Real estate record: Home values just topped $1 million in these Sacramento-area communities

A Sacramento suburb has joined the million-dollar club.

The typical home value in Granite Bay eclipsed $1 million in 2021, according to new data from real estate service Zillow. In fact, the wealthy Placer County suburb blew past the seven-figure mark: the typical home there is worth $1.1 million after a 22% increase in home values last year, according to the Zillow data.

Granite Bay was one of five communities in the Sacramento metropolitan region to see home values rise above $1 million in 2021.

Homes in tiny Zamora, a community of just a few dozen residents along Interstate 5 in Yolo County, are typically worth just over $1 million. There isn’t much to choose from in rural community near Knights Landing: no homes are listed for sale there and there have been only two sales recorded in the community in the past year, including a $2.1 million property on the outskirts of town.

Also new to the list are the Lake Tahoe vacation communities of Homewood and Tahoma. Much of the Lake Tahoe region is considered part of the Sacramento metropolitan area. A typical home in Homewood, on the lake’s west shore in Placer County, costs $1.2 million. In Tahoma, just a couple miles down the lake straddling the county line of El Dorado and Placer, that price is $1.02 million.

Tahoe City was the fifth community in the region to make the million-dollar list. The prominent Placer County vacation spot saw its typical home value go from $1.01 million in 2020 to nearly $1.3 million last year.

Sacramento is increasingly becoming a competitive market for high-priced real estate.

Sacramento real estate analyst Ryan Lundquist said 7% of homes in the market — or about 2,000 homes — sold for above $1 million last year. The year before, 1,025 homes sold for north of $1 million.

Zillow’s data show that 146 cities across the country saw their typical home values surpass $1 million last year, a record increase. There are now 481 “million-dollar cities” in the U.S., according to Zillow. The San Francisco metro region has the most of those communities with 76. Los Angeles, San Jose, Santa Rosa and the Santa Maria-Santa Barbara metro areas are also in the top 10.

This story was originally published February 17, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Real estate record: Home values just topped $1 million in these Sacramento-area communities."