LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: The house that sold for nearly $800,000 over asking price speaks to the inequity of California.
Dave Clark, a Keller Williams agent who’s been in the business for 30 years, said the house had only one owner prior to this year’s sale. A couple bought it brand new in 1963, raised two kids and held onto the house until recently, when the gentleman followed his wife in death and their son and daughter sold it.
“I think they paid around $25,000,” said Clark. “So it went up in value about 100 times.”
That’s astounding. But median incomes, unfortunately, have gone up only about 10 times over the same period.
Incomes at the top of the pay scale, meanwhile, have exploded. An op-ed in the L.A. Times last week said Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have more wealth than the bottom half of the country combined. The op-ed, by Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie, said today’s 400 richest Americans are 10 times richer than 1983’s richest people were, but median family income has declined in that time.
Weird that we’re in a populist moment.