California Dominates New List of Most Expensive Housing

California housing is so expensive—pause for reader to ask, “How expensive it it?"—that the state occupies all 10 rankings among the top 10 list of priciest residential markets in Coldwell Banker’s 2016 Real Estate Home Listing Report, with six rankings based in the Silicon Valley region.

Coldwell Banker uses a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home to reach its data conclusions. For this report, the California markets that reigned as most expensive were Saratoga (where a four-bedroom/two-bathroom home averages $2.45 million), followed by Newport Beach ($2.1 million), Cupertino ($1.81 million) Redwood City ($1.8 million), Arcadia ($1.74 million), Carmel ($1.72 million), San Francisco ($1.67 million), La Cañada Flintridge ($1.57 million), Sunnyvale ($1.5 million) and Los Gatos ($1.47 million).

“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,” said Charlie Young, president and CEO of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC.

As for the other end of the price spectrum, Detroit was ranked as the most affordable city, where one could buy a four-bedroom/two-bathroom home for $64,110. The other most affordable markets, as per Coldwell Banker’s metric, were Cleveland ($73,073), Park Forest, Ill. ($78,392), Jamestown, N.Y. ($88,891), Utica, N.Y. ($92,891), Wilkes-Barre, Pa. ($94,436), Scranton, Pa. ($104,842), Huntington, Ind. ($105,614), Augusta, Ga. ($106,567) and Palatka, Fla. ($110,655).