$1.5M REAL ESTATE PRICE GAP BETWEEN LA JOLLA AND MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA

Santa Monica may be expensive, but you know which city in the country has the most expensive housing? La Jolla. According to a recently released Home Price Comparison research conducted by Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp., seven of the 10 most expensive housing markets in the nation are in California.

“Santa Monica never makes the top 10 lists because such a large part of our housing market is condominiums,” notes Real Estate attorney Richard Besone. “Notice that New York City is not on the list either. A basic one-bedroom apartment in a pleasant part of Manhattan starts at $700,000, and prices can go well beyond $20 million. Cities like Santa Monica and New York don’t meet the statistical criteria of these studies.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 40 million Americans moved between 2002 and 2003. Focusing on areas with high relocation rates, the Home Price Comparison Index offers an "apples-to-apples" evaluation of similar homes sold in “typical middle-management transferee neighborhoods in 348 markets across the country and in Puerto Rico and Canada.” FYI, more than 60 percent of the markets surveyed have an average home price of less than $300,000.

The top 10 most expensive markets in the country are: 1) La Jolla, Calif., 2) Beverly Hills, Calif., 3) Santa Barbara, Calif., 4) Palo Alto, Calif., 5) Greenwich, Conn., 6) Newport Beach, Calif., 7) San Mateo, Calif., 8) San Francisco, Calif., 9) Wellesley, Mass., and 10) Kailua Kona, Hawaii.

In September, in Santa Monica the average sale price of a Single Family Home was $1,250,000, bringing the year-to-date average sales price to $1,400,000, according to Multiple Listing Service statistics. FYI, this is down from August, when the average sale price for a home was $1,460,000, and the year to date average was $1,425,000. The average condo price for September was $659,000 and $625,000 year-to-date. This is up from August, which posted $625,000 as the average monthly price and $621,000 as the year-to-date median.

Lou Barnes, mortgage broker and nationally syndicated columnist believes prices on the coasts will stay high. “The population of the United States has doubled in the last 50 years, and is now growing by 2.5 million people each year,” Barnes stated. “Our land inventory is the same as it was, and will be. There is no new San Francisco Bay lying undiscovered somewhere in the Midwest; and as each hurricane makes landfall, it is painfully clear that there is no undeveloped reserve of coastline. We can develop increasingly remote or undesirable tracts, but our most attractive land is rising disproportionately in value.”

For those of you wishing to cash out and buy a mansion in the Midwest, the top 10 most affordable markets in the country are: 1) Minot, N.D., 2) Great Falls, Mont., 3) Arlington, Texas, 4) Billings, Mont., 5) Killeen, Texas, 6) Tulsa, Okla., 7) Topeka/Shawnee County, Kan., 8) Parkersburg, W.V., 9) Cadillac, Mich., and 10) Knoxville, Tenn.

The price difference between La Jolla and Minot is $1,578,033 for a similar 2,200-square-foot home. Prices comparisons were made on a 2,200 sq.ft. home with four bedrooms, 2.5 baths, family room (or equivalent) and two-car garage in neighborhoods/zip codes within a market that is typical for corporate middle-management transferees.

Of all the United States,  California has the greatest variance within the same state at $1,359,733; between La Jolla, at $1,708,333, and Riverside/Ontario, at $348,600.

The percentage of households in California able to afford a median-priced home stood at 18 percent in July, a 9 percentage-point decrease compared to the same period a year ago when the Index was at 27 percent, according to the California Association of REALTORS® The July Housing Affordability Index (HAI) was unchanged compared to June, when it also stood at 18 percent. Los Angeles County holds steady at 17 percent, but down from 27 percent last year.

At 42 percent, the High Desert region was the most affordable C.A.R. region in the state, followed by the Sacramento and Central Valley regions at 26 percent. The San Diego area is one of least affordable in the state at 10 percent, followed by the Orange County and Monterey regions at 11 percent.

The average price for a single-family home in California in August was $474,370, a 16.8 percent increase over August 2003, according to C.A.R. Prices edged up 2.6 percent from July.

The cumulative average sales price of the 322 U.S. markets surveyed in the Home Price Comparison Index was $354,372; up 11.4 percent from $318,172 in 2003.