Home prices have been hitting new highs all year, but California’s median prices are nearly $400,000 more than the country’s average. The median home price in September for California hit a whopping $712,430, according to the New York Times. Just in June, the median home price hit $626,200, and it has been growing ever since. This new median is the highest on record. For reference, the median home price of an existing home nationally hit $313,000 in October. One appraiser says builders have not been able to construct new homes fast enough to satisfy the state’s population of 39 million.
Those builders also haven’t been able to — or haven’t chosen to — build the kind of properties that the majority of the population needs.
“New home construction skews luxury. We aren’t building enough affordable new homes,” said Jonathan Miller, of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. “Most of the sales growth in single family homes in California is above the $600,000 mark. When it comes to inventory, there is more lost in affordable and modest-priced housing, year over year, than in the upper-level housing market.”
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