What does a $1.5 million home look like across California? Take a look at these five properties

Both single-family homes are listed at about the median price for what a single-family home in San Francisco sells for these days — $1.5 million.

In a state as vast as California, where home prices have soared during the pandemic to a statewide median of $771,270, single-family homes listed at $1.5 million take different shapes.

How different? Here’s a tour of five recent listings in five California cities.

San Francisco: A sunny 4-bedroom a short walk from Stern Grove

Location is one of the main attractions behind the detached Outer Sunset home that’s listed at $1,495,000.

The home on 22nd Avenue is less than two blocks from Stern Grove Park to the south and Muni’s L rail line to the north. It’s also next to the 19th Avenue corridor — one of the Sunset’s three main north-south arterials connecting westside residents to I-280.

“It’s close to the beach and the park, and especially since COVID the last couple of years, a lot of people want more outdoor space,” listing agent Jason Chan said of the 4-bed, 4-bath property. “So this is really the ideal home.”

The living room includes a fireplace and wide windows that bathe the room in natrual sunlight. Its backyard features a second-floor tiled deck with a staircase leading to a backyard that can be used for gardening. The home’s late owner, a contractor, built additional rooms on the first floor, though the home still has a one-car garage and storage space.

The 2,300-square-foot listing is the kind of home attracting many young families to the city’s Parkside neighborhood, including first-time homebuyers, Chan said.

“It’s a very family friendly neighborhood,” he said.

Santa Rosa: A suburban home luring Bay Area families northward

In Santa Rosa, the five-bedroom home listed at $1,495,000 is the type of place that’s attracted interest from families in San Francisco and the South Bay who are looking to move north in search of bigger properties within close proximity.

That trend has been par for the course in recent years, realtor Karen Webb said, though that migration pattern has only grown stronger since the pandemic and the rise of hybrid and telework.

“That’s what’s so tempting for people, especially if they have these new hybrid work situations where they can keep a nice high-paying job and move up here and have a house that’s three times the size of what they had in the city,” Webb said.

The 4,000-square-foot home, featuring a three-car garage and backyard hot tub, is adjacent to Santa Rosa’s Skyhawk Park and is about an hour drive from San Francisco.

There’s wide variance of homes listed in Sonoma County listed at around $1.5 million, Webb said. Similar priced properties toward the North Bay coast are likely to have smaller homes plopped in more acreage.

But migration from the Bay Area’s inner core continues to drive home prices in the North Bay.

“We are getting a giant influx of people moving north, which is pushing our market,” Webb said. “So there’s people who have lived here for a long time who are selling, cashing out and moving north or somewhere else.”

Sacramento: A home where $1.5 million listings have become common

For years, much of the Bay Area’s outmigration has led homebuyers to Sacramento and its sprawling suburbs.

The migration to the region has made $1.5 million home listings in Sacramento more common in recent years. Still, “$1.5 million will get you an amazing house here,” realtor Kendra Knauer said.

Knauer last Thursday listed a three-bedroom, three-bathroom home near the city’s wealthy “Fab 40s” neighborhood in east Sacramento. The 2,400-square-foot home, which includes a spacious backyard shaded by the trees that proliferate across the city, attracted about 100 people to its open houses over the weekend, including some would-be Bay Area buyers.

The listing is expected to have a sale pending within the next week, Knauer said.

“This price point, especially in the last year or two, is a much more common price point than we’ve been used to seeing in Sacramento,” Knauer said. “Four or five years ago, there wasn’t a ton of $1.5 million houses in Sacramento.”

L.A.: A remodeled three-bedroom home close to the ocean

Situated on a dead-end street near Interstates 10 and 405, this remodeled three-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot home is the standard listing in Los Angeles around the $1.5 million price range, realtor Karla Zapata said.

The Spanish-style home, first built in 1936, comes with a two-car garage, backyard pool and front open-air courtyard with a manicured front lawn.