided to real estate investors. If the goal is to prevent retirees from being ''driven out of their homes'' then there is no reason not to limit the exclusion to a single property per person.
> that reassessment is capped so when the market goes crazy people aren't driven out of their homes
By definition, the people who would be "driven out" have seen their home values wildly appreciate and they have by that token become substantially wealthy. This is like saying that if someone is on food stamps but then becomes a millionaire, it's unfair to take away their foodstamps or raise their tax rate.
Yeah. I'd bet developers would happily pay 2-3x in fees if they didn't have to do environmental impact reviews (EIRs).
It's not that EIRs themselves are especially troublesome. But the reviews are the hook for litigation by NIMBYs, especially in California where the state-based environmental review law makes it incredibly easy for challengers to tie up a project in court for an eternity; even tiny developments. Exceedingly rare is the case where a legitimate environmental issue is at stake; and on the whole EIRs have had the effect of encouraging urban sprawl--there are fewer challenges to EIRs in less populated areas.
It's really difficult to keep investments lined-up for an indeterminate amount of time. Time and indeterminism is perhaps the most costly aspect.
And it's compounded by the fact that California doesn't provide development-as-of-right, which means zoning reviews and permitting can drag out for years as committees hem and haw, or allow NIMBYs to control the process. Many if not most cases in the state are likely unconstitutional as a violation of Due Process. But the Supreme Court hates taking those cases because it's a tricky area of the law. Part of the problem is that developers are repeat players in the game, which means they tend to not want to, literally, make a federal case out of any particular project because they know they'll be black-balled on their next project. So the really good cases that would make for good law never materialize.
It was maddening--nay, sickening--to see Governor Jerry Brown's development-as-of-right legislation fail in the legislature. Localities could still have had all the ridiculous zoning restrictions they wanted; it just would have required them to strictly apply their own rules, rather than making them up on-the-fly according to their and challengers' whims. Which is what Due Process technically requires, anyhow! And that legislation would have required 25% affordable units in a project, which means it wouldn't have applied to single-family units, nor effectively to most other projects except large inner city residential projects. Basically it would have had very limited effect. But localities across the state--rural and urban--went apoplectic at the mere hint of being subject to their very own rules.
Anecdotal evidence from small scale builders suggest building to higher performance standards, even to Passivhaus, add only up to (sometimes no more than) 10℅ build cost.
It's all down to design, and this is where volume builders baulk. They can't pay minimum wage to cheapest labour to throw up 'standard' builds - in the UK that's cavity wall, but in the US no doubt you have your own standard approaches with performance problems.
Given that no house has ever been sold at a price based on build cost, the type of whining in the OP really boils down to "our profits are lower, can government do something about it?".
So, is it possible for a local government to ever reach a limit on fees necessary for building in their area before it creates a problem?
>> "our profits are lower, can government do something about it?"
Seems the complaint is that government is directly responsible for the problem as they see it. Isn't it reasonable for the companies to complain to the government concerning that topic? What if the local government started tacking on fees to your paycheck that reduced your take home pay to what you felt was unreasonable amount? Do you have the right to complain?
Yup, and they tend to have the politics whose practical effects ended up driving them from California in the first place. I'd like to see an amendment to the Constitution which provided for internal immigration, such that there's a multi-year waiting period to become a state citizen after moving to a new state. The idea would be to give folks a period of time to acclimate & acculturate to their new state's politics. They would, of course, still be able to vote in their old states during that time period.
This might even be good for states that people move from: as their former residents retain voting rights for a period of time while acclimating to better states, they are likely to vote for better policies, to the betterment of those net-emmigrant states.
How did the article turn $47,000 (average for CA) and $72,600 (SF) and $62,000 (Sacramento) or $51,650 (six California cities highlighted in the report) into "$75,000 in added costs from fees and building code requirements"? They say the average fees nationwide are $21,000.
If the average new home price in CA is $621,135, 73% higher than the national average of $358,200, then it seems like the $26,000 difference in average fees represents only ~10% of the $262,935 difference.
It's not insignificant, and it makes a difference at the margin, but it feels like numbers are being thrown around a bit dishonestly.
I do not know much about real estate cost but it is interesting to see someone blaming a $50,000 regulatory fee for the $400,000 or so difference in median house cost between CA and other states.
It's not just about the 50K. There's an additional 20% for building impact fees. And all these regulations prevent builders from using more cost effective means for building.
