“And yet every single home is over a million and well over at that. You would think prices would be plummeting!”
I live part-time in S.F., and I’m a homeowner there. I too am surprised at the prices paid for homes. When a home sells in my neighborhood, I occasionally check the property records and, out of curiosity, do some Googling as to their background. I’d estimate that the lion’s share (>75%) of sales fall into one of three categories:
(1) Buyers from China. When you see buyers named “Xi Zhou Zhang” or similar, you know you’re not looking at American-born Chinese who’d be called something like “Edward Wong” or “Sandra Chu.”
(2) Tech people. Employees of Apple, Nvidia, LinkedIn, Google, Meta, Netflix or similar.
(3) Health care. Doctors/dentists/PTs/nurse practitioners at UCSF medical center or in the Sutter Health Group.
Vancouver, B.C. the same. It’s not as bad as SF, but when my parents moved out 20 years ago there was a parade of drug dealers every night driving by in Range Rovers and G Wagons since they were close to down town.
And the buyers in Van are mostly category 1). except not only from Mainland China. But also from Hong Kong, and Taiwan
We sold our California digs to a completely obnoxious Chinese couple, I presume Chinese expats.
At least their check cleared.