California Housing Prices

If you live in coastal California and don't already own a home, then you're toast. Housing prices here are sky-high and do not reflect the national trends in prices. There's one main reason for this: environmental policies. Environmental pressures on the California coast are intense and manifest in various ways: restrictive policies coming out of Sacramento, local zoning ordinances that prohibit new houses in specific areas and/or dictate the number of houses that can be built per acre in specific areas (often 1 house per 40, on up to 1 house per 160, etc), Endangered Species Act restrictions that prohibit development in habitat areas of so-called endangered species, etc.

Another factor that compounds this is the unusually high presence of local busy-body environmental organizations in California who are quick to sue other locals intent on exercising their private property rights. I would think that such entities and their members do not exist in similar quantities in states such as Texas. Perhaps that's partially due to Texas' permissive laws on carrying concealed weapons, but I digress.

As I was saying, if you don't already own a home here (and intend to live here), good luck. Save yourself the heartburn and move to another state. You aren't going to buy a home on the coast unless you're making a minimum of 150k a year. Even then, you're barely going to qualify for a mortgage.