(TNS)—No other region in the nation has seen more home sales of $1 million or higher than the Bay Area, and it’s not even close.
Low housing supply and high demand have made $1 million home listings common in a region unlikely to see declining home prices, even amid climbing mortgage interest rates. But a recent report examining U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest percentages of $1 million home sales puts the soaring home prices of the Bay Area and California into sharp relief.
Metropolitan San Jose, where 61% of homes sold for $1 million or more in 2020, came at the top of the list compiled by the Inspection Support Network. At 49%, the metro area comprised of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley had the nation’s second-highest percentage of homes that sold at or above $1 million.
In fact, California represented four of the top five priciest large metro areas with more than 1 million residents. Metro Los Angeles and San Diego came in third and fourth, respectively, followed by Seattle, where about 15% of home sales went for $1 million or more during the first year of the pandemic. About 4% of homes in the Sacramento metropolitan area sold at or above $1 million, placing it at No. 11.
Overall, more than 1 in 5 homes in California sold for more than $1 million, according to the report. Only Hawaii (17.5%) and Massachusetts (10%) had double-digit percentages of $1 million home sales.
The report used federal data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act to rank regions with the highest proportion of $1 million home sales. The analysis included only conventional, home purchase loans that originated in 2020, the most recent year for which there’s available data. The report’s data only shared the percentage of homes sold at or above $1 million, not the total number of homes sold in this price range.
Eight of the nation’s 10 metro areas with the overall highest percentages of $1 million home sales are in California, according to the report. Each of these metro areas, which include Santa Cruz (37%), Los Angeles (28%) and San Diego, are either in the Bay Area or along the state’s coast.
In Napa, the 25% of homes that sold above $1 million also had the highest median property value of the state’s top 10 areas—$1,545,000, in 2020. Like other regions, the Wine Country enclave saw overall median home sale prices rise during the pandemic, from $600,000 in January 2020 to $900,000 in March, according to Zillow.
Despite becoming an increasingly common price point in the Bay Area, the report also illustrated how uncommon $1 million home sales remain in California’s inland communities.
For example, homes priced at $1 million or above accounted for less than 1% of total home sales in places such as Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield.
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