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US: California home prices
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  • Just as in Vancouver, at least 25% of the home sales in CA is driven by Chinese from China buying. Around where I live (luckily I bought a home back in the 1980s), Chinese are paying cash, no need for mortgage. Many of the homes are going for more than the asking price. So I drive to Walmart supermarket in my Subie, they go to the same Walmart in their Bentley and Porsche. That is the same scenario back East in Northern NJ but to a lesser extent. I thought Northern NJ prices were high, quite a lot cheaper than here.

  • @ghkqn

    Well, as I am aware it is all just starting. You can't stop capitalists from pretty life, they fought for this.

  • Supply and demand. It's as it should be. Corrections will occur as well.

  • It's as it should be.

    At least we now know how it "should be" :-) Did not tried to discuss it to people who become homeless due to this "supply and demand"?

  • SF Bay Area is just crazy. If you are an artist starting out on your career, or a teacher, fireman, where can you live?

  • No, not how it "should be." The demand is artificially inflated by excessive loaning by commercial banks that create money with each loan they write - it is just a ledger entry so there are NO limits until enough bad loans are written that the system seizes up - just like in 2008. Sucks to be young (or have a social conscience.)

    @ghkqn Vancouver prices rose more that 20% last year AFTER the government imposed a foreign buyer tax (just like I said they would.) And biggest rises were in Fraser Valley townhouses that "Chinese" buyers don't want.

  • San Francisco's strict short-term home rental laws just kicked in on Wednesday, and are already having a big effect on SF-based Airbnb. Listing plunged from over 10,000 to around 5,500, dropping around 4,760 listings, the site told the San Francisco Chronicle. Wednesday midnight was the deadline for hosts to register homes with the city for a $250 fee, or face fines as high as $1,000 a day.

    It seems like state government like free money and big home prices :-)

  • No, not how it "should be."

    Of course it's how it should be. We can fantasize about fairness in the marketplace, but the reality is if someone is willing to pay what some would call exorbitant rates, then the market is right in allowing it. I live in Michigan in a 4,000 sq foot home that costs a fraction of what the same home would cost in sunny California. It's a choice, a free choice. I might want to live in California, but economic realities make it impractical for me. Perhaps someday I'll be able to make that free choice if I am able to create and retain more wealth by offering goods and/or services to others that they value. That's a choice, too. I can remain complacent, or I can push toward achieving goals.

    If lenders choose to write "bad loans" to those who are not credit worthy, the free market SHOULD penalize those institutions, not offer a public bailout. That's fair! If a lending institution knows it could suffer dramatically by approving questionable loans, it probably wouldn't write them. That's banking reform.

    Quotes to ponder:

    “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”

    “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

    “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

  • @firstbase

    It's a choice, a free choice.

    You have strange understanding of "freedom".

    Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject.

    Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development. The first men who separated themselves from the animal kingdom were in all essentials as unfree as the animals themselves, but each step forward in the field of culture was a step towards freedom.

    Actually your "freedom" is opposite of real freedom.

    If something strange happens and you no longer can even pay taxes on your home and must go to live on street or in cheaper state (as you propose) - it is not freedom, it is degradation and triumph of parasites. Same as cancer get all resources from normal human tissues.

  • @firstbase Of course, you can boil it down to simply saying it is about consumer choice rather than necessity, but rather than this being about Sunny California vs "nasty cold" Michigan, I put it too you that the reality is that people primarily go where they can get employment - a necessity. No jobs in Detroit means houses are super cheap.

    This whole beautiful "free market" idea is totally bogus. We all love the idea of freedom, but it has nothing to do with that. The system clearly favours certain groups and this is obvious if you care to look. (PS I am not a socialist, and I have an MBA, so if anything I should be biased towards what you say; except it ain't true.)

  • Wow, I wonder if all those homeless got dumped off by cops in Irvine

  • Homeless People in Anaheim, California ( Disneyland )

    Original footage, no commentary:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=438&v=zvCGtxeknSg

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