Re: What's wrong with this picture?

"Greg Mossman" wrote in message news:11iduds7geli75f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> And Pomona is hardly upscale. Lots of industry and agriculture. That's
why
> they put the L.A. County Fair there, and still slaughter cows on the Cal
> Poly Pomona campus.

I remember seeing a couple of fairly nice houses on one of the hills
overlooking the airport there (Brackett Field)... We had flown from Houston
to there to visit a friend of Grace's who lived in a house over in Diamond
Bar...

> If you don't mind a little commute, you can do much better. Ideally, you
> can live and work outside Seattle city limits and use the city when you
want
> a good meal or to take visitors.

Agreed, but I wasn't familiar enough with the surrounding areas to know
which of the listings that were returned by the search were actually really
Seattle...

> Diamond Bar is a little nicer than Pomona, but in my view the prices are
> inflated because it's THE place for Chinese immigrants.

Interesting... That would explain why Grace's friend lived there, I guess...
This was back in 1998, if I remember correctly though...

> But it's still the San Gabriel Valley. The eastern San Gabriel Valley.
Try
> a search in the western San Gabriel Valley, i.e. Pasadena, or better yet,
in
> west L.A. I grew up in the formerly middle-class zipcodes of 90025 and
> 90064. Nothing at all comes up there in the $300,000 range, not even
> condos. And those are some of the worst areas of the Westside. If you
want
> sticker shock, search in 90049 (Brentwood) or 90077 (Bel Air) or 90210
> (Beverly Hills).

Sounds like you're agreeing with me that the prices over there are overly
inflated... Other than the housing market, the cost of living there is not
too much higher than it is here... Since the property taxe rate is somewhat
low, they don't get reflected into the cost of goods and services much
differently than they do here, but I suspect that the initial property
purchase price has to influence it somewhat... When you have housing prices
like that, one has to wonder if people buying a house right now actually
expect to be able to pay off their mortgage or if they're just gambling on
the house increasing in value enough that they can just roll the money over
on another house in an up-and-coming neighborhood... The realtors like to
say that the most important thing in housing is *location*... Even in the
Houston area, there are areas where the cost of land is quite a bit more
than other areas... The cost of building the house might remain the same,
but the cost of the initial land can vary quite a bit... A lot that might go
for $15-30K in the suburbs might go for $100-200K if you are in the Medical
Center area... Some of the doctors are willing to pay quite of a premium to
be able to be close to work... Somehow, I don't think that cutting down on
commuting costs and time are the reasons that the houses in the Westside
have increased so much in value... More likely because the county appraisal
district just wants more money since the rate is capped at 1%...


.

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