[quote=SK in CV][quote=bearishgurl]
If you never leave your “planned development” except to go to work in your “planned office park” and shop in your “master-planned strip mall,” you’ll never be able to see up front and personal how the (gritty?) “real world” operates :=0[/quote]

Actually, I grew up a stone’s throw away from one of those areas you mentioned and my sister still lives there, (in a house 3 blocks away from where we grew up, that she purchased with 20% down and a mortgage) and I have many friends that still live there. My sister certainly could have acquired through inheritance my mother’s house 8 years ago and kept the low taxes, but she chose not to. (Her taxes, btw, dated back to a pre-prop 13 assessment, and were over $1,000 a year.) It was a bigger and nicer home, but it wasn’t worth the hassle to her.

I’ve seen no evidence that anywhere near half of the homes there are being purchased for cash. Of the scores of people that I know that still live there, only two acquired their homes from their parents. I’m still waiting for any real evidence that there are neighborhoods were most homes are purchased for cash. My anecdotal evidence says otherwise.[/quote]

Agree with SK. We live in an older, established neighborhood in a very desirable area, and very, very, very few were purchased with cash.

In L.A., where Mr. CAR and I grew up, we also lived in older, desirable, well established neighborhoods. Didn’t know of a single person who bought with cash. There are some homes that have been owned by the same families for multiple generations (like my MIL’s house), but those are the exception.