Home Buyers Heading Inland
For Jennifer and Chuck Davis, selling their small home on the fringe of the Bay Area meant freedom from the tense, two-job churn that had taken over their young lives.
So the couple recently sold their Sonoma County house for $225,000 more than they paid for it in 1996 and moved to tranquil Lake County, where Jennifer’s only job is to take care of her two young sons.
“The value of the time I get to spend with my kids is just immeasurable,” said Jennifer, 33, a former job counselor for teenagers. “Life’s much slower here, so I’m much less frustrated in trying to deal with it. And to be in your early 30s and have no debt, that’s just an incredible feeling.”
The Davises discovered that despite a prolonged run-up in housing prices, Californians can still relocate within the state by moving away from the high-priced coastal markets. They got a lakeside house on an acre for $295,000, and truck driver Chuck transferred his job to an office nearby.
While thousands of Californians left the state during the last decade, many to seek cheaper homes, thousands more are now moving to affordable communities within the state that still offer cash-strapped young buyers a start and equity-rich baby boomers a way to retire in style.
As the median price of an existing single-family house in California soared past $400,000 this year, a California Assn. of Realtors survey found that nearly one-fourth of home sellers last year relocated to another county in the state, while about half stayed in the same county.
Nearly one-fourth of buyers and sellers responding to the Realtors’ Annual Housing Survey said they made that move for affordability, while 19% said they moved for quality of life considerations -- the top two reasons.
“There’s a continual decline in affordability, and people are being pushed inland, where land is cheaper,” said Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the Realtors association.
“You’ve got this gigantic pool of baby boomers who are retiring at a younger age,” she said. “They’re looking to Lake or Shasta counties, or Bakersfield. There are actually some lovely areas in the Central Valley.”
The Realtors group reported that the median price of an existing single-family home in California rose to $406,390 during the first quarter of 2004, including a norm of $398,000 in Southern California, but only about $246,000 in the Central Valley.
To find an affordable house, buyers can still move to the commuter towns of Southern California’s wind-blown high desert or to the senior citizen resorts of the low desert.
They can buy a cabin in the rugged San Bernardino Mountains, endure the dank winters and stultifying summers of the Central Valley.
Or they can pack up and settle on the state’s rural, but scenic, eastern and northern flanks.
The $150,000 houses of Bakersfield, Adelanto and Desert Hot Springs are well known around the Southland.
But fewer buyers understand that they can also find inexpensive homes amid the pines near Big Bear Lake, under the oaks in Visalia not far from Sequoia National Park or in the shadow of snow-capped, dormant volcanoes in Northern California.
“We paid $227,000 for a nice three-bedroom house on three acres in the edge of the forest,” said planning newsletter editor Paul Shigley, who cashed out of his Ventura County home 20 months ago and moved to Shasta County, where his wife is a city administrator.
“It’s a little different world up here; the pace of life is a bit slower. But if you’re coming, bring your own job,” said Shigley, 39, who works for a Ventura-based publisher via home computer.
A DataQuick Information Systems analysis of home and condo sales in 769 California cities and communities during the first quarter of 2004 revealed that the typical price in nearly half those areas was below $300,000, despite a sharp increase in the last three years.
In 41 communities, the median dwelling price -- where half cost more and half less -- was under $100,000. Those included Clear Lake, a retirement town about 120 miles north of San Francisco, and Barstow in the Mojave Desert.
In 43 other communities, the median sales price ranged from $100,000 to $150,000, including Oroville in the foothill grasslands north of Sacramento and Susanville on the eastern Sierra Nevada boundary of Lassen National Forest.
Locally, dwellings in San Bernardino, and in Crestline and Running Springs near Lake Arrowhead, also sold for about $150,000. The cheapest Los Angeles County cities were Lancaster at $185,000 and Compton at $200,000.
In Desert Hot Springs, a typical dwelling sold for $155,000.
“The desert is still one of the most affordable areas in California,” said Pat Fredericks, a Westlake Village transplant to Indian Wells.
“The heat feels good to my old bones,” said Fredericks, 62. She moved from a 2,500-square-foot house abutting Santa Monica Mountains parkland four years ago when her husband, Ward, retired. They bought a much larger desert house for about the $400,000 selling price of their Ventura County home.
Appleton-Young said the inland migration was changing the nature of communities all over California.
“The problem is the jobs aren’t always there. The housing moves out there first,” she said. “San Bernardino and Riverside are the best examples. They were bedroom communities, but now you see a bustling diversified economy.”
The same thing has happened near Sacramento, she said.
Indeed, demographers project that the population of the world’s most productive farming region, the 500-mile-long Central Valley, will more than double by 2040 as cities from Bakersfield to Redding absorb California’s unceasing growth.
Many buyers from Southern California upgrade to a custom home and still pocket lots of equity, said Bob Osherman, an agent in Visalia. “I know a Highway Patrol officer who moved up here, but still drives down there” to work.
Investors from the coast are also snatching up houses costing $120,000 to $180,000, Osherman said. “We had 15% appreciation last year, so unfortunately a lot of our people here are being priced out of the market.”
In Fresno, real estate broker Karen Avenell said buyers were coming from San Jose and the Bay Area, including many young families seeking homes and jobs, and often, their retired parents to be near grandchildren.
The median price for a Fresno-area house or condo was $176,500 last quarter, DataQuick reported. But a recent check of new single-family homes in Fresno found none for less than $199,000.
“We just had two nurses in here” from the San Jose area, said agent Marty Couto in Fresno. “They work for Kaiser [hospital] and can transfer here, where they can afford a home.”
The same phenomenon is occurring in Northern California, where housing pressures force families north to traditionally low-priced counties such as Lake, and into the Central Valley.
But even in Lake County prices are soaring, Cindy McDonald said. Three years ago, at age 46, she fled the Bay Area with her husband, David, and more than $350,000 in equity.
Now the two-story, lake-view home they bought for $268,000 is appraised at $468,000. And the 15 acres they bought is being subdivided for new homes. Cindy has become a real estate agent, and Ward is a trainee property appraiser.
“It’s scary to take that plunge,” said Cindy, a former sales executive for Procter & Gamble. “But it’s also kind of liberating. I’m making more money up here than I ever did in the Bay Area.”
Jim Barnett, 61, a retired mechanic at San Francisco International Airport, did his Internet homework before selling a two-bedroom cabin near Half Moon Bay for $475,000. He and his wife considered moving to rural Colorado.
“But we found we could get a lot more for our money in Susanville,” said Barnett, who bought a four-acre property for $175,000 in 2000. “And it’s a lot closer to my family in Sacramento.”
Dan Sweeney, 60, thinks he found just the place in Cummings Valley, about 4,000 feet just above Tehachapi.
He recently bought a 40-acre horse ranch with a 2,600-square-foot main house, a side house for two of his children, an apartment for another son and a barn-music room for his grand piano. He sold a large home in Moorpark to cover the ranch’s $750,000 price.
“The same property would have cost $3 million down here,” said the Simi Valley businessman, who commutes an hour and 40 minutes to work. “It’s an entirely different lifestyle up there, and I didn’t have to move to the Midwest to get it.”
