Los Angeles

The California Headquarters Exodus Continues

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A new Hoover Institution (Stanford University) report indicates that California continues to shed corporate headquarters locations to other states.  read more »

Housing Affordability in California: Part 1 — The Situation

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There is probably no issue more requiring resolution in California than poor housing affordability. It is a threat to the preservation of the middle-class and the competitiveness of the state.  read more »

Pandemic Reversal?

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A recent article in the San Jose Mercury-News reports that transit ridership in “car crazy” Los Angeles has exceeded ridership in the “transit mecca” of the San Francisco Bay Area, a “reversal that could remake California’s mass transit landscape.” This would be a lot more interesting if the writer hadn’t done the arithmetic wrong.  read more »

The Fall of Los Angeles

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For much of the 20th century, Los Angeles symbolised the future. Over the course of the century, the population grew 40-fold to nearly four million people.  read more »

Who Will Be the Next Mayor of Los Angeles?

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Central Avenue, the historic heart of South Los Angeles, has seen better days. Once the home to leading black institutions, like the famous Dunbar Hotel, where jazz and other musical greats stayed, it was also an industrial powerhouse that promised decent work for those fleeing the Jim Crow South.  read more »

California's Economy May Seem Healthy, But Just Wait for the Next Recession

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The California economy may seem healthy on the surface, with home prices soaring, Silicon Valley booming and the state government posting big multi-year state budget surpluses thanks to a massive surge in capital gains tax revenues and income tax revenues from tech stocks.  read more »

California's Vanished Dreams, By the Numbers

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Even today amid a mounting exodus among those who can afford it, and with its appeal diminished to businesses and newcomers, California, legendary state of American dreams, continues to inspire optimism among progressive boosters.  read more »

Americans Do Not Want to Return to Urban Living

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The Census Bureau recently released data on domestic migration that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their findings were heavily covered in the press with headlines such as “Cities Lost Population in 2021” and “The pandemic city exodus revealed: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago lost the most residents.”  read more »

California's SB9 Housing Bill Starting To Sound Like Prop 13

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That rumbling you hear in the residential real estate market is SB9—either a silver bullet or a boogeyman, depending on where you stand.

Senate Bill 9 is the latest law with the potential to reshape California.  read more »

Does California Know What Time it Is?

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Has the California proposition changed fundamentally? And does it matter for real estate?

The answer to the first question is yes—the state had a net population decline in 2021, the first drop since it began annual counts more than a century ago.  read more »