We often look at quarterly housing prices, or monthly housing prices, but a new report out from UCLA Anderson Forecast takes the much longer view, looking at housing prices since 2000. It finds that Los Angeles prices have shot up 121 percent—more than in any other metro in the nation, says KPCC. Washington DC and San Diego also saw triple-digit jumps (105 and 101 percent, respectively), while famously pricey cities like San Francisco (89 percent) and New York (73 percent) made the list, but didn't come close to topping it.
What's going on, LA? One reason for this terrifying uptick, economist William Yu with the Anderson Forecast says, is that "some Angelenos, especially rich ones, have a suburban mentality," which he says disposes them toward opposing higher-density housing developments in their neighborhoods, which keeps housing costs moving on up. LA is in the worst housing shortage since World War II and increasingly unaffordable for both buyers and renters. Meanwhile, every other city listed above built more housing in the last 14 years than Los Angeles did.
Building more dense housing, Yu says, would make housing cheaper, and would not necessarily lead to further congestion if public transportation can keep up. (You know, like how thriving cities like New York have more people but less congestion than LA.)
While density is just one of the reasons that LA's housing prices are increasing so much and so quickly, Yu does suggest that Angelenos need to start abandoning their desire for the less-dense, suburban lifestyle and that people should try to "understand some new realities" about our city and what it needs to go grow as an economically strong one. He names Downtown as a great model for the rest of the city's growth.
· Blame 'suburb syndrome': LA home price increases outpace other metropolitan areas [SCPR]
· Mayor Garcetti Wants 100,000 New Units in LA by 2021 [Curbed LA]
· LA is the US's Most Unaffordable Place For Renting and Buying [Curbed LA]
· 10 Charts That Show How and Why LA Has the Most Unaffordable Rental Market in the US [Curbed LA]
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