It already has among the best in the world, that will do nothing. I commuted every day from Vallejo to SF. Took about an hour most times, and was cheap (I want to say $150 a month). But the commute alone supports around 1.2 million a day, and that is primarily people living in outlying areas getting to and from the city. There is simply no way other than bus or ferry from the NW (Marin Headlands), and all routes also end at Concord as nothing but the ferry and bus goes past the Carquinez Straight. Those are purely physical barriers and there is no real way around that. I took many forms of transit back then, and to be honest the worst was BART. And even the ferry had issues, as I had my vehicle broken into many times as the crime rates there were high and there was no security. And thankfully the one mile walk from the ferry terminal to and from work was not a problem for me, but for others that would be yet another complication. Which is why the California Line is still the only one with a significant commuter presence (the rest are almost only for tourists). Even when my wife and I took day trips into the city, we used the ferry and MUNI. But when I moved to swing shift I had to join the commute, as services shut down by the time I got off work so I had no choice but to drive again. And there will never be trains to Vallejo, San Rafel, or Fairfield. Just as when I worked in Sacramento there was nothing else to do but drive. And it's sad, as at one time the commuter rail system in San Francisco ran all the way to Chico.
No, it is not. Tell me, then why does a new house in Jacksonville NC cost around $250k? If it was determined by banks, then it would be high nationally. Trust me, I have lived in 8 states, ranging from towns of under 10k, to the mega-cities like LA and SF. It is entirely by supply and demand. Your conspiracy nonsense that it is the banks that fuel the prices is just that. Nonsense. That is why over a decade ago in a "housing crash", prices in LA continued to increase! Because the price was not tied to the banks at all, but on supply and demand.
Have you forgotten about incomes? Do Jacksonville, NC banks give loans based on people paying 40% of their income on PITI? Housing prices crashed in CA!! SD, SF, and LA had enormous price declines. But what happened after that? Could it be that the FED printed trillions of dollars? And where did that money go??
Yes. Because the majority of home loans there are to those in the military. With the exact same requirements that a Veteran in California has. Want to know why that is BS? Look at VA loans. There the bank has little control over things like that, and the number of VA loans in LA has been growing every year. LA in fact is the fastest growing metro area in the nation for VA loans in addition to the largest metro area for VA loans nationally. And you also still have "rent to own", which does not use banks at all. In case you were not aware, Jacksonville NC is almost the classic definition of a "Military Town". Almost everything in that community is based on the military, and they make up a huge amount of the local housing market. However, it is also transitory, as most know they will be there for no more than 6 years. So a hell of a lot of houses are bought and sold as the members arrive and leave. But in LA, a hell of a lot of Veterans who move there are there to stay. Which is why VA loans make up a small but significant amount. And loans that have qualifications that the banks can not mandate. Not unlike a student loan, they simply have to grant them if the Government says they qualify. And no, housing prices did not "crash", housing sales did. Do not confuse the two, and most of them were snatched up not by others wanting to become homeowners, but by speculators and companies that intended to use them as rentals or redeveloping into apartments. Home ownership in the state has actually decreased, as prices continue to rise, the problem added to as there are even less individual units available. Hell, for laughs the other day I looked up where I lived when I was in High School. 40 years ago that block and every one around it was houses (mostly constructed post-WWII). Today, it is all multi-unit apartments, 40 people living in the same footprint that was once occupied by 4 to 6 people. Not sure why you think that, I have been watching the LA market for almost half a century now. I remember when the San Fernando Valley was the "suburbs". Today, it is in freaking Kern County, just outside Edwards Air Force base. And ultimately, it does not matter if you live in Encino, Castaic, Lancaster, or Mojave. Your monthly expenses will be the same, the only difference is where you put them. Spend more for a house for less commute, or spend less for a house and spend the money on vehicles and gas. Either way, you end up spending about the same amount each month. My wife and I did not save money by my commuting from Fairfield to downtown San Francisco. We simply enjoyed our living there more than we would have otherwise. And ultimately, it cost us more. But we were willing to do that to not have to live inside the city but in a more rural area. Where seeing turkeys in the backyard was a common occurrence instead of bums pissing on the street. No, the "price decline" was not real, because there were few units actually sold during that time. What you had was a glut of properties that became available due to foreclosure. And in a foreclosure, it is recorded as a "sale" for the outstanding amount of the loan when tie bank takes possession. The market crashed because of no sales, banks took possession for outstanding loan balance, then they sat on them for years and years as nobody was buying. And the joke is, many of those are still vacant even today. Go through a great many communities and you will find homes vacant for a decade and a half. About the only time they get grabbed up anymore is if somebody can grab the neighboring units and convert them to apartments. LA and the like has not been a "homeowners market" for over 4 decades. It is primarily a market for speculators, hence why actual home ownership has decreased every decade. In 1980, it was 65% and stable. Today, it's only 45% and falling. Do you think that the companies that now drive the market need to fuss with income requirements for a loan? They can buy two houses next to each other for $2 million, tear them out and put in a 20 unit apartment complex, and make many times more. Smaller investors buy up multiple units and rent them out for decades. The irony of the house my parents sold is that I almost rented it in 1994 after my place was "Red Tagged". That was the second owner after my parents sold it, and they bought it as a rental in 1986. It is now 37 years later, and they still own it and still rent it out. It has not been a "home" for decades, it is an investment. It is obvious you have no idea what moves the LA housing market.
