A Zillow analysis counts cities where even the bottom third of regional home values now tops $1M, nearly tripling the pre pandemic map and shifting its fastest growth to New York and New Jersey.
California still leads the count of US cities where entry-level buyers now need at least $1 million, but the fastest growth has shifted to New York and New Jersey, according to a Zillow analysis distributed by PRNewswire on Monday. Fifteen cities crossed the $1M threshold for the cheapest third of regional homes in the past year, and most of them sit outside the West Coast.
A starter home, in Zillow's framework, is a property in the lowest third of home values for its region, not a single national price tier. That definition is what allows a $1M starter home in San Jose to coexist with a $198,649 typical starter home nationwide. The 242-city total is roughly three times the 80 cities Zillow identified in February 2020, before the pandemic reset the housing market. The company is the originating source of the analysis, dated June 2026.
New York and New Jersey are now the fastest-growing part of the map. California still has the most $1M starter-home cities, but the year-over-year expansion is concentrated in the Northeast corridor, with new entries joining a list that has long been dominated by California strongholds. The list has spread well beyond its coastal roots.
The same release, however, includes a quieter set of signals that run the other direction. Zillow's framing points to "affordability pressures have begun to ease in parts of the country," citing a national typical starter-home value that has climbed only 1.7% over the past year. The list of 242 cities is the durable side of the data; the easing signals are the more tentative one.
That tension is the story. The geography of entry-level ownership has redrawn itself in ways that now stretch well beyond the original California-and-Seattle core, and the redrawing is durable. At the same time, the conditions for getting onto the ladder appear to be slowly improving in some markets for buyers who are already saving. The map is bigger, but the bottom rung is bending back.
Zillow's analysis is the originating source for the city count, the pre-pandemic baseline, and the starter-home definition. Independent confirmation of the directional claim has not been published in the same release. The next two quarters of inventory and price-growth data will show whether the easing conditions are regional, seasonal, or the start of a broader reset.