Dennis RomeroThere was a time when a gay neighborhood was one in which “urban pioneers” had started to dress up an otherwise dicey community. Silver Lake's formerly gritty Sunset Boulevard, once home to gangbanging and cruising for hustlers, comes to mind.
Today a so-called gayborhood is a full-on wealthy community, it seems.
Just in time for L.A. Pride, the folks at real estate listings site Trulia looked at the top 10 American zip codes with the highest proportion of same-sex male couples. It found that prices in these areas have been skyrocketing.
The gay community with the steepest price increase in America is Palm Springs' 92262 zip code, Trulia says. There buyers will find a median per-square-foot cost of $260. If you compare that to 2012's $158 per square foot, you're looking at a nation-leading increase of 65 percent.
Palm Springs returns on the list with the zip code that had the third steepest increase: 92264. There you will find a square foot of real estate going for $240, a 38 percent increase compared to 2012's $174.
West Hollywood has the third and last Southern California zip code on the list. The community's 90069 has a square foot of home for you at a whopping $802, a 31 percent increase from 2012's $611. That represents the sixth highest increase here.
Credit: Trulia
You could reasonably observe that, gay or not, these are pricey neighborhoods in a pricey region. However, Trulia states, “Home prices in almost all of the gayborhoods that we look at in this study are more expensive than their metros as a whole.”
This weekend you can have pride in ownership … if you can afford it.
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