Housing costs in Los Angeles remain stubbornly high as residents continue to flee the city — and experts have shed light on the under-the-radar reason fueling the discrepancy.
Figures released earlier this year show that LA lost 10,000 people last year, while the broader county saw 64,000 people leave — the most of any county in the state.
But despite the exodus, the housing market hasn’t seen prices dip. The average LA home value stands at $956,465, down 1.2% over the past year, according to Zillow. Home prices have doubled over the last decade.
Experts said that the size of the city’s households helps explain the contrast.
“People are moving out of LA, but households are becoming smaller, so the number of households that require housing is actually rising,” Stephanie Hawke, associate research director of land use and supply at the Terner Center, told The Los Angeles Times.
One- to two-person households are rising while three-plus-person households are falling. The average household size in the county has dipped to 2.81, according to U.S. census data.
“A growing housing stock is accommodating fewer people,” Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, told the Times.
Existing homes and apartments that once housed many people are now housing fewer. The shift is attributed to declining birth rates as younger people marry less often.
There’s also the chronic problem of California simply not building housing fast enough, experts said, despite efforts by the government to boost development.
Additionally, a report last month revealed that the residents fleeing California are actually relatively poorer compared to their neighbors and find it hard to maintain their quality of life in the state. That means the people who stay or replace them tend to be higher-income earners able to cover increasing housing costs.
Therefore, rents stay high since the housing market doesn’t need to adjust.
For those who do flee California, high housing costs has been one worry they can now leave behind.
“You just get way more bang for your buck in Texas than you do In California,” Matt Ingles, who left LA for the greater Austin area, previously told The Post previously. “My quality of life here is significantly better. But that’s more than just finances.”
