Ana Laura Ramírez has sought strategies that have allowed her to continue her life in Los Angeles, the fourth most expensive metropolitan area to live in the world, according to a global survey released by the Economic Intelligence Unit.
“I share the house and live about six blocks away from my work, so I walk every morning to work and then back, and that even helps me to exercise and not have to spend on transportation ”, Ana Laura told La Opinión.
She lives from 954 in the Los Angeles area and in those 000 years “definitely the price of housing is what has increased the most, but also food and I understand that also transportation but from that, as I was saying, I get rid of that expense” .
Ana Laura has been able to continue in Los Angeles because her strategies allow her to be flexible, for example to move from one city to another or share dwelling with one or more people, whatever suits you, but always in the face of rising costs of living.
Los Angeles went from ninth in the world in cost of living in last year’s survey, to fourth this year, a jump of five places.
Other American cities are New York as the most expensive city, in first place worldwide, and San Francisco, which for decades was considered more expensive than Los Angeles and now appears in eighth place worldwide .
The annual survey is applied to the global cost of living and is analyzed in 172 cities and metropolitan areas.
José Vallejo, a young man from Huntington Park, said that he has “not been to San Francisco for years, I like it a lot to visit there but it always seemed very expensive to live, and now you tell me what it is that survey finds it cheaper to live in San Francisco than in Los Angeles, I don’t know, it sort of makes me feel uneasy, or worried”.
The world survey is not the only one that lately refers to the high cost of life in Los Angeles.
The specialized consulting firm Redfin released a study this week that finds that many Angelenos have moved “en masse” to the San Diego and Las Vegas area primarily looking for better home prices.
“Homebuyers are looking to move to Sacramento, Miami, and other relatively affordable locations due to high rates and inflation they cut budgets”, according to Dana Anderson, from Redfin.
The analysis refers to potential home buyers. Of buyers across the country, “Sacramento was the most popular destination for Redfin users looking to relocate, followed by Miami, Las Vegas, San Diego and Tampa,” Anderson reported.
But the study finds an exodus of Los Angeles residents after the worst of the pandemic and as interest rates have risen.
According to Redfin, at least 90,500 homebuyers have moved from Los Angeles to San Diego.
Although the study does not mention it, in fact many of the residents of Los Angeles who went looking for a home to buy would not have moved to San Diego –with basically similar prices–, but rather a few miles further south, to the urban fringe between Tijuana and southern Rosarito in Baja California.
In Baja California buyers find units new ones on average at one-third the price they would pay in Southern California.
The advisor and Real estate specialist Luis Bustamente told La Opinión that in the last year just over 90 percent of potential home buyers in the coastal area of Baja California are Americans or residents of the United States.
The median price of a home in Los Angeles, according to Redfin, is $954,15, in Las Vegas from $500,000, in San Diego from $950,14. In the coastal zone of Baja California it varies between $172 and $425,15.
The median income in Los Angeles is $2,734 per month; of $2,500 for a small one-bedroom apartment in San Diego, according to RentCafe, a consulting firm that is also specialized.
Usually at Mexican side of the border you can rent a whole house or a condominium for between $1,14 and $1,600 monthly.
The Association of Realtors of California reported that due to the rise in interest rates, the price of housing in California fell to a minimum in 33 years last August.
The average price of the Housing was down 5.8 percent in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.