The 10 Most Expensive Real Estate Markets Are in California

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The 10 Most Expensive Real Estate Markets Are in California

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Draw a ring about 25 miles in radius around San Francisco, and in the circle will be the 10 most expensive real estate markets in the United States. All 10 have average home prices above $1.47 million.

According to a study by real estate firm Coldwell Banker, the most expensive market is Saratoga, just south of San Jose. The average home price for a four bedroom, two bathroom home there is $2,453,718 based on research in the 2016 Coldwell Banker Home Listing Report” The report is based on more than 50,000 listings from over 2,000 markets. A total of 2,168 markets made the final cut.

RANK    MARKET                  STATE               AVERAGE PRICE
1            Saratoga                         CA                   $2,453,718
2           Newport Beach              CA                   $2,130,338
3           Cupertino                        CA                   $1,812,833
4           Redwood City                 CA                   $1,807,068
5           Arcadia                             CA                   $1,748,680
6          Carmel                               CA                  $1,722,500
7           San Francisco                 CA                    $1,672,100
8          La Canada Flintridge     CA                     $1,571,846
9          Sunnyvale                        CA                      $1,566,616
10        Los Gatos                         CA                      $1,470,524

The market with the least expensive homes are primarily in the Rust Belt. Detroit is at the bottom of the list of at number two with 168. The average home price there is $64,100. Following it, Cleveland at $73,073. Of the seven cities at the bottom, six are in western New York, Michigan, Ohio or Pennsylvania.
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The Bottom 10:
RANK    CITY                              STATE                               AVERAGE PRICE
2168      Detroit                            MI                                     $64,110
2167      Cleveland                       OH                                    $73,073
2166     Park Forest                     IL                                      $78,392
2165     Jamestown                     NY                                      $88,891
2164     Utica                                NY                                       $92,891
2163     Wilkes-Barre                  PA                                       $94,436
2162     Scranton                         PA                                       $104,842
2161     Huntington                     IN                                        $105,614
2160     Augusta                          GA                                        $106,567
2159     Palatka                           FL                                          $110,655

Charlie Young, president and chief executive officer of Coldwell Banker Real Estate commented:

Silicon Valley has been at the forefront of innovation in the U.S. for years, with leading tech companies attracting some of the brightest entrepreneurial minds in the world. Clearly, the amenities of the region are also impacting home prices.  While there are 25 communities in the U.S. where the average price of a four-bed, two-bath home is more than $1 million, it’s fascinating to find that nearly 40 percent of the cities we studied had like-sized homes for less than $250,000.

Being middle class may not be so bad.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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