We can thank Forbes Magazine’s The Most Expensive Zip Codes for selecting the prestige postal zones and then managing to mess them up. So far we’ve caught them describing one town while showing houses from another, forgetting the difference between a zip code and a town boundary, mixing up their data sets, and showing a zip code 10 miles and $2 million away from what they labeled.
Since we don’t concern ourselves with other parts of the country where prices go down, homes need maintenance, streets get busy, and airports allow planes to land while children are sleeping, we’ve been looking at the Bay Area zips only. In case you want to refer to the previous articles, you can click over to:
- The 25 most expensive zip codes in the entire country, featuring Atherton, Belvedere, Los Altos Hills and Hillsborough!
- The next 25 zip codes, not quite as Special. Portola Valley, Los Gatos, Woodside, and other places too far away from Google to matter make their appearances.
- The 50 after that, at cut-rate prices compared to the first 50. These entries in the Corridor of Not Quite include Los Altos, Saratoga, Monte Sereno, and Palo Alto.
Again, data crunched by Altos Research, info prepared (not always perfectly) by Forbes, criticisms (I’m starting early today) entirely home-grown at burbed. The very first entry on Forbes’ Page 2 list is one of our own! We may not be in the Real Bay Area (RBA) anymore, but remember, these zip codes are still more expensive than at least 44,000 others!
#101 – 94507 Alamo
- Median Home Price: $1,513,739
- Median Price Change: -11%

- Average Days On Market: 139
- Inventory: 113 properties
- Median Household Income: $139,997
I just said we weren’t in the RBA anymore. It’s never a good sign when the very first listing is in the East Bay. That 11% drop isn’t surprising anybody.
Besides, pretty soon the home price medians are going to drop below a million and a half, and then where would we be?
Right. In the East Bay.
#106 – 94946 Nicasio
- Median Home Price: $1,484,615
- Median Price Change: 5%

- Average Days On Market: 176
- Inventory: 13 properties
- Median Household Income: $76,194
You should have heard of this town before. It was featured in burbed because of this listing. Jerry Garcia’s house has been holding up this zip’s entire market.
Clearly Alamo and Nicasio are for two different demographics. Alamo is for people earning good money now. Nicasio is for people who already earned good money and want to get away from the people in Alamo still earning. Then they can chillax and just enjoy it. The money, I mean. I’m still getting my head around trying to fill the closet in Jerry’s master bedroom.
Unfortunately, by not keeping enough cash coming into town, the residents of Nicasio let down the team. Yes, the median home price is under one and a half million now. Who knows what kind of vagrants and transients are living in those houses? It’s not surprising one of them joined a rock band.
#120 – 93921 Carmel
- Median Home Price: $1,412,704
- Median Price Change: -9%

- Average Days On Market: 153
- Inventory: 84 properties
- Median Household Income: $53,750
The income is down even more here at the other end of the Bay Area. The Monterey Bay Area.
Carmel is a touristy little town that is expensive to live in, doesn’t sell anything useful to residents, and has a beach nobody can use since parking is between impossible and utterly impossible. You shouldn’t have taken your time reading this. They just ticketed your car.
Does that little bit right outside the zip environs, lower right corner, really say Trailer Park?
#120 – 93921 Carmel-By-The-Sea
- Median Home Price: $1,412,704
- Median Price Change: -9%

- Average Days On Market: 153
- Inventory: 84 properties
- Median Household Income: $53,750
This is only a test to see if you’re paying better attention than Forbes did when they put this article together.
Yes, it is entirely possible that two cities can share a common zip code. We’ve had many examples of it in the first hundred entries.
But what are the odds of the same zip code, the same ranking, the same data, and the same map just sitting there for two cities with practically the same name, and nobody noticed a damned thing?
#121 – 92603 Irvine
- Median Home Price: $1,406,399
- Median Price Change: -9%

- Average Days On Market: 120
- Inventory: 227 properties
- Median Household Income: NA
Irvine has entered the building!
No, I have not taken leave of my senses. I know that Irvine is not in the Bay Area, Real or otherwise.
But Irvine’s real estate issues have been so instructive, and the seminal Irvine Housing Blog so important to anyone trying to make sense of what happens when bubble
s pop.
And as much as there have been problems with the real estate market up here, one of our zip codes doesn’t have 227 properties in inventory, and so far we’ve avoided Mello-Roos taxes, too. There’s a good reason we’ve avoided Irvine’s problems. It’s because they’re not making any more land up here. And that’s because they’re making it all down there, complete with Mello-Roos!
We now return you to our regular Bay Area real estate presentation, already in progress.
#125 – 93923 Carmel
- Median Home Price: $1,384,643
- Median Price Change: -7%

