There is no shortage of Bay Area housing anecdotes floating around. Whether it’s the tale of billboards that advertise new homes in San Francisco starting at “only” $1 million dollars, or a Google employee who must move into a 128-square-foot truck in the company’s parking lot to effectively save money, these unusual stories make it clear that the housing market in the Bay Area is bordering on insanity.
However, if you want more quantitative proof of the housing bubble that is plaguing the Bay Area, this map should do it. Using data from the real estate website Trulia, this animation plots the number of million dollar homes in the Bay Area.
In 2012, just under 20% of homes in San Francisco were worth over $1 million. Today, over 57% of homes have hit the mark, meaning that the majority of homes are now selling for over seven figures.
While San Francisco gets the majority of the attention for its housing prices, the situation is actually much wider in scope. San Jose and Oakland have seen the percentage of such houses increase to 46.3% and 19.7% respectively. Meanwhile, in Southern California, the number of $1 million houses have doubled in both San Diego and Los Angeles over the last four years.
MILLION DOLLAR HOUSING MARKETS IN THE U.S.
| City | $1MM homes (2012) | $1MM homes (2016) | Percentage point change |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco, CA | 19.6% | 57.4% | +37.8% |
| San Jose, CA | 17.4% | 46.3% | +28.9% |
| Oakland, CA | 5.2% | 19.7% | +14.5% |
| Orange County, CA | 7.1% | 16.1% | +8.9% |
| Los Angeles, CA | 8.0% | 16.3% | +8.3% |
| Honolulu, HI | 8.1% | 15.4% | +7.3% |
| San Diego, CA | 5.4% | 10.7% | +5.2% |
| New York, NY | 7.0% | 12.0% | +4.9% |
| Ventura County, CA | 4.3% | 9.0% | +4.6% |
| Seattle, WA | 2.5% | 7.0% | +4.5% |
Data courtesy of: Trulia
Looking at individual neighborhoods, the numbers get even more intense. In Westwood Park in San Francisco, for example, only 2.9% of homes were worth over a million dollars in 2012. Today, 96.0% of houses there hit the mark, leaving only a few pockets that have some element of affordability.
Just south of the San Francisco airport is the neighborhood of Nineteenth Avenue in San Mateo. There, not a single house can be found for under $1 million. This wasn’t the case in 2012, when only about 10% of houses were in seven digit territory.
Interested in buying in San Francisco yet?
Here’s a final comparison to show what you could own with a cool million:
Source: http://www.visualcapitalist.com/57-percent-homes-sf-one-million/