Nope, haha. I’ve been going to Curbed.com and it is pathetic. This site for LA was clearly in a league of its own (see calzada’s post above). Someone really needs to fill the market for a website like this in LA.
Why Doesn’t Anyone Want This Cute Echo Park Bungalow?
It’s going to take them a while to get used to the new influx of people from Curbed LA, where we had great comments sections. Your comment was spot on.
All These Stories About People Fleeing Cities Are Total Nonsense
Isn’t San Jose like LA, in that it’s basically a suburb(an city)? Except it’s a massively overpriced, congested suburb, which shows that suburbs can be just as overvalued as urban areas and maybe it’s not suburban vs urban? I mean, just where is the line between suburban/urban?
Why Doesn’t Anyone Want This Cute Echo Park Bungalow?
on the positive side the view of the lake is nice, yard is pretty, hardwood floors are nice. But the remodel was done cheaply. those sconces in the living room are terrible and who picked out those ugly counters in the kitchen and that really cheap sink in the bathroom. they should have spent $5000 more and got much better quality stuff as buyers expect at that price. parking situation is a real issue. LA is very much a car city. can’t imagine going to the grocery store and lugging bags of groceries up a bunch of steps. that gets old real fast. Easy solution to all of the negatives – lower the price a good chunk and someone will accept the negatives if they feel like they are getting a deal
All These Stories About People Fleeing Cities Are Total Nonsense
The headline says: "All These Stories About People Fleeing Cities Are Total Nonsense" and has a pic of NYC. Jeff wants you to think people aren’t looking to leave NYC in droves. A more accurate title would have been: "These Stories About People Fleeing All Cities Are Total Nonsense." Because we know from comments in the NYC pricing thread that LA, for example, is doing just fine.
He should have shown the total number of people in each city searching to move out of there, 2020 vs. 2019, and then broken it down by those looking to move to another big city or to a suburb. Just because New Yorkers are using Zillow more to search in another city than in the ‘burbs doesn’t mean there isn’t a shitload of folks looking to move to the ‘burbs, too. It doesn’t work to use percentages for this kind of analysis.
As for Detroit, people are looking to get the hell out of there too but probably can’t afford the nicer suburbs, so more are in the "other cities" bucket.
People in San Jose are sick and tired of the traffic; believe it or not, it’s worse than LA’s. I could see a lot of them looking at places like Marin, which is neither city, suburb, nor rural. There’s a lot to choose from in the greater Bay Area that can’t easily be classified. The important point is that many in SJ want to get out because it’s overpriced post-COVID and has terrible traffic.
All These Stories About People Fleeing Cities Are Total Nonsense
I hid the data from my eyes while I thought about it, to see if I could guess which cities had the most significant increase in people looking to move to suburbs, 2020 vs. 2019. I asked myself what are the three biggest "need to get the fuck out" cities on that list and came up with:
San Jose CA — Because this is Silicon Valley and everything is over-priced by double. Why pay that when you don’t need to live close to work anymore?
Detroit, MI — With the most liberal of all governors and a sizeable number of heavily armed, right-wing "protestors," it’s a powder-keg ready to go off
New York, NY — Because, duh
Looked at the data just now, and sure enough, the three most significant increases in seeking to move to suburbs were San Jose, Detroit, and NYC.
You might be thinking OK hotshot why isn’t Seattle #1 given all the anarchy up there? The reason is that even last year before COVID19 and CHOP/CHAZ tons of people were looking to get the hell out of Seattle.
LA is a suburb in a city so naturally you’d expect fewer folks there to be looking to move to a suburb in either 2019 or 2020, and the data shows just that.
This is the second Curbed article in a row where the headline doesn’t match the data in the story.
While I agree with your estimate of a 20% decline in prices, there are a few things that mitigate your doom and gloom analysis. First off, the majority of 40 million unemployed people are not likely the potential buyers in markets like NYC, SF or LA as they were already priced out of the market. Second, where else are rich people going to put their money? Assuming that the real estate market and stock market start to decline at the end of the year and continue to do so for the next 2 years, given that the Fed will keep interest rates at zero, NYC real estate is going to be a good place to keep your money (especially if you think inflation is going to catch up to the Trillions that the Fed has and continues to pump). Finally, we are now in the era of government bail outs and the government is for sure going to bail out people who can’t pay their mortgages because they have to keep prices up in order to support the house of cards that is our economy. This is even more true if Biden gets elected and the Dems control both houses – they are not going to let people lose their homes.
Good to see you too. Could you imagine a headline on the old Curbed LA board that says something like LA home prices aren’t falling and then the data in the article says that they are? There’d be like 150 posts! Here there are 16 with two of them from us, but they keep this one open and close the busy one. Makes no sense.