Sacramento Real Estate Prices Up 2,214 Per Cent
I thought I’d throw in a little counter-point to the barrage of news about how bad things are compared to their best years on record. Recently a web site visitor stopped by and let me know that this home on Verner Ave, currently listed at $299,000, was purchased when it was a new home by his parents in 1956 for $13,500.
It’s a commonplace of physics that Newtonian mechanics worked perfectly well at a macro resolution, but failed to account well for the behavior of particles when later applied to the micro level — hence quantum mechanics. (And it “failed” again at speeds approaching the speed of light, but that’s another issue).
Similarly, the Sacramento Bee’s three quarter inch headlines about the housing slump are perfectly valid and I agree with them 100%, on the Macro level. But even the Bee points out that this slump is compared to a “stunning housing boom that saw increases of 103 percent over a five year period.” (Sac Bee, October 18, 2006).
So, yes, indeed, prices are down about seven percent from last year in Sacramento County. or they’re up 2,214 percent from fifty years ago. Meantime gravitation is a phenomenal force responsible for pushing planets around, or a seriously weak little business compared to the forces at play in that glass of water you may have had recently. It’s all a matter of which resolution you’re talking about.
