We Californians know, or should know, that while living in this state has many positive aspects, we are paying through the nose for the experience.<\/p>\n
A flurry of recent studies drives home how deeply California residents must dig to meet costs of living that are either at or near the highest of any state.<\/p>\n
One comes from the Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office, the Legislature\u2019s advisor on the state budget, delving into the astronomic costs of buying a home.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0LAO study\u00a0found \u201cCalifornia home prices far exceed the rest of the country.\u201d Mid-tier homes, those roughly in the middle of the price range, are more than twice as expensive as the typical mid-tier home elsewhere in the U.S. Monthly payments for such homes run about $5,500 in California, 74% more than what they were 25 years ago.<\/p>\n
The study also found that the annual household income needed to qualify for a mortgage on a mid-tier California home in September was about $221,000 \u2014 more than two\u00a0times the median California household income in 2024, which was\u00a0$102,000.<\/p>\n
For a bottom-tier home, about $136,000\u00a0in annual income is needed to qualify for a mortgage \u2014 about 33% higher than median household income was in 2024.<\/p>\n
The data illustrate why California has the\u00a0second lowest rate of home ownership<\/a>\u00a0in the nation. Just 55.3% of Californians live in homes they or their families own, slightly higher than New York\u2019s ownership rate.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not surprising that hundreds of thousands of California residents, unable to aspire to home ownership, have\u00a0decamped for more affordable states<\/a>, such as Texas, where\u00a0home prices are a fraction of California\u2019s.<\/a><\/p>\n Those who do migrate to other states find not only are houses much less expensive but fuel for their cars and utilities to light, heat and cool their homes are markedly less expensive.<\/p>\n The Center for Jobs & the Economy, an offshoot of the California Business Roundtable, continuously monitors energy costs in California and other states.\u00a0Its latest report\u00a0<\/a>says gasoline, averaging $4.64 a gallon in California, is\u00a0as much as $1.50 a gallon higher<\/a>\u00a0than in Texas and other states. California\u2019s electrical power rates are roughly twice as high.<\/p>\n Another take on California living costs comes from the Transparency Foundation, a conservative economic think tank.<\/p>\n It gathered a wide variety of factors and calculated living costs for an upper-middle class California family with a $130,000 annual income. It concluded\u00a0the family would pay $29,753 more per year<\/a>\u00a0than the national average for housing, utilities, health care, taxes and other costs of living.<\/p>\n \u201cThis report should be a wake-up call to all Californians, that they are being unfairly punished by the bad policies imposed on them by their politicians \u2014 and they are literally paying the price for it,\u201d Dave McCulloch, the foundation\u2019s chairman, said in a statement about the report.<\/p>\n A\u00a0new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California<\/a>\u00a0confirms that Californians worry about living costs. Nearly a third of those polled said they, or someone in their household,\u00a0have reduced food purchases<\/a>\u00a0to save money.<\/p>\n The California Farm Bureau revealed this week that a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people next week will\u00a0cost a California family $72.61<\/a>, well above the national average of $55.18.<\/p>\n