Comparison shopping.

LIKE thousands of L.A. newcomers before me, I did something frightening: I went house hunting last week.

Of course, I was prepared for the sticker shock. Just last week in the Los Angeles Business Journal, we reported that the median home price in Los Angeles County was $525,000 in December, up 18 percent from the previous December.

Still, it's a heart stopper when you come face-to-facade with a two-bedroom fixer-upper for $800,000. That's about as frightening as taking a ride on the back of Gov. Schwarzenegger's motorcycle.

But what I kept thinking about as I strolled through the million dollar cottages was something a little different. It is this: The disparity, the chasm between home prices on the East and West coasts and home prices pretty much everywhere else, has deepened and widened alarmingly. That is to say, too much.

Consider this: House prices nationally increased about 50 percent in the last five years, but they've zoomed 100 percent in California, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. That means in recent years it has gotten even more difficult to move here from many parts of the country.

In recent years, as I worked in America's heart-land, the rule of thumb was that home prices had about a 2-1 cost difference. In other words, five-years ago a $200,000 house in Kansas City cost about $400,000 in L.A. That made it tough, but at least doable, for many in America's flyover country to migrate West and find a home, although perhaps a more modest home, in L.A.

But if you apply the government stats, that would mean that Kansas City house now costs about $300,000 and the comparable L.A. house about $800,000. That's closer to a 3-1 price difference, which makes it much harder to move here.

But I think that 3-1 price difference understates reality. I just sold a suburban New Orleans house for $120 a square foot. Last week, the prices of homes I looked at in L.A. were roughly $500 a foot. In other words, I'm seeing a 4-1 difference in price.

Regardless of whether the price difference is 3-1 or 4-1, the move to L.A. surely has gotten impossible for many. I am able to do it partly because I was downsizing anyway. Still, I'll pay twice as much money as my last house, and I'll get half as much house.

All this could be dismissed as personal whining except that the disparity in house prices is a business issue. Businesses have a trickier sales job to recruit workers from other parts of the country. And L.A. has a tougher time convincing businesses to locate here or stay here, said the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

One of the great and rare benefits of this country is that we are able--even expected--to pull up stakes every once in a while, move away from the old problems and start fresh someplace new. That new, fresh place often has been L.A., and the city benefited through the years from a steady stream of motivated migrants. But you have to wonder how many intelligent, talented people now look at the house prices in L.A., get frightened, and stay put in Peoria.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not hoping for L.A. home prices to drop. That would be bad, perhaps very bad, for the economy. Still, I think it would be a benefit if the difference in home prices reverted to a 2-1 price difference.

For that matter, as a house shopper, I'd be happy to settle for a 3-1 difference.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [e-mail]