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In or around any metropolis area prices are ridiculous. I lived in Los Angeles. Home prices are $1 million+ for a shack or a condo, $2-$3 million for modest home, $4 million and up for a nice home if you want to buy. It’s up 30%-40% since Pandemic which only makes sense because taxpayers subsidized such inflation. In the suburbs, it can be a tad lower (like in the center of the San Fernando Valley) but not dramatically lower.

30 minutes north of L.A. you can buy a decent home for $700,000, or a very nice home for $1.5 million. A lot of them are newer - but not much land generally. Tract homes. But new or fairly new.

Now do the math on the property taxes. $20,000 per year for a $1.25 million house. $50,000 per year on a $4 million home. For people who are in their homes a long time and have a low cost basis (California has Proposition 13 which prevents property taxes from rising more than 2% per year from your cost basis, so if you bought a home in 1988 for $250,000 you are paying $4k a year in taxes, but if you sold it for $2 million the new owner will be paying $30,000 a year in taxes!). So if you own the home or even still paying a refinance on it at that low basis - you never have to sell. You can rent it out for $5k-$10k a month and retire on that income. It costs you one month’s rent to just rent it out.

I’ve got family who are leaving and going to Georgia and Tennessee. They have equity in their homes and lower cost basis to tax but they still can’t justify the property tax, raise 3 kids etc. I’ve got other family been in LA for decades, they have very low cost basis and property tax. The younger generation - it’s impossible to survive.

I am trying to convince the missus we should move to Kentucky. I used to live part time out there. I’ve seen online beautiful property we can buy, and lease space to move our business to would be 66% cheaper than what we are paying now.