Housing woes spur Bay Area residents to ponder exodus from costly region, poll says

San Jose Mercury-News ^ | September 19, 2017 | By GEORGE AVALOS

[Oldeconomybuyer]

BERKELEY — The Bay Area’s brutal spikes in home prices have spurred more than half of its residents to dream of escaping from the expensive region, and the urge to flee is strongest among millennials, according to new poll results.

In July, the median price of a single-family home in the nine-county Bay Area was $804,000, up 10.1 percent from a year earlier.

The new Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies Poll determined that 65 percent of the Bay Area’s registered voters and 48 percent of voters in California describe the issue of housing affordability as an “extremely serious” problem.

The poll also found that 51 percent of Bay Area residents have considered moving out of the nine-county region, compared with 56 percent statewide who have considered relocating.

Young people, such as millennials, are more likely than older people to be seeking an escape from the region. The poll found that 65 percent of people aged 18 through 29 have considered a move out of their region of the state, while just 38 percent of people aged 65 or older had thought about leaving. About 69 percent of people aged 30 through 39 had considered a move out of their area, the survey determined.

“The only folks who are cheering our region’s astronomical housing costs are the folks at U-Haul who are helping residents move right out of the state,” said Carl Guardino, president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. “But this problem is eminently fixable with political courage. People with jobs need a place to go home to sleep at night.”

[Night Hides Not]

We need a wall to keep Californians out of Texas.

[okie 54]

You Prune Pickers can go anywhere you want as long it is within the confines of the state’s borders

[Dilbert San Diego]

Thanks, you mentioned some of the intangible issues which are part of why people live where they live.

I feel about San Diego the way you feel about your home in the Bay area. There are problems in this area, but there are benefits too. I’m also in a position in which I bought a home decades ago, and watched it skyrocket in value.

The article mentions millennials as a key group who want to move away. Part of that could well be due to them not being able to ever see themselves afford a house there.

[onedoug]

Just keep your yankee ass out of the South!

[rb22982]

Wow that is an insane water bill! I hate our $60-$90/month (was $40-50 in my last city).

[fr_freak]

In PA, companies have fled Philadelphia crime and taxes by going to the suburbs.

Bay Area could do likewise.

They have already. In the early 90s, the Sacramento area was just "a cow town". Then the Bay Area types discovered that Sacramento existed out of desperation to find affordable places to live (every other community within 50-100 miles of the Bay Area had already become a commuter bedroom community). So, a bunch of tech companies and what-not moved large offices to Sac, and now Sac is a mini Bay Area, and by "mini" I mean a sprawling over-priced suburban wasteland just like most of the Bay Area.