Last week we saw that San Diego was #1 in the nation for least affordable housing compared to the renter’s median income.
This article ranks the Top 10 cities in America by median list price, with the highest eight cities all located in California (San Diego is #7):
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/29729-california-dreaming-be-prepared-to-pay-up
The data is from realtor.com, which not only tracks the median list prices, but they also log the inventory counts for each city. The MLS coverage may not match up exactly to the metro areas, but let’s compare inventory-to-census populations to gauge the potential competitiveness:
Metro Area | ||||
San Jose | ||||
Oakland | ||||
San Francisco | ||||
Seattle | ||||
Denver | ||||
New York City | ||||
LA-Long Beach | ||||
San Diego | ||||
Houston | ||||
Orange Co. |
Seattle and Denver don’t get mentioned on the highest-priced lists, but the difficulty of buying a home there is duly noted. The actual San Diego residential inventory today is 6,709, or a 473:1 ratio, which would push us up into the same group, and we’d have the highest median LP of those five areas.
Interestingly, the Orange County inventory is 64% higher now than it was a year ago, while the San Diego inventory is only 15% higher Y-O-Y.
http://www.realtor.com/data-portal/realestatestatistics?source=web
Ventura County 297:1
Thank you!
Census shows 839,620 population estimate for 2013, and 2,719 active listings on the realtor.com page. Let’s call it 309:1.
Median LP = $525,000 – higher than SD!
Santa Barbara County:
435,697 population
1,144 actives
381:1
$700,000 median LP
One of the main reasons low inventory in Ventura county is because of slow-growth land-use policies.
I think Ventura also gets all its water from local resources. Other counties with low/slow growth also don’t hook into the state systems. Not sure about Santa Barbara.
Water = Overcrowding
One word, “desalination”
Coming soon to a county near you!!
Not sure that would get Ventura off the slow growth mode myself, I think it is more NIMBY issues than anything else.
Also They have a large amount of agriculture in Ventura county so they could easily find water if they truly wanted to.
The step before desalination is drinking your own wastewater:
http://www.valleywater.org/SVAWPC.aspx
Just like on the space station 😉