Which explains the exodus from CA to TX. Sell your 1,600 sq ft home that you've had for 30 years for millions, then retire to Texas and build a mini-South Fork and still have money left over.
Not sure how it is today, but 20 years ago when we were contemplating a move to the San Antonio area, we could get 1.5 times the house there that we had in the Lansing area.
Still regret not moving out of Michigan...
We’ve had neighbors sell their homes here and move to areas in the mid-west, buy 10 acres, and build custom home on lake-front property, etc.
Not too long ago, areas in coastal central California hated us b/c we were able to buy large homes there with cash from selling our homes here - driving up the price of homes and pricing the locals out of their own neighborhoods.
Not so any longer. It’s very expensive there as well.
As soon as a Californian plops down double or triple the going rate on just one property in a county in Texas, the robber baron tax assessor decides that every muddy floodplain inch of soil in the county is worth six times as much.
Every homeowner the county decides they are sitting on a lottery ticket and baits the hook for the next Californian to come along with a wad of cash to burn.
Eventually the wave subsides, the foreclosures come for all the idiots caught up in it who didn’t plonk down California cash. The robber baron tax assessholes don’t move an inch, except for the foreclosures selling for 30 cents on the dollar where they have no choice.
The only good news in this is that every election cycle Texans are starting to view property tax the same way they see income tax and the politicians are starting to notice.