This article is full of misinformation. What he says may be true of the future after the bubble but the numbers over the past 40 years, in my own experience and that of my acquaintances, is quite different. In 1969, my father died and left me a small inheritance, about $5,000. I used $3500 of that to make a 10% down payment on a home in South Pasadena, a small suburb of Los Angeles, considered at the time to be smoggy and less desirable than many.

In 1972, I sold the house for what I paid for it and bought one in Orange County for $67,000. I added a pool for $14,000 in 1975. About 15 years ago, the small (1500 square feet) house in South Pasadena was listed for $595,000. It turned out that, as commutes got slower, location was more important than smog although that had been cleaned up in the interval.

The Orange County home by 2005 was worth about $1 million. I had bought another smaller house in Orange County in 1991 for $259,000 and sold that one last year, AFTER the real estate estate crash, for $600,000. In 2005 I turned down $850,000.

I will grant that other areas of southern California did not see such appreciation but the author has obviously little experience with the local real estate market.