“Let say I can get a nice place in the CA countryside for 50 cents on the dollar. Would it be worth it? Has the low balling started? I am past worrying about schools and all of the BS.”
Home Prices are rising in the good places to live.
They are falling in Gay Frisco, Oakland and parts of LA.
American buyers with cash are fleeing from NY, Chicago area and even LA and buying homes in the other areas often before the Real Estate agent finishes driving the for sale sign stake into the ground.
The non ChiComs from Hong Kong are still buying with cash.
One of my wife’s best friends here in California has gone into the business of staging homes going on sale with furniture, paintings and even kitchen stuff, with her daughter and 2 other retired friends.
Their only problem is not selling the staging furniture as they prepare the empty homes to sell. Buyers are paying cash for the new homes and buying the staging furniture.
They staged an estate sell and show. Not only did the new buyers buy the home at several thousand more than the asking. The real estate agent had set up a little desk in the foyer and had several offers, The new home buyers bought the home and the staging furniture.
Re property taxes, new buyers get hammered in liberal counties. Prop 13 only protects those who have lived in their home for a year or more.
Our northern counties are more reasonably priced and most are conservative. I’m recommending Butte county to some out of state buyers if they like 4 seasons, and Del Norte for cooler coastal buyers.
Daughter and husband searched for two years in San Francisco - in the city (don't ask why).
Every time they put in an offer, a Chinese person would make a far better offer - in cash - and write a check for the full amount. They were being out-bid by tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars (these properties are over a million and up).
They were about to give up, discouraged, when husband liquidated some stock and used that as a cash sweetener on a property they wanted - and were accepted, finally. They have a shared backyard and a walk-up, no elevator (not good for my arthritic knees). Lots of homeless around, even though it is a nice, pricey area.
They wonder why I haven't visited in over a year.