Is Folsom a ‘beach town’? A new study says it is, and one of the better ones, too

Sacramento residents may not need to drive a couple of hours to get to the nearest beach town, according to a new study.

Folsom made the top 10 in WalletHub’s new report on the most liveable beach towns in America, which examined waterfront locales across the country, divided them between ocean beaches and lake beaches and rated their livability based on a variety of factors.

The city, in northeastern Sacramento County on the shores of Folsom Lake, was deemed the second-best lake beach town in America to live in, topped only by Traverse City, Mich.

California cities featured prominently in WalletHub’s best ocean beach towns as well, with Newport Beach, Carlsbad and Encinitas securing third, fourth and eighth place, respectively. The top ocean beach town to live in was Naples, Fla., on the Gulf of Mexico, according to the study.

South Lake Tahoe, the quintessential lake beach resort for many Californians, scored much lower than Folsom, earning 16th place in the study’s list of best lake beach towns to live in.

Folsom was given high marks for affordability, fair weather, education and health, according to WalletHub.

Real estate database platform Zillow reports the median home price in Folsom to be $557,000 this month, and while that may seem a little too steep to be called affordable, it is relatively low among other listed waterfront property.

This month, median home prices in Carlsbad are more than $860,000 and in Newport Beach the median is a whopping $2.15 million, according to Zillow.

Although median home prices in South Lake Tahoe are lower — $452,800 this month, according to Zillow — WalletHub reported its median household income was one of the lowest included in its list.

As of 2017, the median household income in Folsom was $106,718, while it was just $45,223 in South Lake Tahoe, according to the U.S. census.

As for education, 92.4 percent of Folsom’s adults 25 and older are high school graduates and 48.4 percent are college graduates, according to the census.

In South Lake Tahoe, 87.4 percent are high school graduates and 27.4 percent are college graduates, according to the census.

Folsom’s high public health rating is also backed up by census figures, with a mere 3.1 percent of its residents under age 65 being uninsured, while 14.7 percent of South Lake Tahoe’s under-65 population lacks health insurance.

WalletHub’s full listing and methodology can be found here.

This story was originally published June 20, 2019 at 5:26 PM.