 Posted: Thu, Mar 10 2005, 11:01 am EST Post subject: The California effect |
|
| The California effect
Flush with equity, Californians are driving up home prices in markets outside the Sunshine State. SALEM, Ore. (CNN/Money) – As the great real estate bubble debate drags on, markets in California are most often singled as those ripest for a fall. But if California falls, will other markets go with it? Already, Californians wield unprecedented influence on real estate throughout the West. Flush with home equity made from huge price gains in their own state, Californians are staking their claim on Oregon ski towns, fueling bidding wars in Arizona golf communities and doubling down in Nevada. "Probably 60 percent of our residents over the past 10 years have been from California," said Cary Krukowski, director of marketing at Lake Las Vegas a resort community about a half an hour outside of Las Vegas. In downtown Vegas, roughly half of all buyers in the Newport Lofts are from California, according to the Newport Beach, Calif. developer Seegmiller & Partners. Home prices in Las Vegas increased about 50 percent last year. "We call it the echo effect," said J. Lennox Scott, CEO of John L. Scott, a real estate company with 126 offices in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. "People move to California for work or the weather and then eventually they travel up the West Coast." And eventually buy property. Recently, between 40 percent and 50 percent of Seattle buyers who work with John L. Scott's relocation division came from California. (more...) |
|
