[giotto]

Prices in California have fallen 50% from their 2006 highs, but they are still too high. $300K will buy a shack on a tiny lot. In any other part of the country, that same 300K will buy a house twice the size on a lot 3 times as big.

California's no-growth policy is the reason. The list of the 100 US cities with the smallest houses contains 43 California cities.

[Clemenza]

As a native New Yorker, I don’t see WTF people need bigger houses when they are having smaller families than ever. These Toll Brothers eyesores can’t be justified in any rational way.

[Finny]

Prices in California have fallen 50% from their 2006 highs, but they are still too high. $300K will buy a shack on a tiny lot ...

... in a proportionately very tiny percentage of places, pretty much exclusively in very specific regions on the coast in areas with primo climates.

Yet 45 miles as the crow flies north-east of the spectacularly dramatic (and dramatically pricey) San Simeon/Hearst Castle-Cambria area and only about 35 miles north of the heart of the Paso Robles wine country ...

... $65,000 will get you a nearly 16,000 sq-ft 3-bed, 2-bath corner-lot 1948 home that appears to have been pretty well maintained (the original pale-lemon and dark green 1940s bathroom tile with the outset sink is very cool) and which probably has hardwood floors in the living room beneath the wall-to-wall carpet, as one of the bedrooms has nice-looking old hardwood floors. It's a short sale. In Santa Barbara County, if you know where to look, you can get a pretty big, fairly new house mere miles away from spectacular sand dunes and a vast beach for around $200,000 or less, and older homes go for pretty much the full range of the $100,000s. It's in an old agricultural and train tracks area. Even on the coast of California, it's all about ...

Location, location, location.