https://money.cnn.com/2008/12/30/real_estate/October_Case_Shiller/ Home prices post record 18% drop The 20-city S&P Case-Shiller index has posted losses for a staggering 27 months in a row. SHARE | RSS By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer Last Updated: December 30, 2008: 2:06 PM ET ROAD TO RESCUE Home prices up for 1st time in 3 years New home sales: 'Really good news' Wall Street: Here comes the hard part 7 regional banks fail Banker: "TARP helped avert a global calamity" NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Home prices posted another record decline in October, falling 18% compared with a year earlier, according to a closely watched report released Tuesday. The 20-city S&P Case-Shiller index has posted losses for a staggering 27 months in a row. In October, 14 of the 20 cities set fresh price decline records. "The bear market continues; home prices are back to their March 2004 levels," says David Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's. Sunbelt cities suffered the most, but most of the country is watching home values fall. Home prices in Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Francisco all fell more than 30% on a year-over-year basis. Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego recorded year-over-year declines of 29%, 28% and 27%, respectively.
You are making the mistake a great many do. Prices do not equate to sales. The market crashed, and prices dropped. However, here is something that escapes a lot of people, the houses were just not selling so the "price" does not matter. If the houses were selling, then you do indeed have a drop. But nobody was buying, so in reality the amount did not matter. Do not confuse a market crash with the actual prices falling, they are nowhere near the same thing. If you own a car that is valued at $1 million and you offer to sell it for $800k, is that really a "drop" if nobody buys it? It is not, no more than if you ask $1.5 million makes it a rise in price or value if nobody buys it. In other words, you are trying to back up your claim with a chimera. And most of those dumping houses were trying to do it a step ahead of foreclosure, so there was never a "sale", even though it did eventually enter into real estate records as a foreclosure on whatever the remaining loan balance was. So if the house was worth $1 million but the outstanding balance was only $700k, then it goes down as a transfer of ownership ("sale") at $700k. "Prices" are the most meaningless of values, as that is simply what the seller is asking. And a lot of property sits on the market for years or even decades, as either the seller overvalues the worth, or nobody wants it for various reasons. It is largely arbitrary and meaningless.
That was not representative of the steady state of home loans in America. That was the disaster of 2008.
You are 100% wrong. Millions of homes sold. From 2008 to 2011 when prices started to recover, approx. 17M existing homes sold in the U.S. . Isn't that enough? https://www.statista.com/statistics/226144/us-existing-home-sales/ 2008 4.12M 2009 4.34M 2010 4.18M 2011 4.26M
This doesn't even start to address the point that Mushroom made. You aren't saying anything about demand, or regionality, or the economy as a whole, or interest rates, etc., etc. You ask if that number is enough, but whether that number is "enough" (or what "enough" even means) isn't merely an issue of sales volume. Plus, you only listed sales of existing homes!! You should go back to calling me stupid.
https://www.laalmanac.com/economy/ec37.php Los Angeles County Existing home prices in 2006 $585K...in 2011 $307K You talk to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost incredible amounts of money selling homes during this period and ask them if it really didn't happen. Btw, a little over 1M existing houses sold in SoCal in the period of 2007-2011 [the crash in SoCal]. https://www.statista.com/statistics/864235/volume-of-homes-sold-california-by-region/
Now why would I only include existing homes? Think about it. You do enough on your own to prove your ignorance without me calling you anything.
The California Drought is Over. Definitively. After over a month of torrential rain and massive mountain snow, the drought is over in California. Yet with all the liquid bounty, some in the media and elsewhere don't want to give up on it, as noted in the NY Times headline below. And the U.S Drought Monitor has severe drought over much of the state. I believe the evidence for the end of California drought is quite overwhelming. But consider the facts found below and decide for yourself. . . . .
