Totally agree. It's easy to understand the implications but as a New Yorker it's hard not to be proud of your city in some ways. The UES being worth more than six states, it just boggles the mind to try to do the comparisons in your head.

I'm the most surprised how LA blows up, I thought it was quite a bit cheaper there than in SF/NY.

LA county has almost 10M people living in it. SF has only 800K. If housing prices were equal, you'd expect LA to be 10 times the size (assuming an equal number of people per dwelling).

Yes, it's difficult to make a fair comparison across counties of such vastly different areas and populations. LA county includes far-off places like Palmdale which bring the average housing price way down. If you only looked at more central neighborhoods like Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, etc. you'd see distortion more akin to SF.

This imagery makes me cringe while being spot on.

Perhaps because it's HN, the discussion is focused on SF and NY. But it's SoCal and Florida that surprised me.