California’s home prices have been escalating sharply as the state recovers from recession, but property taxes on those homes will rise only slightly, reports from two state agencies indicated Friday.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office said, “Since bottoming out in late 2011, California’s median house price has increased by 45 percent – about 10 percent a year – reaching around $450,000 as of September 2015.”
The LAO report noted that the price escalation has been especially strong in some hot markets – 15 percent in the past year in San Francisco to $1.1 million and 13 percent in Santa Clara County to $926,000. Over the past four years, prices in those two markets have jumped more than 60 percent.
Although prices appear to be in line with underlying demand, both home prices and rents have climbed far faster than incomes, the LAO study found, and that “could suggest that the housing market is somewhat overheated” although whether a new housing bubble is developing is uncertain.
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