In the fall of 1973 home prices in Southern California were $1000 below the national average; six years later they were $42,400 higher (fifteen years later, $143,000 higher). If in the flatlands of the Valley home values only doubled, they tripled or quadrupled in the hills or near the beach. In Beverly Hills, median home values increased $200,000 in a single year. Averaged over all of Southern California, homeowners were reported to be earning 30–40 per cent on their equity per annum, in adjusted terms, in the late 1970s, and home values increased almost three times faster than income. As ‘the purpose of housing units came to be perceived more as investment and speculation than as shelter’, house trading became a mass mania. In the course of the decade 164,000 new realtors’ licenses were issued (bringing the total to nearly 400,000 by 1981), and homeowners were reported to be mining billions of dollars from their equity (via second trust deeds) to pay for grander lifestyles.63