CA Renter, I lean toward a lot of your opinions. Re the comments of AN, SD Realtor, and others, regarding how a person “should just save up”, and “why should a slacker get to have a house”– While these comments make sense in other parts of the country such as Texas, the Midwest, etc where the housing markets are more “normal”, I am really wondering if they hold true here.
The median income in SD is $72,000/year at last reckoning, which implies a house price of $216,000 under “normal” mortgage debt ratios. In most parts of SD county that are anywhere near me, this will get you either an OK condo or maybe a little house in a skeevy neighborhood. In Texas or the Midwest, $216,000 will get you a nice to more-than-nice middle-class SFR, with a lot bigger yard than you can find around here. What I’m saying is that there are a lot of hardworking non-slackers in this county who are still priced out of decent housing. Yes, they can buy cheaper houses in outlying areas– but the long commutes will eat up their savings in terms of gas and 2 hours lost out of their lives every day.
As far as people buying up houses here to rent out– taken singly, each individual is innocuous. But how many of them are there in the aggregate in San Diego County, I wonder? Are there thousands? Does it mean that there are many more thousands (3X, 5X, ??) of people in the county who are being *forced* to rent because the dwelling they could have bought, was bought by a would-be landlord instead? How much inventory has been/is being soaked up by landlords, and is being held off the market to be rented out to the very same people who would rather buy the places? I suspect this is where CA Renter is coming from too.
I know the stat is that something like 45% of people in SD rent, versus 40% in other parts of the country, so maybe not that many houses are being “soaked up by landlords”… I have also read in the past that there is a shortage of rentals in SD county (read, apartments), so are all these “landlords” doing us a favor? Taking condo-converted apartments and turning some of them back into rentals?
Does it boil down to a shortage of housing here, and people fighting/bidding over the scraps that come out? I just don’t see this kind of market happening in the Midwest. There it seems like houses are plentiful and cheap. Maybe it’s because populations are stable/declining in most Midwestern cities, and SD county has been growing by a half million people per decade for the past 50 years. If so, why were SD/CA prices low until the ’70’s, and only then they started shooting up? What changed in the ’70’s? Why are housing prices of 6X, 7X incomes now the “new normal” here?
