Here’s where home prices have risen so fast that median mortgage payments have doubled
If you managed to buy a home in the Bay Area in 2012, just as housing prices were hitting bottom, you’ve seen your property value skyrocket in the years since.
And in two dozen ZIP codes, from Antioch to San Jose, that’s an understatement: Prices have risen so steeply that the median market-rate mortgage more than doubled between 2012 and last year, according to this news organization’s affordability analysis of 225-plus ZIP codes in the nine-county Bay Area and Santa Cruz County. That’s mostly because of escalating sales prices; during that same period, average mortgage interest rates increased by less than one percent.
Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties contained the majority of ZIP codes that saw median mortgage increases of more than 100 percent, accounting for 19 of the two dozen. In parts of Vallejo and Oakland, payments increased more than 150 percent.
Read The Price We Pay: How Rising Housing Costs are Transforming the Bay Area
Even at more than double the cost, the four ZIP codes that saw the greatest increases between 2012 and 2018 still fell within the cheapest 20 percent of Bay Area zips last year.
But payments also spiked in pricier neighborhoods close to Silicon Valley’s tech centers. In Mountain View’s 94043, near Google’s headquarters, for example, median mortgage payments surged more than 104 percent, from $3,190 in 2012 to $6,510 in 2018.
No place has appreciated more than Oakland’s 94601, which encompasses the Fruitvale neighborhood, home to the city’s largest Hispanic population and site of the deadly Ghost Ship fire that killed 36 people in 2016. There, the median market-rate mortgage payment jumped 159 percent, from just $880 in 2012 to $2,280 a month in 2018.
A four-bedroom home described as a “fixer-upper” needing “a lot of work” was listed for sale as of late January at $550,000 — more than quadruple the price it sold for in late 2011.
Vallejo’s 94590 saw a similar surge, with a 158 percent increase in median monthly mortgage payments from 2012 to 2018. Here, in the triangle bound by Mare Island, Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and Interstate 80, the median payment leapt from $570 in 2012 to $1,470 in 2018.
By contrast, the smallest increase among the 24 zip codes was in East San Jose’s 95133, where the median mortgage payment increased 101.10 percent, from $1,850 to $3,720.
In Sunnyvale’s 94089 and 94086, median mortgage payments more than doubled to $5,120 and $7,220, respectively. Last year, the city broke its own record for the most expensive single-parcel sale when a 2,855-square-foot home in its West Valley neighborhood sold in May for $3.15 million.
Below are the two dozen Bay Area zip codes that saw median mortgage payments at least double between 2012 and 2018.