Analytics built by: Location, Inc.
Raw data sources: American Community Survey (U.S. Census Bureau), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Methodology: NeighborhoodScout uses over 600 characteristics to build a neighborhood profile… Read more about Scout's Real Estate Data
With a population of 61,800, 21,594 total housing units (homes and apartments), and a median house value of $1,332,516, Santa Cruz house prices are not only among the most expensive in California, Santa Cruz real estate also is some of the most expensive in all of America.
Single-family detached homes are the single most common housing type in Santa Cruz, accounting for 55.59% of the city's housing units. Other types of housing that are prevalent in Santa Cruz include large apartment complexes or high rise apartments ( 21.22%), duplexes, homes converted to apartments or other small apartment buildings ( 11.69%), and a few row houses and other attached homes ( 9.30%).
People in Santa Cruz primarily live in small (one, two or no bedroom) single-family detached homes. Santa Cruz has a mixture of owner-occupied and renter-occupied housing.
There is a lot of housing in Santa Cruz built from 1970 to 1999 so parts of town may have that "Brady Bunch" look of homes popular in the '70s and early '80s, although some of these houses were built up through the early '90s as well. There is also a lot of housing in Santa Cruz built between 1940-1969 ( 30.85%). A lesser amount of the housing stock also hails from before 1939 ( 18.74%). There's also some housing in Santa Cruz built between 2000 and later ( 13.02%).
Appreciation rates for homes in Santa Cruz have been tracking above average for the last ten years, according to NeighborhoodScout data. The cumulative appreciation rate over the ten years has been 91.00%, which ranks in the top 50% nationwide. This equates to an annual average Santa Cruz house appreciation rate of 6.68%.
Over the last year, Santa Cruz appreciation rates have trailed the rest of the nation. In the last twelve months, Santa Cruz's appreciation rate has been 4.49%, which is lower than appreciation rates in most communities in America. In the latest quarter, NeighborhoodScout's data show that house appreciation rates in Santa Cruz were at 1.56%, which equates to an annual appreciation rate of 6.37%.
Relative to California, our data show that Santa Cruz's latest annual appreciation rate is lower than 60% of the other cities and towns in California.
One very important thing to keep in mind is that these are average appreciation rates for the city. Individual neighborhoods within Santa Cruz differ in their investment potential, sometimes by a great deal. Fortunately, you can use NeighborhoodScout to pinpoint the exact neighborhoods in Santa Cruz - or in any city or town - that have the best track record of real estate appreciation, by the latest quarter, the last year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, or even since 2000, to assist you in making the best Santa Cruz real estate investment or home purchase decisions.
$1,332,516
for California
for nation
21,594
$4,945 / per month