A once-thriving California coastal community has become a ghost town as investors buy homes and then leave them empty.
Located in San Luis Obispo County, between Highway 1 and the Pacific Ocean, Cayucos’ motto is “the last of California’s coastal towns.”
The charming enclave has avoided the extensive development that many other coastal cities in the Golden State have faced thanks to strong land preservation efforts.
But now rising house prices and the growing number of short-term rentals have forced locals to leave and left the city almost desolate.
“Cayucos, once a vibrant conglomerate of middle-class neighborhoods, has become a lonely, empty place,” resident Dell Franklin wrote in a recent opinion article.
Cayucos, California, is a once-thriving coastal town that has been left empty as investors buy homes and leave them empty.
Rising house prices and rising short-term rentals have forced locals to leave and left the city almost desolate.
“(It is) a prey ground for our richest investors, with so much extra money that they concentrate in places like Cayucos and buy land or houses and build giants that are empty and turn almost every street in Cayucos into a ghost street.”
Cayucos is home to miles of white sand beaches, an iconic fishing pier, and beautiful historic buildings.
Like the rest of the state, home prices in Cayucos have increased in recent years and the median home value has reached $1.3 million, according to Zillow.
The low supply of new homes being built in the city has also contributed to skyrocketing prices.
‘I need desperate sellers. In normal areas, some vendors have to sell. But no one wants to leave here,” real estate agent Dale Kaiser told the Los Angeles Times.
He Cayucos Land Conservation (CLC) was founded in the 1990s to prevent a development including a 250-room hotel and 65 homes from being built in Estero Bluffs and the site eventually became a state.
“We were lucky to be behind the curve,” said CLC board member Greg Bettencourt. ‘We saw the development that was happening along the coast in Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Cruz, Monterey. “We saw our future and decided we didn’t like it.”
‘The bad news is that there is less land to develop, leading to fewer houses. We recognize that limited resources mean higher prices, but developing around Cayucos will not lead to lower prices, it will simply create a different community.’
Now new houses are no longer being built in the city of just over 2,000 inhabitants, but outsiders who can afford higher prices buy and rent them.
‘People are struggling to find a place to live and, meanwhile, houses are empty. “This rubs salt in the wound,” Kaiser said.
Cayucos has 200 Airbnbs and 350 rental licenses in total, a number similar to nearby coastal cities with double or triple the population, according to the LA Times.
The city has avoided development because of the Cayucos Land Conservancy, but that has resulted in no new housing being built for residents.
Home prices in Cayucos have increased in recent years and the current median home value is $1.3 million.
At its founding in 1867, the city was a center of butter, cheese and milk production where coastal steamers could dock and transport dairy products throughout the state, according to the Cayucos Chamber of Commerce.
Now, due to its proximity to major cities, wealthy elites are flocking to the city to buy beach houses that either remain empty when they are not there, or are converted into short-term rentals.
‘I can’t blame them for coming. This is a magical place and we are on the 50 yard line between Silicon Valley and Hollywood. But it’s hard for locals to compete with the money made in San Francisco or Los Angeles.
Local business owners are now forced to rely on tourists for their income and some of them can’t even afford to live where they work.
‘Ninety percent of our clients are tourists. We survive because of tourism,” said Donna Codi, a part-time worker at the Remember When antique store.