The list of Bay Area cities where the typical home value tops $1 million is no longer remarkable — most towns qualify. The real badge of honor these days? Joining the 2-million-dollar home club.
That status has been reached by 33 cities in the nine-county Bay Area. Beyond the usual suspects like bucolic Atherton and Woodside, the list includes a number of towns on the edges of the Bay Area that have seen home values climb as remote work has made them a more attractive option.
Related Articles
Housing |
Vast redevelopment of San Jose golf course gains community support
Housing |
Could a $20 billion bond measure help solve the Bay Area’s affordable housing crisis?
Housing |
Electric flying taxi firm preps aviation web to slash Bay Area commutes
Housing |
Photos: Massive Big Sur estate with a funicular listed for $21.5 million
Housing |
Black Cultural Zone hub in East Oakland pushes ahead with bank grant
One of the newcomers to the list is Danville, a town of 43,000 south of Mount Diablo where the median price has nearly doubled in the last eight years to $2 million from $1.2 million in 2016.
Jennifer Youngblood’s parents bought a home in Danville in 1970. The price then? $37,500.
It’s in that same home where, 30 years later, Youngblood and her husband, John, raised their two children, now 18 and 21.
Plenty in the town has changed — the schools have been torn down and renovated as the population has nearly doubled. The hills where high schoolers would go cow tipping are now home to multi-million dollar mansions. The active train tracks Youngblood would walk along on her way to school have since been decommissioned and transformed into a 30-mile-long paved trail for hikers and bikers extending from Pleasanton to Martinez.
John and Jennifer Youngblood and their daughter Hope, 18, at their home in Danville, Calif., on Thursday, June 20, 2024. Youngblood has raised her family, including son Luke, 21, in the same house she grew up in. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
“I feel lucky that my parents made that investment so many years ago,” Youngblood said. “We’ve just watched the property values increase.”
Without her parents’ house, Youngblood isn’t sure she would have been able to afford the same quality of life in Danville. “If you’re not a dual-income household making at least $300,000, it’s off the table to live here,” she said.
Real estate agent Kevin Cox said prices skyrocketed during the pandemic as buyers sought out communities like Danville with larger lots, and paid less attention to commute times. (To downtown San Francisco or San …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
