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Comment by chiph | Hacker News Reader

Back during the .com era, I got bored one day and looked up the cheapest house for sale in Cupertino. $300k got you what would have been a crack house in the RTP area - run down, no lot, chain-link fence to keep people out.

I just repeated this experiment - $500k for a 1-acre lot with a shack on it, or $925k for a 2 bedroom condo. Those prices are insane. Yet every time I think they're unsupportable - they go higher.

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The insanity has kind of infected me, now I want to see the 1 acre lot for 500K. You could build a lot of 925K condos on that! edit: looked on Zillow and the cheapest condo/townhome was 2.19 million for the new ones just built off Stevens Canyon where the dump trucks from the quarry pass by five days a week (seven when the building boom was here). There used to be a gas station here until the condo developer bought it and tore it down so they are probably right on top of an EPA site. The cheapest homes were estimated at 1.4-1.5 million for three foreclosures.

Only if you could get permission to build on it. And if permission were easy to come by, a developer would have already bid $5M+ for the lot.

The lot (which as you guessed, is on Stevens Canyon). Former gas station was my guess too.

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/17580-Stev...

That lot/abandoned home is pretty far back on Stevens Canyon, it's regularly 10 degrees cooler there than the rest of Stevens Canyon because it's in shade most of the day, most of the year, but manages to get a lot of car traffic because it's a shortcut from highway 9 to Cupertino.

I was mistaken about the street address of the gas station turned condos, those are on Foothill just before it turns into Stevens Canyon https://www.zillow.com/community/cupertino-live-work/2092128...

> $500k for a 1-acre lot with a shack on it

That sounds low for Cupertino

Cupertino is not exactly the cheapest area in SV. Though $500k I think is motivated by the lot size. San Jose is cheaper.

Also don't discount the fact the USD went through some serious deflation. In the name of jump starting the economy, our govt literally made money out of thin air and made it rain.

Wouldn't that be inflationary?

Printing more money is inflation

Wait when did the USD go through deflation?

Well, don't forget that the reason the economy needed jump starting is that $4 trillion evaporated in the crisis of 2008.

You mean inflation (well really, quantitative easing, we actually have been below target inflation for years), but that would mean housing everywhere has spiked in price. That's not the case, housing in a few markets has far outpaced anything else.

>, we actually have been below target inflation for years

no, we have crafted something called CPI, that charts how much consumer goods cost, and tracked below the target for that. Meanwhile, coastal RE, equities, business valuations and skyrocketed at unprecedented rates...

I'm going to assume you've read a bit about crypto currencies, and are now confident in their superiority to fiat currencies. I recommend spending some time learning about basic macroeconomics before drawing too many conclusions about the government "literally making money out of thin air". You can get the kindle version of Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money for $1 [0] or pick it up from your local library for free!

[0] https://www.amazon.com/General-Theory-Employment-Interest-Il...

Inflation is responsible for the wage slavery we find ourselves in today. Those peddling inflation and control of the money supply as a necessary component of modern economics are peddling snake oil. Price discovery is hard enough without an invisible handle manipulating the units you’re trying to measure value in.

Good thing Bitfinex isn't magically making money out of thin air with Tether as we speak...

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