And, by far, the worst part of it is, it makes innovation in housing a complete non-starter. It's tantamount to: if in the 1980s (before the shape of the internet was known) the government had decided to tax every page download 20 cents. Imagine how much that would have stifled innovation - everything internet would've come to a screeching halt before even seeing what's possible.
Personally, I think these laws are a major crime against humanity. Housing makes up such large percentage of people's spending (50%-65% when you take into account property taxes for 50 years). It keeps you a wage slave for at least 30 years. It doesn't have to be this way - housing can cost a fraction of what it does now without all these regulations, with the right land use policy, the right building materials, using manufactured homes, etc.
I'd venture to guess that the fundamental drivers of prices remain founded on desirability of the state relative to other states. These policies are certainly making it worse, but they are priced in, one way or the other.
You might think of it like a luxury tax. The item still sells at the total price, even though there is significant cost to acquire it. Either you can afford a $500,000 home or you can't. If you can, then consider living in California. If not, you've likely got 48* other states to choose from.
* Per Zillow, Hawaii's median home price is $571,000, is higher than California's $472,000.
So, the case that expensive housing hurts California businesses is well stated and intuitive, (and I don't disagree)
But I was considering a counter point the other day. Homeownership here means mid level engineers who have lived here a decade or two often have access to seven figure credit lines. What effect does this have on the entrepreneurial side of things here?
To be clear, I am not putting this fourth as a fully formed belief, but it is an interesting argument, I think, and worth talking about.
>What effect does this have on the entrepreneurial side of things here?
The effect is that an already privileged group is more privileged than they previously were (financial flexibility to try a startup), and those less privileged are driven away and forced to relocate.
Here's my unformed thought from this: are startups hurting progressive/socialist movements in the US? Their benefit is that they're lean and efficient. They do more with fewer people and fewer resources. This means fewer jobs.
Central Valley was sort of ground zero for housing meltdown, since we are talking here about the entire state, places like Modesto which are about 2-3 hours from SFO are also out of reach for population? That is surprising, Central Valley is predominantly Agri, but when people of thinking of flying all the way to Colorado, why not move 3 hours East or South ?
There is something that is not right with that list. Mexico City is on that list but not San Francisco? I have been to Mexico City and rent is about a third for a similar sized apartment in San Francisco.
I'm forever torn on this. What can a non homeowner do to help the problem? I feel compelled to not buy into overpriced homes. But I'd also like one and fear they are only going to become more overpriced in the future.
[+] [-] nugget|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xrange|9 years ago|reply
It's only better if they move elsewhere and refuse to vote for the same policies that caused the problems in the first place.
[+] [-] pascalxus|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carsongross|9 years ago|reply
And we've slapped a huge amount of college debt on their backs, just to be sure.
[+] [-] chiph|9 years ago|reply
So, the equivalent of people's downpayment in the rest of the country is lost to regulation. That's insane.
[+] [-] cjensen|9 years ago|reply
Meanwhile in my home town of Fremont, a developer is putting in hundreds of new homes in North Fremont, and the school district has no way to charge those homes enough to actually build a school for them. The four nearest elementary schools are over-capacity, so the buyers will have the fun of commuting over five miles to school.
Consider the source: the linked article is from a Home Builder Industry magazine.
[+] [-] x0x0|9 years ago|reply
Which is not ideal, but on a $600k+ ($29k is 5% or less) home, let alone a $1m home, that simply isn't the primary cost driver.
========
The whole article seems like it's poorly written or actively attempting to mislead. It's not until 1/2 way through that you learn:
Prop 13 stymies local tax increases, which means housing is an enormous cost for cities because they can't recoup their costs through property taxes. Instead, taxes go to the state government.
I dunno, could you imagine that severing the link between new development which increases local costs (schools, roads, utilities, police) and local income could affect cities' interest in building housing? Unlike complaints about environmental impact costs, this seems like a much more plausible explanation for the lack of housing.
Then the article finally explains that building impact fees are the only way local cities have to recoup their direct costs, which explains their rise. Why wasn't that in the first 1/2 of the article?
Also, prop 13 means rising prices are all to the good for home owners. In most (all?) other states, rising property prices mean homeowners pay more tax, which creates an incentive for homeowners to oppose too large an increase in home prices.
Finally, the complaining about the Zero Net Energy mandate is misleading as well when it presents it only as a negative. A few minutes research will show that it's intended to curb the growth of energy requirements. Power plants are big, expensive, and tend to pollute a lot. If we want to have 45m people in CA, we have to be judicious about how much pollution our state can withstand. And someone has to pay for those new power plants we will have to bring online if we don't curb power usage growth.