- Average Days On Market: 191
- Inventory: 298 properties
- Median Household Income: $67,315
Now if i am reading this map correctly, this zip code includes Carmel and Carmel Highlands, but not Carmel-by-the-Sea or Carmel Valley. Or the other part of Carmel that is covered by a simple street map and includes all the high-priced art galleries and jewelry stores.
This zip also has a bigger inventory than Irvine’s. Thanks for making us look bad, Carmel, when everyone at IHB clicked over to read this. You’re making all of us look really pathetic to those Southern Californians. We might have to ask you to move over there, permanently. You and your 298 unsold properties. Maybe when you get they’re you’ll be placed in a Mello-Roos district, too.
(I thought those 298 listings had to be a mistake on Forbes’ part, but it isn’t. Entering this zip into Redfin yields 270 listings. And just because the zip covers around 200 square miles isn’t going to get it off the hook.)
#131 – 94104 San Francisco
- Median Home Price: $1,365,346
- Median Price Change: 3%

- Average Days On Market: 162
- Inventory: 11 properties
- Median Household Income: $14,609
Finally! A zip that makes you really sit up and take notice.
A zip that not only includes a bunch of ginormous skyscrapers (well, ginormous as long as we don’t go comparing them with anything in Los Angeles, or Chicago, or Manhattan), but has the brass rivets to say LOOK AT ME. The median home price here is $1.36 million and the median income is $14,609. That’s right! It would take the average resident here a hundred years to buy the average residence.
Only a zip code with serious chutzpah could issue a message like that, a message that says, “Want to buy here? Sorry. You’ve been Priced Out Forever.”
#132 – 94965 Muir Beach
- Median Home Price: $1,364,462
- Median Price Change: 7%

- Average Days On Market: 34
- Inventory: 3 properties
- Median Household Income: $76,808
This tiny town is located right where California Route 1 cuts overland to the Pacific and heads north up the coast (that line mislabeled 1 is actually US 101. I’m watching you Forbes. Always watching.) This tiny town has about six streets. Muir Beach shares a zip with Sausalito, which ought to be showing up at some point.
Muir Beach. Like Bolinas, only closer and more expensive. Water meters not included.
#134 – 94574 Saint Helena
- Median Home Price: $1,354,277
- Median Price Change: -5%

- Average Days On Market: 186
- Inventory: 102 properties
- Median Household Income: $60,964
Looks like it takes half a year to sell a typical property in Saint Helena. That means they named the place well.
Saint Helena was the second and final place that Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to, and he died five and a half years later. And there isn’t anywhere nearby called Elba, because that would mean you could escape. Although you can at least drink heavily.
Able I was ere I bought in St. Helena.
#147 – 95452 Kenwood
- Median Home Price: $1,294,385
- Median Price Change: 46%

- Average Days On Market: 152
- Inventory: 19 properties
- Median Household Income: $58,421
Honey, I shrank the zip code.
I had to. When it took up about 20% of the page, the only thing I could find was State Highway 12 and Mt Hood Regional Park. I figured Kenwood was somewhere between Santa Rosa and Fairfield but wasn’t quite sure which was closer.
And St. Helena is in convenient exile distance. I suppose I should find something nice to say about the place because the prices are up 46%, but seriously, unless you’re cultivating 200 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon or really want the Smothers Brothers as neighbors, you should be looking a little closer to Facebook HQ.
#150 – 94705 Oakland
- Median Home Price: $1,283,731
- Median Price Change: 28%

- Average Days On Market: 217
- Inventory: 3 properties
- Median Household Income: $68,112
Somebody is playing a joke, but I can’t figure out who the joke is on.
We started today’s batch of runner-ups to the runner-ups in the East Bay. Not only are we going t
o finish there, we’re going to finish in one of the least RBA-like cities in the East Bay.
Then again, the zip includes a bunch of UC property in Berkeley, so that’s kind of cheating. Plus the Claremont Hotel. I bet the Claremont Hotel would sell for more than $1,283,731.
And the zip is up… twenty eight percent. With the same kind of unobtanium inventory we saw in Muir Beach. That’s it. I’m out of here. I know when I’m licked.
Next installment: The Most Expensive Zip Codes in the Richmond Flats between Cutting Boulevard and Solano Avenue.