California Housing Remains an Expensive Proposition

CoreLogic has analyzed the nation’s most expensive housing markets and continuing to lead the nation in sales cost is the Golden State of California, occupying nine of the top 10 spots.

Even with prices increasing by 40% over the past three years, the total value of real estate has moved up from $33 trillion to $44 trillion dollars nationwide, and borrowers generally saw their home equity increase over this 36-month span.

The report, "10 Most Expensive Housing Markets in the U.S. Nearly Unchanged in Three Years" by Thomas Malone, Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist at CoreLogic, found that the nation’s Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) landscape looks much the same over the past three years, with the most expensive U.S. housing markets in early 2020 all ranking as the priciest this spring.

“10 Most Expensive Housing Markets in the U.S. Nearly Unchanged in Three Years" analyzed median sales prices reported in January 2020 compared to March 2023. The two data sets were remarkably similar, with eight of th10 of MSAs remaining the same, and nine of the 10 based in California.

Leading the pack as most expensive was San Francisco, which reported an average median price of $1,250,000 in January 2020, rising to $1,400,000 in March 2023. Coming in second, San Jose reported an average median price of $911,500 in January 2020, rising to $1,228,500 in March 2023. Rounding out the top three was Anaheim which reported an average median price of $750,000 in January 2020, compared to the jump to $965,000 reported in March 2023.

And while California remained a pricey destination to live, CoreLogic found the fastest-appreciating markets were mostly in the Sunshine State of Florida, including the Cape Coral-Fort Myers metro, which moved up 30 spots to become the 60th most expensive MSA amongst the top 150. Tampa moved up 16 spots from 80th to 64^th, and North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton moved up 18 places, rising from 57th to 39th.

“Much has been made of home price declines on the West Coast and the appreciation in Florida, but examining ranks rather than percentage changes adds a greater perspective to these trends,” said Malone in the report. “Indeed, factors such as remote work and mortgage rate increases, combined with high home prices, may have shifted demand to more affordable areas and shrunk the dispersion of prices across metros. However, this shift has created little change in the most expensive and least expensive housing markets in the U.S. The price gap between buying a house in California and Florida is now closer than it was, but prices in the two states are unlikely to ever fully converge. As the price gap shrinks, the California housing market will again become relatively more attractive, and homebuyers will begin to return. It is likely that this migration will occur before California MSAs become cheaper than other U.S. areas.”

Click here for more information or to view CoreLogic’s report, “10 Most Expensive Housing Markets in the U.S. Nearly Unchanged in Three Years.”