Gimme gimme sticker-shock treatment.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Real estate prices in Washington, D.C.

WHEN I MOVED to the Washington, D.C., area a couple of years ago from the small town of Oxford, Ohio, the most stunning difference was the cost of houses. Back in the Buckeye State, a four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot house (with a study and a 1,500-square-foot basement) could be had for around $200,000. That same abode in the northwest quadrant of D.C. or close-in suburbs was priced over $1 million.

Yeah, yeah, I know, when it comes to real estate, only three things matter: location, location, and location. But as Joel Miller makes clear in this month's cover story, "The Politics of SkyHigh House Prices," there's something else at work too, especially in the parts of the country where the cost of buying a home has zoomed into the stratosphere (see page 24). "The nation as a whole has no real shortage of cheap digs," writes Miller, the author of Size Matters: How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America's Families, Finances, and Freedom (Nelson Current). "It's just that the cost of land and homes in certain areas has gone through the roof, mainly because zoning and other land use restrictions have made usable land scarcer."

In the D.C. metro area, median home prices in constant 2005 dollars increased a walloping $242,800, to the princely sum of $441,400, between 2000 and 2005. In the NewYork metro area, they rose by $248,200, to $553,200. In the San Francisco BayArea, they climbed $217,000, to $721,900. Similar hikes are visible in many other metropolitan areas around the country, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Portland.

No wonder, then, that Census Bureau figures show people fleeing metropolitan areas for the "exurbs," or...