[+] [-] beamatronic|9 years ago|reply
"Typical fees in San Francisco are $72,600 per home; in Sacramento, they’re $62,000. And for the six California markets highlighted in the Zelman & Associates report, the average is $51,650. "
[+] [-] twothamendment|9 years ago|reply
Since then I built in the middle of nowhere - no city, no inspections (except electrical) and it costs about $20,000 to get water (a well and equipment) and power. Anything much more than that and it seems like it is well beyond recovering the costs.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ScottBurson|9 years ago|reply
I was trying to make this point a few weeks ago here on HN, in a discussion on Prop. 13, and got pushback. I take this quote as evidence that it's common knowledge among people in the housing industry. Prop. 13 disincentivizes cities from adding housing.
Prop. 13 needs to be fixed. The way it should have been done is this: in a year in which property values increase by more than 2%, instead of limiting the tax to 2% more than the previous year's, we limit the payment due to 2% more than last year's payment due. The locality receives a lien on the difference, but that lien does not become due until the property is sold.
So in an area in which property values have been rapidly rising, a homeowner who sells their property will have to share their windfall to some extent with the locality. But those on fixed incomes are still protected: their annual tax payments don't increase any faster than they would today.
Common objections:
"People will take out home equity loans that will have to be repaid at sale, leaving them with a cash loss."
A property tax lien is a public record. Banks will take the liens into consideration when deciding how large a loan to offer. This is standard practice already.
"The liens will accumulate to the point that they will be greater than the owner's gain on the property, giving them a strong disincentive to sell."
No, this wouldn't happen, because the lien is only on 1% of the excess gain (the amount the value increased over 2%). If, for one example, the value jumped in the first year and then went flat, the payment would continue to grow at 2% annually until it caught up to the value. The only scenario that generates a lien larger than the owner's gain is if the market has been up but then drops sharply just before the owner wants to sell -- in short, if there was a bubble. Well, bubbles produce lots of dislocation; I don't think they make for a good argument against this proposal.
"Prop. 13 will never be modified."
Well, it certainly won't if no better alternative is put forth!
[+] [-] prostoalex|9 years ago|reply
disincentivizes cities from adding low-density housing
Once you start piling them up into high-rises, the revenue stream doesn't look that bad.
But for multi-family high rises different cities have a number of additional requirements. Minimum parking spaces, minimum number of feet from the sidewalk, minimum footage of "green zones" consisting of lawns or trees - all great things hypothetically speaking, but costs add up pretty fast, so any high-rise building is now a "luxury condo tower" when in theory increasing density should lead to decrease of cost per square foot, not increase.
[+] [-] twblalock|9 years ago|reply
Furthermore, not only does this create a disincentive to sell, it also creates a disincentive to buy. Buying property becomes a lot less attractive when the same disincentive that applies to the current seller will apply to buyer in the future, when the buyer decides to sell the home.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aplomb|9 years ago|reply
The examples given are completely out of whack and strawmen. prop 13 allows for effective tax increase through reassessment of value, but that reassessment is capped so when the market goes crazy people aren't driven out of their homes - the increases effectively keep pace with inflation which should handle increased outlays on part of the localities.
[+] [-] landryraccoon|9 years ago|reply
No other good is treated like housing this way. We don't say it's good if your computer or cell phone goes up in price, or if cars are more expensive every year.
[+] [-] nugget|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvm|9 years ago|reply
By definition, the people who would be "driven out" have seen their home values wildly appreciate and they have by that token become substantially wealthy. This is like saying that if someone is on food stamps but then becomes a millionaire, it's unfair to take away their foodstamps or raise their tax rate.
[+] [-] wahern|9 years ago|reply
It's not that EIRs themselves are especially troublesome. But the reviews are the hook for litigation by NIMBYs, especially in California where the state-based environmental review law makes it incredibly easy for challengers to tie up a project in court for an eternity; even tiny developments. Exceedingly rare is the case where a legitimate environmental issue is at stake; and on the whole EIRs have had the effect of encouraging urban sprawl--there are fewer challenges to EIRs in less populated areas.
It's really difficult to keep investments lined-up for an indeterminate amount of time. Time and indeterminism is perhaps the most costly aspect.
And it's compounded by the fact that California doesn't provide development-as-of-right, which means zoning reviews and permitting can drag out for years as committees hem and haw, or allow NIMBYs to control the process. Many if not most cases in the state are likely unconstitutional as a violation of Due Process. But the Supreme Court hates taking those cases because it's a tricky area of the law. Part of the problem is that developers are repeat players in the game, which means they tend to not want to, literally, make a federal case out of any particular project because they know they'll be black-balled on their next project. So the really good cases that would make for good law never materialize.
