Pure clickbait to define a start home solely by the price and nothing else. The titles claim is correct overall, correct for some cities, but incorrect for many cities. No mention of volume - how many homes are in the large “start home” band v the small top 5% band?

Regardless, even calling them lower cost houses still supports the thesis: more data on the K shaped economy.

> Starter homes are defined for this analysis as those in the 5th to 35th percentile of home values in a given region. Nationally, the typical starter home is worth about $202,000, up 2.3% from a year ago. Luxury homes are those in the top 5% of home values in a given region. The typical luxury home is worth about $1.9 million, up 3.1% from a year ago.

> The divergence is sharpest in San Francisco. Luxury sales across the metro area surged 21.6% year over year in May, while luxury inventory fell sharply and fewer listings cut their price. Starter-home buyers are hanging back: sales slipped 1.2% year over year in May, while more than twice as many starter-home sellers cut their price in June (22.2%) to try to entice buyers off the sidelines than did luxury buyers (9.4%).

Yeah, this does seem like it's likely to be an artifact of the rapid rise of house values in San Francisco on account of the extremely limited supply and people who work at AI companies suddenly having a lot of money.

It's not economical to build "starter" homes. Given the large fixed costs, builders are going to have higher margins building a 2500 sqft monstrosity. Construction physics blog had a number of interesting article on the housing market

If you look at the location chart and their definition of "starter homes", this just turns into a heat map of housing shortages.

No mention of condos? Surely that’s eating some of the starter home demand?

duh, the richest people have the money...

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