I am not in/on a lease, the question isn’t particular to Coastal CA – opinion is that both are mostly irrelevant. How can one argue that change in interest rates will not affect prices?[/quote]
If you look at the past 40+ years of data …increases in interest rates do not correlate with decreases in property values.[/quote]
Gotta be careful with the difference between correlation and causation. You’re right that higher interest rates haven’t correlated with lower property values. (As a practical matter, we haven’t seen interest rates do anything but go down for the last 30 years, save for some minor fluctuations.) Particularly in the last 30 years the Fed has been manipulating interest rates to counter inflation. So higher interest rates were used to stop prices from going up, or at least to stop them from going up as fast. So when price acceleration slows, interest rates drop.
Interest rates DO affect prices. The stronger correlation than interest rates v prices, is that between changes in interest rates and the rate of change in prices.