It was maddening--nay, sickening--to see Governor Jerry Brown's development-as-of-right legislation fail in the legislature. Localities could still have had all the ridiculous zoning restrictions they wanted; it just would have required them to strictly apply their own rules, rather than making them up on-the-fly according to their and challengers' whims. Which is what Due Process technically requires, anyhow! And that legislation would have required 25% affordable units in a project, which means it wouldn't have applied to single-family units, nor effectively to most other projects except large inner city residential projects. Basically it would have had very limited effect. But localities across the state--rural and urban--went apoplectic at the mere hint of being subject to their very own rules.
[+] [-] joeldg|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lambdasquirrel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangravell|9 years ago|reply
It's all down to design, and this is where volume builders baulk. They can't pay minimum wage to cheapest labour to throw up 'standard' builds - in the UK that's cavity wall, but in the US no doubt you have your own standard approaches with performance problems.
Given that no house has ever been sold at a price based on build cost, the type of whining in the OP really boils down to "our profits are lower, can government do something about it?".
[+] [-] talmand|9 years ago|reply
>> "our profits are lower, can government do something about it?"
Seems the complaint is that government is directly responsible for the problem as they see it. Isn't it reasonable for the companies to complain to the government concerning that topic? What if the local government started tacking on fees to your paycheck that reduced your take home pay to what you felt was unreasonable amount? Do you have the right to complain?
[+] [-] vadym909|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scaryspooky|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeveb|9 years ago|reply
This might even be good for states that people move from: as their former residents retain voting rights for a period of time while acclimating to better states, they are likely to vote for better policies, to the betterment of those net-emmigrant states.
[+] [-] rconti|9 years ago|reply
If the average new home price in CA is $621,135, 73% higher than the national average of $358,200, then it seems like the $26,000 difference in average fees represents only ~10% of the $262,935 difference.
It's not insignificant, and it makes a difference at the margin, but it feels like numbers are being thrown around a bit dishonestly.
[+] [-] laurentoget|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pascalxus|9 years ago|reply
And, by far, the worst part of it is, it makes innovation in housing a complete non-starter. It's tantamount to: if in the 1980s (before the shape of the internet was known) the government had decided to tax every page download 20 cents. Imagine how much that would have stifled innovation - everything internet would've come to a screeching halt before even seeing what's possible.
Personally, I think these laws are a major crime against humanity. Housing makes up such large percentage of people's spending (50%-65% when you take into account property taxes for 50 years). It keeps you a wage slave for at least 30 years. It doesn't have to be this way - housing can cost a fraction of what it does now without all these regulations, with the right land use policy, the right building materials, using manufactured homes, etc.
[+] [-] 11thEarlOfMar|9 years ago|reply
You might think of it like a luxury tax. The item still sells at the total price, even though there is significant cost to acquire it. Either you can afford a $500,000 home or you can't. If you can, then consider living in California. If not, you've likely got 48* other states to choose from.
* Per Zillow, Hawaii's median home price is $571,000, is higher than California's $472,000.
[+] [-] lsc|9 years ago|reply
But I was considering a counter point the other day. Homeownership here means mid level engineers who have lived here a decade or two often have access to seven figure credit lines. What effect does this have on the entrepreneurial side of things here?
To be clear, I am not putting this fourth as a fully formed belief, but it is an interesting argument, I think, and worth talking about.
[+] [-] whamlastxmas|9 years ago|reply
The effect is that an already privileged group is more privileged than they previously were (financial flexibility to try a startup), and those less privileged are driven away and forced to relocate.
Here's my unformed thought from this: are startups hurting progressive/socialist movements in the US? Their benefit is that they're lean and efficient. They do more with fewer people and fewer resources. This means fewer jobs.
[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|9 years ago|reply
How is it possible that this largely Democrat-leaning state can be so pro-wealth/anti-middle class and poor?
[+] [-] prostoalex|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hilop|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sremani|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssalazar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Frogolocalypse|9 years ago|reply
http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/most-expensive-cities
There is only one city from the US on that list (New York) of a hundred cities. Sydney Australia is 18th.
And you want to talk about bubbles?
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-hou...
Australia tops the list (and Sweden, apparently). That list indicates the price of real-estate has tripled in 15 years.
So yeah...
[+] [-] EduardoBautista|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] odbol_|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Namrog84|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tempest1981|9 years ago|reply