No, not John Piper (probably fooled some of you into thinking this might actually be interesting—sorry to disappoint). Actually, I'm referring to today's WSJ editorial on the potential for a devastating housing bubble in the San Francisco Bay area.
It caught my eye because in February I was in the Bay area and read a SF Chronicle article on the boom in housing prices. I'm working from memory here, but the average single-family home price was somewhere in the $600–700K range. These are ordinary homes, not mansions.
That number is shocking enough to a resident of eastern North Carolina, where you can get a brand new, 3-bedroom, 2-bath house for $130K pretty easily. But what really dropped my jaw was the fact that in the past 12 months, housing prices in the Bay area have increased more than 20% on average. That means the average home in the Bay area increased in price far more than my house is worth. In other words, if I had bought a house in San Francisco in February, 2004, I could have sold it in February, 2005 and bought my current house in Rocky Mount with the profit plus bought a 2005 Mustang and still had thousands of dollars left over.
What say y'all move down here and put a charge in our property values?
1 comment:
No kidding...I pastor a church in the SF bay area. It is expensive here. A church of 200 will need approximately 7 million to buy a 2 acre lot and build a small facility. There are a lot of social ramifications as well.
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