A spate of new studies gives the lowdown on California’s sky-high living costs

We Californians know, or should know, that while living in this state has many positive aspects, we are paying through the nose for the experience.

A flurry of recent studies drives home how deeply California residents must dig to meet costs of living that are either at or near the highest of any state.

One comes from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the Legislature’s advisor on the state budget, delving into the astronomic costs of buying a home.

The LAO study found “California home prices far exceed the rest of the country.” Mid-tier homes, those roughly in the middle of the price range, are more than twice as expensive as the typical mid-tier home elsewhere in the U.S. Monthly payments for such homes run about $5,500 in California, 74% more than what they were 25 years ago.

The study also found that the annual household income needed to qualify for a mortgage on a mid-tier California home in September was about $221,000 — more than two times the median California household income in 2024, which was $102,000.

For a bottom-tier home, about $136,000 in annual income is needed to qualify for a mortgage — about 33% higher than median household income was in 2024.

The data illustrate why California has the second lowest rate of home ownership in the nation. Just 55.3% of Californians live in homes they or their families own, slightly higher than New York’s ownership rate.

It’s not surprising that hundreds of thousands of California residents, unable to aspire to home ownership, have decamped for more affordable states, such as Texas, where home prices are a fraction of California’s.

Those who do migrate to other states find not only are houses much less expensive but fuel for their cars and utilities to light, heat and cool their homes are markedly less expensive.

The Center for Jobs & the Economy, an offshoot of the California Business Roundtable, continuously monitors energy costs in California and other states. Its latest report says gasoline, averaging $4.64 a gallon in California, is as much as $1.50 a gallon higher than in Texas and other states. California’s electrical power rates are roughly twice as high.

Another take on California living costs comes from the Transparency Foundation, a conservative economic think tank.

It gathered a wide variety of factors and calculated living costs for an upper-middle class California family with a $130,000 annual income. It concluded the family would pay $29,753 more per year than the national average for housing, utilities, health care, taxes and other costs of living.

“This report should be a wake-up call to all Californians, that they are being unfairly punished by the bad policies imposed on them by their politicians — and they are literally paying the price for it,” Dave McCulloch, the foundation’s chairman, said in a statement about the report.

A new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California confirms that Californians worry about living costs. Nearly a third of those polled said they, or someone in their household, have reduced food purchases to save money.

The California Farm Bureau revealed this week that a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people next week will cost a California family $72.61, well above the national average of $55.18.

Finally, there’s a new report from WalletHub, a website devoted to personal finance, implying that Californians are taking on more debt to pay their rising bills.

In this year’s third quarter — July through September — the average California household added $880 in new debt, increasing the total owed to $259,773, second only to residents of Hawaii.

All together, Californians’ personal debt increased by $11.8 billion during the quarter. Now it’s nearly $3.2 trillion, just a bit lower than their $3.6 trillion in annual personal income.

A truly staggering number.