bsrsharma, I am tied to the LA area by my business, mostly. I own a diagnostic ultrasound repair business that I started 23 years ago. I think I can squeeze a few more years out of it, so my central location in Diamond Bar is ideal for commuting to all points, south, east, north and west. Over the past 27 years that I have lived here, I have seen this once small suburb evolve into a full blown incorporated city, and the mix of people shift to predominately Asian, with a good smattering of Indian. I’m not implying that any of this evolution is bad, but I have witnessed firsthand the effects of foreign money. Someone commented how that Chinese immigrants couldn’t easily buy here. Nonsense. I live in a gate guarded neighborhood of multi-million dollar homes, and much of the sales here are by Chinese nationals. Many of the realtors here are Chinese, and they advertise heavily in Shanghai, Taiwan and Hong Kong. In fact, the person that bought my home a couple of years ago was a single lady from China, who’s a pharmaceutical representative for an American company in China. She paid mostly cash, financed less than a mil. I am worried that with the continuing bubbles of many foreign markets, and the aggressive easing of the Fed, we may be in for many years of flat, not declining, markets in the more desirable areas where these foreign nationals want to buy, such as the better neighborhoods of LA. In real terms, adjusted for inflation, which could seriously pick up in the near future, prices might be slightly adjusting downward, making investment attractive to foreign money. But in nominal terms, they could stay flat, making it a nightmare for us patient renters and savers hoping to buy in at lower prices.
