American consumers might have reason to believe that the recovering economy is keeping costs down. After all, gas prices have recently hit lows we haven’t seen in years. A strong dollar has made purchases more affordable. And national unemployment dipped to 5.1 percent earlier this year.
But when it comes to things like buying a home, Americans might be startled at how quickly prices have rebounded in many places following the economic recession. Prices haven’t increased uniformly; some areas still have relatively affordable home prices, while others have homes with prices that seem to rise exponentially each year.
Using data from their real estate market trends topic, our data experts at FindTheHome identified the most expensive states to buy a home based on the median home sale price in each state. These statistics are sourced from public county records and reflect the median price of all home sales recorded in July 2015.
California stood as the third-most-expensive state to buy a home.
Out of all the counties in Southern California, Orange County had the most expensive median home prices in July 2015, with a median sale price of $600,000, an increase of 3.63 percent from the same period 12 months ago. Ventura County followed second, with a median sale price of $406,000, jumping 5.86 percent since last year.
Visualizations provided by Graphiq.