People who make a very good living and/or enjoy waking up in the middle of the night screaming because they're so massively leveraged. As for people who pay that for mass-produced new construction... well I guess if they can't tell the difference it's not my place to tell them.

I just don't get the concept of a so-called neighborhood being manufactured in less than a decade. Plop: houses. Plop: schools. Plop: shopping malls. How does this add up to a "nice" place to live? I guess trees aren't on the short list, and they don't subtract for when you're sitting in a traffic jam with cornfields on both sides.

Do youall mean that not EVERYONE can afford $9000 plus a month house payments???? And a new Porsche, of course.

MY gosh thats ONLY $36,000 gross per month. (using the traditional guidelines of housing = 25% of monthly income)

I live between Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes... Ive often wondered how anyone could afford such homes. There are some nice ones but no mansions. Im single and in the upper 2% of yearly income but no way would I want to pay such a price for an average home in Manhattan Beach. Maybe a lot of those houses stay in the family for many years and are passed down. When I drive my Porsche by them and see Fords parked outside maybe thats the ticket. The condos on the beach certainly would be worth that price or more though. The beach house from the TV show Beverly Hills 90210 is on the border of Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach, by the way... I think I saw Brendan and Kelly outside there the other day.

When I first glanced at this thread it looked like it was about injured KC running back, Priest Holmes.

Check this out from the same link...biggest avg. incomes for US cities...so you have people making less than $150K in Los Altos buying $1.3million houses? Talk about stretching their budgets...this makes no sense.

VA Great Falls $165,592
2. CT Darien $155,006
3. CT New Canaan $150,748
4. CT Wilton $148,718
5. MD Potomac $148,198
6. VA Fairfax Station $147,927
7. CA Saratoga $147,163
8. CA Alamo $144,894
9. CA Los Altos $144,402
10. IL Lake Forest $143,595

Guy I used to work with is selling his house here in Phoenix after we all lost our jobs when the department closed. He should walk away with almost $300,000 profit on the house after living there for three years.

He is returning to Wichita and will pay cash for a house there and be able to retire in 3 years, a lot happier. House prices out west are just a bit crazy at times, but even worse in Cali than Arizona. It is slowing down but still too high.

JoeA

A friend of mine and his wife are moving to Wichita in a few months from Phoenix, they were pretty happy with what they will be able to afford after selling their house. Your money goes a lot further here, one of the few perks.

I guarantee you, 90% of them are #2, the massively leveraged. Only in our wonderful country can you put on the appearence of being rich, which actually being so deep in debt you will never get out. That's why we rent right now, we couldn't easily afford what we want, so we'll just save another year or two until we can.

Developments suck, nothing is worse than an entire neighborhood of houses that are the exact same thing, with slightly different paint. Disposable housing is what it is, give it 10 years and they all look like hell because the cheap siding is starting to rot and the sheetrock is cracking inside. When we were house shopping we wouldn't consider a house newer than 1970 or so, because that's when the development craze started here in Wichita. Older neighborhoods are the only way to go, the houses have character and are different, the yards are typically bigger, and a nice older neighborhood will typically stay nice, because that's why people live there in the first place. Oh yeah, and they have trees, people in developments must all feel as if they're in the desert with all the barren lots.

So, Porsche-O-Phile, tell me, what is so bad about New Jersey other than cold in the winter?

I think what most people hate about New Jersey is that they see only the worst places--that is, the concentrations of people and development. The population centers of NJ are the epitome of strip mall culture.

I knew a guy with a mansion along the Delaware river in Riverside. What a beautiful place. But no one associates that with NJ.

I hear ya Jon....unfortunate.

Regarding the Toll housing, I think that phenomena is par for the course in many states. It's also apparent that many communities lack qualified planners.

No Rick, its the overabundance of "planners" that cause these discusting cookie cutter, wastelands. Individuals, planning and building their own houses, thats what makes up a nice "classic" neighborhood.

That's the problem here, developers buying huge tracts of land and selling more or less mass produced houses. Two or three approved builders, maybe ten floorplans, which are typically very similar. Then they clear everything, trees and all, and pack in as many houses as is possible. It'll be 40 years before these neighborhoods look decent, and that's if the homeowners spend the money to plant trees. Unfortunately, I doubt if many of those houses will be much in 40 years. Our house we used to own was a custom build in '61, in a nice area. That house had less cracks in the wall when we bought it than many 5 year old houses. It's sad, there's just no emphasis on quality anymore, everybody wants cheap.

Try the Eastside here in WA State.......home values have quadrupled in 8-10 years. Microsoft!

Cheap prices, cheap quality, here in SoCal it's the latter. Luckily we don't have the mother nature tearing our fragile stucco sided timber homes apart and they sway nicely with the earthquakes :p

The TRAFFIC THE TRAFFIC in LA is HORRIBLE.....I just came back over the hill from LA....nice 3 hour drive...the stretch after Baker was 80 to 90 mph all the way...

The Median house in LV is $315,000.00....

I think it is time for Motion to sell out and take his profits and run...and I wouldn't be too greedy about it...give your buyer a good deal...

Perhaps things work different where you live. The localities I'm familiar with elect and/or hire officials who sit on a planning and/or zoning board. It's up to this board to create and/or preserve the personality of the municipality.

I can think of two nearby towns, both affluent, which are at opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to planning and management. One has a strick minimum acerage for single family homes, minimum setback, controls on the type/style of commercial buildings...etc etc. The other town has a hodge podge of strip malls (some squeezed into place at strange angles), large cookie cutter condo/townhose complexes, houses built in previously unbuildable lots between other houses....you get the picture.

This isn't the doing of the developers but of the planning, management and zoning authorities. Unfortunately this is common behavior in many parts of the country. Likely caused by the quest to collect more taxes (amongst other reasons).

Amen Brother. What is going to happen to these new developments in 30 - 40 years?:(

They will probably have to be leveled, for the building of another development.:rolleyes:

Its all about money. NOthing else. The greedy political types see tax dollars, the developers go with the flow and maximize the flow of new taxes. Where this dosen't happen, they just raise the taxes beyound all reason. Example, NY state, a $50K house, 100 years old, 2000 sq feet, tax $3,500 per year, a new 2000 sq foot house, tax $20,000 per year. Calif typical 2000 sq foot house, 50 years old, tax $9,100 per year, new calif house 2000 sq ft $1,000,000, tax $20,000 per year, including melo roose. and some people think CA taxes are to low!!! There are a few exceptins for people who bought homes a long time ago, prop 13, they only pay say $4,500, and the people in their 90's that never sold, might have a very low $2,000 rate.

So whats your tax rate, normalized to a 2000 sq foot house? Thats the bill that keeps on coming, even after you die.

From the land of "2000 sq ft mansions"

Taxes for nice comparable homes on Long Island are substantially higher and always have been than in CA.