The single greatest lie in Real Estate. And the California exodus bubble.

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by flaming_pope

You know it by heart now. “Californians are being forced to flee California.”

And in the exact same breath. “OMG, everyone’s buying homes with CASH.” “The housing market’s booming right now!”

Let me rectify your observations for you. Cash strapped Californians are not “forced” nor “fleeing.” They’re conquering your neighborhood and causing a unsustainable housing bubble. My cousin sold his equity in his California townhouse, and bought a 4000 sqft Mc’mansion with cash to spare.

It’s 100% driven by the riches of California, and will end once the finite number of rich Californians leave and realize rural/sub urban homes outside of California depreciate in value faster than the homes they originally sold.

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  • Other factors:population growth slowing
  • developers pumping out homes (some choosing to HODL’ing with ARMs)

Thoughts on how to play?

Edit/rant: Anecdotal evidence can also be seen on youtube. Homesteading channels are on the decline. Farm tourism only works when you’re not surrounded by other farmers doing the same for 20 years and being better at it.

But I think this has got more to do with property taxes. When your crop is barely enough to pay for taxes due to lack of skill*, youtube income dries up, and you alienated yourself from the local farming community; You’re shit out of luck.

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* Skill here includes futures contracts and managing droughts, I’ve not seen a single homesteading video cover this. And even then a flood of money into futures contract is just going to worsen the crash as Idiots buy/sell futures thinking they’re cash settled. There was this one farmer near where I’m at who happened to know his counter party, ended up with a rotting pile of corn on his field one year.