If you have looked into purchasing a home just about anywhere in California over the past few years, there is a good chance that you walked right into some serious sticker shock.

Rising prices have reached a point where the average family simply can’t afford reasonable housing in many of the communities up and down the Golden State.

In order to help put this growing crisis into perspective, we have pulled together some of the most powerful numbers to paint the picture of what it’s like to call California home in 2019.

Home Prices Rising Faster Than Income

The first thing that you need to know about the housing market in California is that the sale prices of many reasonable homes have increased at nearly double the rate of incomes in those same communities over the past few years.

According to an article from a San Diego news channel, the median monthly housing costs for homeowners in California is 47% higher than the national average. Compare that to income that is only 18% higher than the national average and it’s easy to see why California residents are struggling.

Housing Sales Are Declining

The natural result of homes becoming more expensive is that less and less are selling as those prices continue to rise.

Homebay.com posted an article last year stating that home sales in California declined by 5.5% during the month of August in 2018. That same article projected a decline of more than 3% during 2019.

San Francisco is Ground Zero

If you have heard people talking about the housing problems staring California in the face, you have also likely heard that the most difficult area by far is San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area.

That same article from Homebay.com compared a median list price per square foot of $1,036 in San Francisco to a national average of only $150.

Not Building Enough New Housing

The basic economic law of supply and demand tells us that one solution to this crisis would be to create a new supply of homes to lower the current demand. Unfortunately, there is not nearly enough new construction taking place in California.

According to a KQED article, the state believes that it needs to build somewhere in the neighborhood of 180,000 new housing units. However, over the course of the past ten years, the average number of new homes built has been less than half of that.

Homelessness is on the Rise

The natural result of a situation where there is not nearly enough affordable housing to meet demand is an increasing homeless population.

And if we double back to the first article we looked at, we can see that California is now home to a ridiculous 25% of the nation’s homeless population.

Anyone looking to buy, sell, or rent in the state of California over the next few years is going to have a very difficult time justifying the extreme cost. And at the moment, there is no clear end in sight.