See which Merced County ZIP codes saw the highest home values increase during the last decade
As the 2010s came to an end, the economic recovery that followed the 2007-09 recession helped buoy single-family home values in the Merced area – in some cases, by 30% to 55% during the decade.
From early 2014 – when the earliest data in Zillow.com’s Home Value Index was available at the ZIP code level for most of Merced County – through November 2019, home values in Merced and nearby communities generally increased by between $58,000 and $113,000. Property values vary from one home to another within a ZIP code, and the Zillow index also varies from one ZIP code to another.
The ZIP code with the greatest percentage increase was 95334, which includes Livingston and some of the rural areas south of that city. There, Zillow estimates that values rose from about $170,000 in early 2014 to almost $266,000. The $96,000 increase amounted to a percentage increase of 56.4%.
By contrast, the neighborhood with the smallest percentage increase was 95348, which covers the northern part of the city of Merced and rural areas north of the city almost to the town of Snelling. At the start of 2014, the value index was estimated by Zillow.com at almost $215,000. Now, the estimate is just under $277,000 – a change of about $62,000, but it represents a percentage increase through the decade of 28.8%.
Homes in Merced’s ZIP code 95340, which covers most of the city of Merced east of Highway 99 and rural areas northeast and east of the city beyond the University of California Merced campus, gained an average of more than $60,000 in value, according to Zillow. The index rose from about $202,500 at the start of 2014 to just over $263,000 last month. For that span, it’s a percentage increase of 30%.
Overall, the city of Merced’s Zillow index has climbed by nearly 49% since the start of 2013 – the earliest data available – rising from about $171,000 then to almost $254,000 now.
Elsewhere in the Valley, Fresno ranked second to Riverside among California’s 10 largest cities for the highest percentage increase in citywide home values. Fresno’s estimated rise from about $145,000 in 2010 to more than $256,000 last month represented growth of more than 76%. Riverside, in Southern California’s Inland Empire, saw values grow by an estimated 77.2% over the decade.
Still, that ranks Fresno’s citywide home values as the second lowest among the biggest cities in the state according to the Zillow index:
- San Francisco, $1.44 million, up 49.2 for the decade.
- San Jose, $1.06 million, up 36.8%.
- Oakland, $800,000, up 48.2%.
- Los Angeles, $746,000, up 72.2%.
- San Diego, $710,000, up 53.8%.
- Long Beach, $641,000, up 54.7%.
- Riverside, $422,000, up 77.2%.
- Sacramento, $348,000, up 62.8%.
- Fresno, $256,000, up 76.3%.
- Bakersfield, $252,000, up 45.9%.
Rents also rising
The city of Merced is also seeing its apartment rent prices on the rise, although data is limited to 2019. Since the summer, the average rent for an apartment in Merced has climbed from about $1,020 to $1,075 in November, according to the Zillow Rent Index, which estimates the average market-rate rents in a community. That’s an increase of about 5.5% in the span of four months.
The prices that Fresnans pay in rent for apartments also climbed throughout the 2010s. Fresno remains one of the least expensive of California’s larger cities to rent an apartment. The Zillow data indicates that the average apartment rent in November was about $1,006 per month – although rents can vary widely based on factors including amount of square feet in a unit, number of bedrooms, amenities, age and location of a rental unit.
That’s up almost 41% from a starting point of $715 in mid-2012, when Zillow launched its rental index tool. But Fresno’s rate of rent increase was not as high as some other big California cities, where rents in many cases started off much higher than Fresno and ended the decade with even more eye-popping prices.
California’s 10 largest cities, ranked by Zillow rent index monthly price in November 2019, and their percentage increase during the decade, are:
- San Francisco, $3,774 per month, up 38.2% for the decade.
- Oakland, $2,678 per month, up 78.2%.
- San Jose, $2,651 per month, up 49.7%.
- Los Angeles, $2,473 per month, up 42.4%.
- San Diego, $2,201 per month, up 54.3%.
- Long Beach, $2,024 per month, up 57.1%.
- Riverside, $1,651 per month, up 52.1%.
- Sacramento, $1,492 per month, up 73.2%.
- Fresno, $1,005 per month, up 40.7%.
- Bakersfield, $949 per month, up 21.7%.
This story was originally published January 2, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
