> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Dan Minette
[snip]
> Even if the main problem is a lack of living space? If that isn't the
> reason, why are housing prices in your area so ridiculously high?
Too much money -- at the high end of the income range -- chasing too few
houses. It's not that there isn't enough space. Not even that there isn't
enough housing. I'm not sure what the statistics are, exactly, but we have
a very high percentage of renters here relative to the rest of the country.
The market has been driven up by a relatively small part of the population,
with a lot of money, competing for the existing housing. At the upper end
of housing prices, it has been really ridiculous, with people paying $5
million for houses with asking prices of $4 million, for example.
> If you do
> raise the income of firefighters and police so they can put offers in on
> those 750k homes in your area, won't that raise the price of homes still
> further, since more people will be bidding on the same small number of
> homes?
I'm not at all sure of what the solution is. But as I said before, I think
it starts with education and other ways that people grow.
> I'll stop there and adress other points seperately. In short, I think the
> central structural problem is that there cannot possibly be affordable
> housing in your area without driving down the price of real estate.
Well, yeah. But the prices have more to do with stock options than
salaries, and only a small percentage of people here get options, and only
some of them ever see any income from them.
Nick
