Interesting that we had the same effect for housing (at least in the Bay Area) during and immediately after the pandemic. Hot zip codes like San Francisco, Pal

Interesting that we had the same effect for housing (at least in the Bay Area) during and immediately after the pandemic. Hot zip codes like San Francisco, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Portola Valley, Woodside, etc. actually fell. Second-tier suburbs like the mid-peninsula, Sunnyvale, Fremont, Berkeley, Oakland, El Cerrito, etc. exploded. I suspect that it's a function of shortages. When there are not enough goods to go around at the high end, some fraction of those buyers get displaced to the next tier down. They keep their high-end incomes and ability to pay, though, and bid against each other so that the next tier of goods becomes almost as expensive.