trulia_economist

Southern California home prices now look about 10-15% overvalued relative to fundamentals. (See our report here: http://www.trulia.com/trends/2014/03/bubble-watch-local-worries-national-calm/). But even when SoCal is not looking bubbly, it's still an expensive place to live.

Housing affordability is always a challenge for California, especially in the big coastal markets. It's hard to build new housing: most of populated California is a strip of land sandwiched between an ocean and mountains, so geography limits the amount of new construction. On top of that, regulations hold back housing construction further. Housing affordability will probably always be a challenge in California unless construction in the big coastal metros increases significantly.

-- Jed

Go Barons! Don & Bob's. Twelve Corners. Dr Jones. Junior year in the middle school. You bet! -- Jed

What kind of return are you hoping to get from your breakfast?

-- Jed

Hi -- This is Daisy Kong from Trulia. I work with Jed. To chime in and help answer this question, here's Jed's 2014 outlook on investors buying up homes.

"Throughout the recession and recovery, investors bought homes and rented them out, sometimes to people who lost another (or the same!) home to foreclosure. In fact, the number of rented single-family homes leapt by 32% during this period. Going into 2014, though, investors are buying fewer single-family homes; loosening credit standards might allow more single-family renters to become owners again; and fewer owners are losing homes to foreclosures to begin with – all of which mean that the single-family rental market should cool."

Here's his full take on what you can likely expect to happen in the housing market in 2014 here: http://www.trulia.com/trends/2013/12/housing-predictions-2014/

When you look over the really long term, housing has tended to be roughly similar to stocks/equities. And housing has never actually been a totally safe investment. Even though the recent housing bubble and bust were severe, there have been lots of localized home-price drops over the decades.

Coming out of this housing crash, the big change is that people now realize housing is not a risk-free investment. Hopefully we'll all remember that home prices sometimes do go down, and it's important to factor in that risk when deciding whether to buy. -- Jed