California Is Unique

For some reason, I’m on the email distribution list of “For the Love of Old Houses,” and one thing that this has confirmed for me is the old adage: “The three most important ingredients in evaluating real estate are location, location, and location.”

The house pictured above was built in 1919 near the ocean in Carmel, CA, about 100 miles south of San Francisco. It’s on the market for $7.995 million.  Now, consider picking this up, moving it almost anywhere else in the United States, and trying to get even half of that.

Conservatives like to say the bloom is off the rose for California and other “woke” parts of the country.  Tell that to investors in Chevron, Meta/Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Well Fargo, Apple, Disney, Intel, Google, Northop Grumman, and Oracle. These companies are a big part of the reason that, if it were a country, California would be the fourth largest economy on Earth.

It’s true that California is often the locus of innovations that make our lives longer and healthier, not to mention more productive and convenient.  And perhaps that has given us a reputation for being progressive.  Ya know what?  We’re actually proud of that.