Million-Dollar Homes Increasingly Common

If you don’t own a million-dollar home, chances are that you know someone who does. For the first time, there are over a million such residences in the U.S., according to recent research.

The Boston Globe reports that, while a symbol of unusual wealth only a few years ago, these million-dollar dwellings are now commonplace in the nation’s hottest markets. California real estate has seen the most marked increase. San Francisco alone boasts more than 20,000 owner-occupied residences valued at $1M or higher, while 46,000 more can be found in The O.C. (Orange County, Calif.).

In Manhattan, the average apartment price is now $1.2M in most parts of the island, with the exceptions of Harlem and Washington Heights. Desirable areas in metro Boston and in South Florida have also risen astronomically in price over the past five years, pushing what were once average two-bedroom apartments into seven-figure dwellings.

To illustrate how quickly the incredible real estate boom has impacted major metropolitan areas in the past five years, the current estimate of 1,034,386 homes worth at least $1M in 2004 is nearly double the 595,441 counted just two years ago. In 2000, the total was only 394,878.