--- title: $1 Million Starter Homes? That's the New Price Tag in These U.S. States description: Starter homes now cost at least $1 million in 242 U.S. cities. Here are the states where buying your first home costs the most. authors: - name: Liliana Hall role: Reporter url: https://money.com/author/liliana-hall/ bio: Liliana Hall joined Money in 2025. She is an Austin-based reporter for Money, where she covers a range of topics, including financial news, policy, banking, investing, passive income, financial planning and student loan debt. education: University of Texas at Austin at_money_since: 2025 articles: 134 covers: - Housing - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Pets - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes social: - https://x.com/lilihallllllll - https://www.linkedin.com/in/liliana-hall/ editors: - name: Katherine Peach role: Associate Editor url: https://money.com/author/katherine-peach/ bio: Katherine Peach is an associate editor with a focus on news and email at Money. She didn’t always intend to write about money. She’s a classically trained pianist who dreamed of becoming an archaeologist. However, in 2007 Katherine began working in financial publishing as an editor for Agora Inc. (Apparently, unearthing ideas about improving your personal finances isn’t such a bad career alternative!) Katherine’s writing and editing work has been featured in Investing Daily, Clever, Investor Junkie, The Palm Beach Letter, Truth & Plenty, Independence Monthly, NICHE, AmericanStyle, AntiqueWeek, Millennial Money, Money Done Right, TheStreet, Sure Dividend and many others. Katherine holds a Bachelor of Arts in Ancient Studies with concentrations in Archaeology and Ancient Languages and a minor in Literature from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. education: University of Maryland, Baltimore County at_money_since: 2025 articles: 14 covers: - Housing - Banking - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Federal Reserve Rate Cuts - Health and Wellness - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes published: '2026-06-26T12:30:41.000Z' section: Housing tags: - News word_count: 577 canonical: https://money.com/starter-homes-cost-million-cities/ type: NewsArticle source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Collage of house and 1 million dollars](https://img.money.com/2026/06/News-1mil-house.jpg) The typical first-time homebuyer was [30 years old in 1990](https://www.realtor.com/research/2026-generational-wealth). Today, they're [closer to 40](https://www.nar.realtor/press-releases/first-time-home-buyer-share-falls-to-historic-low-of-21-median-age-rises-to-40) as home prices have far outpaced income growth — and in hundreds of U.S. cities, even starter homes now come with seven-figure price tags. A new [report](https://www.zillow.com/research/million-dollar-starter-home-36452/) from Zillow found that 242 cities have starter homes priced at least $1 million — a record high and nearly triple the number before the pandemic housing boom. Zillow defines a starter home as one whose value falls in the lowest third of homes in a local market. While California still dominates the list of states with the most cities with million-dollar starter homes, the phenomenon is spreading beyond the country’s most notoriously expensive housing markets. Million-dollar starter homes can now be found in 26 states — up from nine before the pandemic. Here’s where buying your first home can mean spending seven figures. ## Where starter homes cost at least $1 million Million-dollar starter homes are still heavily concentrated in a handful of states, particularly California, New York and New Jersey. California alone has 105 cities where a typical starter home is priced at least $1 million, while New York has 41 and New Jersey 26, according to Zillow. New York and New Jersey are the fastest-growing states on the list, adding 10 and five cities, respectively, over the past year. The New York City metropolitan area, which includes parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has the largest concentration of million-dollar starter homes, with 63 cities making the list. The San Francisco metro area follows, with 37 cities, while Los Angeles has 33. The geography of million-dollar starter homes has broadened in recent years. “The reality is that with underbuilding, low inventory and what was basically a pandemic-era price reset, the definition of a starter home has changed,” Ryan Fitzgerald, a real estate broker and owner of Raleigh Realty in North Carolina, tells Money. “This trend is particularly interesting now, as it has begun to spread beyond longstanding coastal markets into the Northeast and well-established employment corridors.” Before 2020, million-dollar starter homes were almost entirely coastal, with Colorado being the only interior state on the list. Now, multiple cities in states including Texas, Wyoming and Illinois have crossed the $1 million starter-home threshold. Below are the states with the most million-dollar starter homes: | State | Number of cities as of April 2026 | | --- | --- | | California | 105 | | New York | 41 | | New Jersey | 26 | | Florida | 11 | | Massachusetts | 10 | | Washington | 8 | | Texas | 7 | | Connecticut | 4 | | Hawaii | 4 | | Maryland | 4 | _Source: Zillow report (June 2026)_ The spread of million-dollar starter homes stands in stark contrast to national income levels. The [median household income](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-286.html) in the U.S. was roughly $83,000 in 2024, meaning a $1 million home costs more than 12 times what the typical household earns in a year. Still, million-dollar starter homes remain the exception rather than the rule nationwide. Zillow estimates the typical starter home in the U.S. is worth about $199,000, but prices vary dramatically depending on where buyers live. But for buyers in markets where even entry-level homes cost seven figures, the path to homeownership often looks very different than it did for the previous generation. The trend hasn’t necessarily changed buyers’ desire to own a home, Fitzgerald says, but it has changed their timelines. “Rather than giving up on homeownership altogether, first-time buyers are saving for a longer period of time, entering the market later in life, and becoming more flexible about property size, condition and location,” he says. In many of these states, he adds, qualifying for a mortgage is now less about meeting baseline requirements and more about managing the total monthly cost of ownership, including taxes, insurance and maintenance. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/starter-homes-cost-million-cities/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Housing", "item": "https://money.com/housing/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Housing Market", "item": "https://money.com/housing-market/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "$1 Million Starter Homes? 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