Those years are not representative of the housing market as a whole in ANY state - OR, the USA as a whole. You are making every effort to support some claim of yours by cherry picking data.
New construction has to be counted when you consider housing demand in the USA. Remember that the years you like to cherry pick were lows in home construction, so when recovery took place, home construction was behind the curve. When noting increases in housing costs one can't just ignore new homes, as buyers can consider both new and "pre owned" homes. I really don't know what it is that you are trying to claim anymore. I know what you've said at times, but I don't see a consistent argument for any point. Read what Mushroom posted.
I don't know that this is a serious issue. The serious issue is that droughts appear to be getting worse, and the huge volume rain is a blessing, but also a serious disaster. Agriculture needs dependable water - not extensive and unpredictable drought followed by floods. The same is true for humans who need water each day. We do not have laws that prevent people from building homes in areas where drought is a risk. Telling people they will have water in the future is not good enough - even if the water total for the year is the same.
Droughts are not getting worse. Random Probability Analysis Of Global Drought Data Affirm No Pattern Can Be Linked To Human Activity By Kenneth Richard on 20. February 2023 “No evidence is found for any systematic trend in precipitation deficits attributable to anthropogenic climate change.” – O’Connell et al., 2022 In a new study (O’Connell et al., 2022), scientists use a stochastic or random probability distribution analysis to assess whether a signal in global precipitation deficits (droughts) could be linked to anthropogenic climate change […]
That's one more than you have presented. IMHO, a journal called Hydrology is probably a pretty good source for research about water.
And that said it all right there. In essence, demand increased and the actual sale price did as well. Once again, confusing the actual price sold with the price listed. Which has not a damned thing to do with the topic, or overpopulation.
Well, one has to look at what the actual definition is. Now, is there a shortage of water, yes. But that has nothing to do with rainfall but overpopulation. In order to be a real drought, that shortage has to be caused by "a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall", which has not happened at all. In reality, California has never been in a drought for more than 7 years. The water shortage is overpopulation, and nothing else. They are only starting to panic now because the state has largely pumped every available source dry, the population has until recently been growing, and there was nowhere else they could go to get water. Hell, the Colorado still gets over 17 million acre feet of water per year. The same amount it had when Hoover Dam opened in 1936. The difference at that time though was that the population pulling water from it was a small fraction of what it is today. In other words, it is not nature making the lake level drop it is humans taking out the water. It is like somebody screaming they are about to go bankrupt, and blaming the bank because there is not enough money in their account to cover expenses.
An important aspect of the massive amount of recent precipitation is that it has erased a multi-year deficit in precipitation. I suggest you read further in the link.
Oh, I understand that. And that will help nature quite a bit, by hopefully starting to refill the aquifers that they have been depleting for a century. But there is no storage capacity in that state to hold anywhere near enough water for that to make a difference. Most of that torrential rainfall is simply being dumped into the ocean. I would agree with "erasing a multi-year deficit", if it could actually be saved. But it can't be saved, reservoirs are already at capacity, as they are most years. Once again, think of it as a bank. Imagine you have a maximum deposit limit of $50k per year (in water that represents the storage capacity of the dams). Anything past that $50k is simply burned (dumped to the ocean), and all of your money has to go into the bank no matter what (there is no storage system for large amounts of water other than in reservoirs). And your annual withdrawals amount to $60k per year (water demand). Even with this, they will have to maintain rationing because there is not enough water for the population, there will never be enough water for the population. Maybe it's time to start dredging out all those old dreams from the 1970s to start bringing large icebergs to California to provide water. Of course, that is just as silly of an idea today as it was 50 years ago. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2008/R1255.pdf
Fair enough, but the public policy discussion about water usage and storage doesn't interest me as much as the meteorological research into drought. I agree the southwest is significantly overpopulated.
Existing home sales are prices paid, not listed. And remember, the houses didn't increase in value, your money decreased in value [inflation due to money printing by the FED (everything else being equal)]. The run-up in prices, the crash, and subsequent "recovery" were monetary events and had little to nothing to do with supply and demand [population-wise]. Over and above that, this is a credit economy where EVERYTHING is credit, so banks have tremendous control over all pricing [one way or another]. Just look at the vehicle market for a perfect example of prices completely controlled by banks' willingness to lend. Or do you believe that the average American can afford a $49K car?
