I don't know much about real estate prices in the rest of the country but California real estate is a sure-fine long term investment that isn't a slave to the Stock Market, whims of legislative bodies or fast-buck, pyramid schemes.
My nail man said there was a show on the tube that compared "what you get" for $250K, $500k, $750K and $1million in Shreveport, Louisiana and San Francisco. Though the value one gets in Shreveport, Louisiana, is FAR greater, it's in San Francisco where people seem to want to live. I love it here but it's my home town so I don't think it anything so special.
In my short life of 60 years the prices of real estate in California have only gone up. The biggest rise in San Francisco was between 1973-1985.
Example: We bought a house in 1982 which was $165,000. It had originally sold for $35,000 in 1960.
In 2000 my ex sold it for $644,000. Sound like a lot?
If you do the calculations, the percentage rise in prices was greater earlier than it was in 2000.
The house I live in now was $25,000 in 1960. It's a two-bedroom, one bath, with a downstairs redone with another full bath and bedroom, double car garage.
It's now worth $900k+.
Lol. Our fire insurance is only $100,000 because the house is just a very simple, cracker-box, like the other thousands in the city. We, however, actually have 5 feet of space on either side of the house.
It's the land that is so valuable, and since land doesn't burn, our insurance is low.
We live with a forest across the street and there is an owl; there are blue jays, red-tailed hawks, peregrins, hummingbirds, just to name a few. There are still raccoons.
All this in the geographic center of the CITY of San Francisco.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
Our philosophy is buy and hold. We know how to flip and do all that, but it's too much work and we stick with what we have done ourselves and then can recommend to our clients.
One story. My parents bought a house in Pomona, CA in 1963 for 13,000. They sold three years later for 16,000. In 2005 it sold for 450,000. Still in the same old run down neighborhood.
That's why we're in socal.