I would not necessarily say this is supply and demand...... those rules of marketing and market trend leave out two important things, greed and vanity. when you calculate those two things in you can have individuals raise prices increasingly playing upon the vanity of consumers who will increasingly pay higher and higher amounts in an attempt to show off. It may seem silly but the very people who do it are some of the very people who post here......
So the prices go up because in Cali a big part of the mentallity is to show off how much money you can spend on what others can not or will not. As long as people keep doing this then there will be individuals who are in positions to exploit it by increasing the prices. This does not mean that EVERYONE wishes to be a part of this cycle and they WILL leave the area either by choice to avoid the increase or because they are forced to as they can not keep up and over extend. Comparing your houses and mentality of consumers in the south and east is truly apples and oranges. Most of us live in houses just as large that have land attached to them and pay substantially less.
