Roughly three million potential first-time home buyers have been shut out of the market over the last decade, according to a new study, suggesting the market’s recovery of the past few years could have been stronger.
Tight lending standards and acute shortages of affordable housing in many markets have reduced the pool of potential buyers, particularly among young people, reducing a key component of housing demand.
Los Angeles County’s homeless population has soared 23% over last year despite increasing success in placing people in housing, according to the latest annual count released Wednesday.
I tossed new Census data into my trusty spreadsheet to see if a recent upswing in construction activity was making a significant change in how much housing — for ownership or for rent — was available. What I found was that Southern California added 34,000 housing units in the year ended July 1, 2016, to 6.4 million. Yes, Southern California’s new housing in 2016 approximates the combined additions in Alabama, New Jersey and Wisconsin. But the 0.53 percent increase last year — yes, better than 0.41 percent average annual rate in the previous five years — again trails the U.S. pace.
California liberal policy-makers have been at war with suburbia and home construction for decades. When Gov. Jerry Brown was attorney general, for instance, he sued counties that had growth plans that allowed the construction of too much sprawling development. The rationale was the fight against global warming, which the governor believes is exacerbated by suburban-style living. It can take decades here to get all the government approvals to build new housing units, and in already pricey coastal cities government permits and fees can add more to the price of each unit than the total cost of a house in other parts of the country.
In addition, land-use restrictions drive up the cost of developable land. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) makes it simple for environmentalists to tie up proposed projects in years of litigation. The slow-growth-oriented California Coastal Commission must give its blessing for projects anywhere near the state’s coastline.
A decline in government spending, rising rents and falling incomes have created a shortage of nearly one million affordable homes in five Southern California counties, the nonprofit California Housing Partnership Corp. reported Monday, May 22.
The five-county area needs 949,016 more affordable rentals to meet the needs of families earning 50 percent or less of the median household income, the report said.
Thirty-two percent of California households could afford to purchase the $496,620 median-priced home in the first quarter of 2017, up from 31 percent in fourth-quarter 2016 but down from 34 percent in first-quarter 2016.
A minimum annual income of $102,050 was needed to make monthly payments of $2,550, including principal, interest, and taxes on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at a 4.36 percent interest rate.
Forty percent of home buyers were able to purchase the $414,940 median-priced condo or townhome. An annual income of $85,270 was required to make a monthly payment of $2,130.
A recent count found a dramatic 104% increase in “tents and hand-built structures” located downtown, for a total of 418, compared to 2016. Driving through East Village, a gentrifying neighborhood on the edge of downtown, it’s tough to find a street that doesn’t have a tarp or tent – or dozens. People with neither tent nor tarp fashion makeshift shelters out of shopping carts, storage bins and blankets.
Only 32 percent of California households could afford to purchase the $496,620 median-priced Golden State home in the first quarter of 2017, according to a report issued Monday by the Los Angeles-based California Association of Realtors.
More than 130 housing bills surfaced this year as of the last count, many of them aimed at addressing the state’s housing shortage, lack of affordable housing and protecting those at risk of losing their homes.
Developers are now adding homes, relative to population growth, at a far higher pace than in recent years. But it’s still below what experts believe would be enough to keep up with California’s growing population, which topped 39.5 million last year.
A measure that would allow local governments to force developers to include more low-income housing within their projects passed the Assembly Thursday.
Assemblyman Matthew Harper (R-Huntington Beach) argued that the bill would raise costs for developers and therefore reduce their ability to produce the broad housing stock the state needs to control prices.
Silicon Valley tech companies have good reason to be concerned about President Donald Trump’s plans to review the H-1B visa program, which has been crucial in providing them access to foreign labor. It wouldn’t be such a big deal, though, if they didn’t put their offices in such expensive places.
The valley’s biggest employers each host thousands of workers under the H-1B program, designed to help employers hire skilled overseas labor when qualified Americans are not available. At Facebook Inc. alone, more than 15 percent of employees hold such visas. Yet the tech industry doesn’t have a skills shortage so much as a shortage of employees who can afford to live within commuting distance of their jobs. . . . no matter how high employee wages go, the limited housing supply leaves the region unaffordable for a large number of workers.
According to a new report from the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Business Council, exorbitant housing costs in Los Angeles, the second most populous city in the US, are inhibiting employers from attracting “high-performers,” or top talent, to their companies.
Moves out of the area remain far below levels seen during last decade’s housing bubble, when out-migration was nearly triple what it was in 2016 — and real estate agents urged clients to “drive until you qualify.”
But after slowing down in the aftermath of the Great Recession, which devastated the housing market, out-migration is picking up as prices climb steadily higher, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
To escape high prices, people — often younger and with lower- or middle-class incomes — are looking toward the Inland Empire and nearby states for additional square footage and a lower mortgage payment.
The million-dollar home prices about 85 miles west, in San Francisco and San Jose, have pushed aspiring homeowners to look inland. Patterson’s population has doubled since the 2000 census. Average monthly rents have climbed from about $900 in 2014 to nearly $1,600 in recent months, according to the apartment database Rent Jungle, compounding the hardships of the foreclosure crisis, the shuttering of several local agricultural businesses and surging substance abuse rates.