Orchard-lined California boomtown where you can still buy a home for less than $500K

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The California dream isn’t dead — you just might have to head north to find it.

For residents feeling priced-out of the Golden State, one charming Northern California city is quietly emerging as an affordable oasis, complete with sprawling orchards, bustling farmers markets and a booming housing market.

Just 45 minutes north of Sacramento, in Yuba City, an agricultural hub with a population of about 70,000 people, buyers can still snag a home for under half a million dollars.

“Yuba City offers something that can be difficult to find in California, a median listing price under $500,000. At $460,000, it sits roughly $265,000 below the statewide median of $725,000,” Anthony Smith, Senior Economist at Realtor.com, exclusively told the California Post. “Prices haven’t changed a lot over the last 4 years (median price of $455,000 in September 2022), but the market underneath that flat number has changed.”

Nestled in the heart of Northern California, Yuba City sits along the Feather River, where tree-lined neighborhoods meets open country roads.

While homebuyers elsewhere are battling sky-high prices, Yuba City is enjoying a building boom, with new homes popping up and inventory on the rise.

“Active listings are up 14% from a year ago, and one in four is new construction, one of the highest shares for California metros,” Smith added.

He noted that buyers aren’t sitting on their hands, either: “Homes are spending a median of 61 days on the market, 3 days fewer than a year ago. For buyers who want access to a larger city, Sacramento is less than an hour away, which makes day trips easy while keeping the cost of living in a smaller town.”

That brisk pace reflects a market where inventory is expanding to meet genuine demand. While top-tier luxury markets in coastal metros like San Jose and Los Angeles count 50% to 60% of their listings in their listings in the million-dollar range, seven-figure homes make up less than 4% of inventory in Yuba City.

Out of 545 active listings on the market, just 22 are priced at $1 million or above — though that number is up 43% from a year ago, according to Realtor.com data.

The bargain prices — at least by California standards — aren’t the only attraction. The city boasts a small town atmosphere, abundant farmland and a vibrant cultural scene anchored by a large Sikh American community, offering an alternative to the wallet-draining lifestyle of the state’s larger metropolitan areas.

The region’s booming momentum is backed up by official state numbers. In California Department of Finance population estimates released this year, neighboring Yuba County, which sits directly across the river from Yuba City in the Yuba-Sutter area, ranked number two statewide for population growth at 1.2%.

Local municipal leaders are working overtime to keep up with the influx. At a Yuba City development services update earlier this year, city planners highlighted a surge in single-family residential permits, a new hotel and other commercial projects, plus two affordable housing projects underway.

But in a state where seven-figure listings have become commonplace and the dream of homeownership feels like just that, a city surrounded by orchards and a median asking price below $500,000 is something of a unicorn.

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