San Francisco is fine, but Sacramento has great food and housing you can actually afford
For the first time, Sacramento has more than 500,000 residents, ironically making California’s once-overlooked middle child the sixth-largest city in the state. According to recently released California Department of Finance 2021 population and housing estimates, Sacramento grew by 0.4 % as neighboring San Francisco experienced a population decline of 1.7%.
Sacramento’s growth comes as California’s population has been relatively stagnant. But in the same breath, Sacramento is experiencing something for the first time ever: popularity.
“A lot of people outside of Sacramento are stuck in the mentality of the old days of Sacramento like ‘It’s just a cow town there’s nothing there,’ and that’s absolutely not true,” said Sacramento digital creator Maddy Eccles.
Eccles moved to Sacramento in January 2018 after a divorce. Without a network of friends, she began creating content surrounding her newfound community and sharing it online. But it wasn’t until a video of the midtown resident riding Sacramento’s River Fox Train rail bikes went viral on TikTok that people started looking to her to give Sacramento recommendations.
Now with a following of more than 27,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram combined, Eccles is a photographer for River Fox Train, runs a photography lifestyle blog, a photography business and creates Sacramento-related content for TikTok.
“People need to be a little more open-minded and just be open to the experiences and seek the beauty of the city,” she said.
America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital
The attraction to Sacramento used to be its proximity to California’s most-appealing places — like San Francisco, Napa and Lake Tahoe — but what if you never left Sacramento? Mike Testa, the president and CEO of nonprofit destination organization Visit Sacramento, asks himself that question every day.
Testa moved to Sacramento from San Francisco in 1996 for a job opportunity. While he was initially hesitant to make the move, the cost of living drew him in. Now he’s working to change the narrative around Sacramento, and it started with his help in coining the region America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital in 2012.
“Farm-to-Fork was designed to change that government-town identity because what we do better than anyone else in the country is grow food, and it’s something that we’ve never talked about,” Testa said.
With more than 1.5 million acres of farms around the city and a year-round growing season, Sacramento restaurants always have access to fresh produce. So chances are if you’re enjoying a meal in the region, it was grown at a local farm.
Today the agricultural powerhouse is home to over 40 regional farmers’ markets including the largest California Certified Farmers’ Market in the state, according to Visit Sacramento.
“When people started looking at Sacramento they saw it differently, they didn’t see it as a government town,” Testa said. “They saw it as a thriving city with a great food scene. ... And just a lot of development and investment coming into the market. So I think the perception dramatically changed from that sleepy Gold Rush town to an exciting city that I want to move to.”
Affordable real estate
As people like Testa work to market Sacramento as the cultural hub it is, real estate professionals including Vischa Savitri help people find their dream home at prices San Francisco’s housing market can’t compete with. Like Testa, Savitri moved to Sacramento from San Francisco in 2002 and was hesitant to leave the Bay Area behind.
But once she settled in Sacramento and learned about its housing market, she quickly started selling homes. Now with a TikTok following of about 40,000 followers, the Remax Gold real estate company’s team leader uses her 20 years of experience selling property to a plethora of Bay Area residents looking to move to the state’s capital.
“When I bought my second home back in 2006 ... all of my friends who were from the Bay Area were like ‘Oh my god this is so cheap. It’s so ‘cheap’ because (if) you spend $1.7 million (in the Bay Area), you still aren’t going to get what you can get out of here,” Savitri said.
A survey of house listings on real estate marketplace Zillow shows buying prices in San Francisco at $2,895,000, compared to $489,900 in Sacramento for the same amount of square footage.
As more people are choosing to continue to work from home, the tradition of being physically in an office is dwindling. As a result, people have the freedom to look outside of the city they work in and buy cheaper property.
“The market has always been stable in this area because people were thinking ‘fine everything is so cheap unless I’m retiring I’m not going to move,’” Savitri said. “But now they get an opportunity to enjoy a luxury home for a fraction of the price compared to what they have to pay in the Bay Area and plus they get to keep their job.”
Whether it was the affordable housing or great produce that lit a fire, thousands of people moved from San Francisco to Sacramento within the last year. Sacramento’s population is steadily growing and it doesn’t seem like it’s slowing down any time soon.
“It’s very appealing for the young adults to place roots and start anew,” Eccles said. “I just think that it’s really up and coming and I’ve heard so many times that it’s just nothing like it was 10 years ago ... and definitely not as expensive as San Francisco, so that’s a plus.”
Healthy job market
Just as the ability to work from home and pay for cheaper housing has attracted people to Sacramento, so has the healthy job market. According to the State Employment Development Department, Sacramento will add about 170,000 new jobs by 2022.
The department predicts more than 41,000 jobs will open up for people without high school diplomas interested in working as personal care aides, retail salespersons and cashiers. About 18,000 jobs are set to be made available for people who’ve graduated high school and are interested in working as office clerks, office supervisors and customer service representatives.
Residents with some college education are predicted to enter a job market interested in employing thousands of registered nurses, teacher assistants and truck drivers. The same is true for college graduates searching for jobs as general managers, accountants and elementary school teachers.
Residents with professional degrees are predicted to enter the most competitive in Sacramento’s job market in 2022 as about 3,000 jobs are set to be made available for people interested in working as lawyers, medical assistants and pharmacists.
Ideal weather
Sacramento has a Mediterranean climate, meaning mild winters and dry summers. The weather is fairly consistent, and depending on what you are used to, winters are a breeze. Relative to the Midwest or Northeast, there isn’t even a winter. Fall is just a longer and runs into spring. It rarely snows and never of any consequence. Winters last about three months and temperatures rarely drop below 39 degrees.
Summers months can be long as temperatures can reach above 100 degrees. But because there’s no humidity, as soon as the sun sets the temperature cools quickly. And the Delta breeze takes the edge off the heat most nights.
Nature at your fingertips
Lace up your boots and don’t forget your sunscreen, because to live in Sacramento means you’re always a short distance away from a trail, lake or wildlife itself.
Spend the day paddling, hiking and bird watching at the Cosumnes River Preserve, which sits about 35 minutes south of Downtown Sacramento. With over 50,000 acres of wildlife habitat and agricultural lands, the Cosumnes River Preserve is protecting the last free-flowing river on the westerns side of the Sierra Nevada.
Or less than 15 minutes away you can surround yourself with special status species that have either been identified as endangered, threatened or species of special concern at the Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge located in Elk Grove.
Yes, Lake Tahoe is relatively close as well. But this is about the Sacramento metro area, which clearly has plenty to offer.
This story was originally published September 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM.