Have any of you tried to buy or even rent recently in LA or SF bay area? It is crazy out there. Huge demand and little supply. Prices are through the roof. It must be because those droves of people are leaving the state to go live in Oklahoma.

G

Absolutely! No place with weather like here! No rain between April and November. Sunny most all the time. Not hot! No air conditioning needed and not too cold, hardly any heat needed. No bugs! Porsches can be driven all year around and they last forever! You can ski the mountains and surf the Pacific on the same day! Really, where is another place like it? Is it then that only Repulicans hate the state?

We disagree on most things, why would this be any different.

George, it has been disproportionately expensive to buy real estate in LA or SF as long as I have been alive. Still pretty high, but fell, a lot. Most of the rest of the country had a smaller hit in RE values and they bounced back faster.

How old is this thread anyway? Only 6 months, hmm.

Any Metro area is out of touch with rural areas.

The prices are high because the demand is high which seems to be counterintuitive to the thread...

Are you hating the Capitalist idea of maximizing profit on the sale of real estate?

I know you're too smart to be so closed-minded. You know I've done a lot of traveling all over the place. Last night I came back from SF - my fifth trip to CA in 2013 alone - and I'm going to SD next week. I've been to CA probably 40x in the last 17 yrs. and avg. about five trips there per year for business (i.e. I don't spend my own money there;)).

I wouldn't live there for all the money in the world. I love visiting and I love returning to AZ. Honestly, I have never met a rude person in CA and I do a lot of business there. I really love visiting, love the weather, the motorcycle culture, the cars, the palm trees, blah, blah. But its laws and politics are insane.

My own paycheck has suffered because of clients from CA moving to other states outside my territory. Hell, I deal mostly with non-profits who pay no corp. income taxes and they're even moving away because of the punitive costs of doing business there.

The price is high because the supply is low. If the banks put all their foreclosures on the market, or they had been building anything in the last 5 years, it would be a different story. The prices of rural property in California are also disproportionately high. I know a number of people that commute several hours because they either could not find anything within reach where they preferred to live due to expense. This has driven up prices in surrounding rural areas.

The percentage of commercial space that is vacant is truly staggering.

California is a great place, it just needs better management running it.

Rick, some of us don't spend too much time thinking about politics and laws, and get on with the business of enjoying life :)

^ this. There are many things in life that only affect you if you want them to.

Exactly. I don't know anyone who obsesses about things they can't control like some of the kooks here. If I even listen to NPR too much in the car, I get depressed. Between the day's news at L.A. City Hall and the day's news in Syria, it's all bad. I just push a different button and listen to some Led Zep. Same reason I try to avoid the PARF board, it does absolutely nothing but lower the quality of my life.

The extent of my thinking about politics and laws on most days is avoiding speeding tickets. :cool:

I don't either because I live in a state that's pretty low cost and light on crushing regs. You have enough FU money to also not have to worry about such things, yet you still left for MT.

I'm right in that income range where my lifestyle would take a dive if I had to move to CA with the same job. I like owning a decent house and not spending hours a day in traffic. Make a lot less and you pay no state or federal income taxes. Make a lot more and you can easily afford them.

there was a time when politics and law didn't intrude on every aspect of my life and crush the joy out of it.


it's not paying attention that let california get this way.

The only CA metric that gives me pause is the high taxes - and how the funds are, IMO, misspent. Laws and politics tend to be 'insane' in many places and frankly I'm not interested - so I guess I am partially to blame for the mess that is Sacramento.

But as others here have already mentioned it's all about being satisfied with your life. Everyone has a different priority list - SoCal pretty much ticks all the boxes for me. YMMV.

Looking the other way - that really helps.

Speeder - Motion - Nostatic: do you never think what it may be like for those that ARE impacted by our crazy laws? Do you worry about your kids being able to live at your standard of living when they grow up?

Of course I worry about my kid - but that is state-independent.

As for the "crazy laws", can you tell me which ones impact your day-to-day life in a profoundly negative way? I'm interested to hear. As far as I can tell, the ones that get the most attention here involve hi-cap magazine bans, CCW restrictions, and environmental laws.

+1

The things you guys get worked up about just amaze me. Life is too short.

As far as your kids go: If they are part of the problem, then you should worry. The trick is to teach your kids to not be part of the problem. They will hopefully have some say in the direction their lives take, so they can always choose whether or not to be part of the madness. I would hope you are in the same position.

I have a buddy living in San Jose who is always questioning his lifestyle, and what he sacrifices on a daily business to live in SJ and pull down pretty good bank. When all he really wants to do is be in Montana on a trout stream. Its pretty much the same situation most of us find ourselves in at some point. Some people act on it, some people stay put and ***** about it.

I haven't been able to leave California. I still have a place there and am there often. Was just sitting on Salt Creek Beach yesterday, enjoying paradise :)

I'm gonna make the wild guess you are a MT resident, so you can live in CA up to 180 days per year and be exempt from a lot of their BS (as Hugh plans to do in a few years). You probably don't pay income tax to CA and you probably buy as many of your consumer items as possible in MT, since there's no sales tax there. Again, you have enough FU money to exempt yourself from so much of the BS in CA. But for the working stiffs who can't afford to "officially" reside in a low/no tax state, CA is an extremely expensive place to live. I have been called by more than one CA Pelican, asking me to let them register their car to my address here and even to get them hi-cap mags that they can't legally get in CA. Those aren't issues for you, but for the folks stuck in CA because of work or family, they do cut into quality of life.

This picture is about three years old. It's a little better now that the work is finished

Todd:

I run a small business. I have approximately 80 employees at any given time. We own about 30 over the road truck plus a bunch of old equipment. AQMD tell me that I must retire 4 of my best large trucks because they don't meet their new requirements. These are products legally purchased new in CA. That's a crazy law. I could at least understand if they applied it to new purchases, but it seems highly unfair to make me get rid of these. And I'm an honestly not sure if I can afford to replace them with new (at $85K each).

Employees. They are our strength. We treat them well and like family. No one quits. but have you ever dealt with the Labor Board? Do you not hear or see the attorney ads encouraging employees to make claims against their employees? It is because the CA legislature bent to the will of the trial atty lobby and allowed individual lawyers to "find" claimants. So now they run ads (in English and Spanish) to go after your employer. The fines imposed go directly to the coffers of the Labor board. Same for AQMD BTW. HR pros tell me that they ALWAYS find something - it's their job.

Ever deal with CA's Worker's Comp system - those in the know say it's the worst of all the states.

Frivolous Lawsuits - don't get me started. There's no changing this one - the trial lawyers own the Assembly, Senate and Governor.

Traffic touches me every day. A myriad of regs keep CA from adding any new (non-HOV) lanes. Last new freeway - the 210 - was planned 50 years ago and opened a decade ago. No new freeways are even in the planning phase.

And then there are all the new taxes, new regs.

An zero relief in sight.

I often think that I ought to have my head examined for trying to actual build something in this state.