Fremont added more million-dollar neighborhoods than any other city in the U.S.

Fremont had 11 new communities where median home values broke $1 million during the last 12 months.

Looking at the list above, it’s clear the Golden State more than lives up to its moniker. And given that so many homes there are worth $1 million-or-more, it should come as little surprise that California is also home to the largest number of million-dollar neighborhoods – those enclaves where half of all homes are worth at least a cool million bucks.

Of the more than 15,100 larger neighborhoods nationwide included in this analysis, 838 had a median home value of $1,000,000 or more, roughly two-thirds of which are in California. More than a quarter (29 percent) of California’s neighborhoods have a median home value of at least $1 million, the highest by far of all states analyzed. New York, Florida and Washington rank a distant 2nd, 3rd, and 4th on the list of states with the most $1 million neighborhoods. Even so, a whopping 82.8 percent of all $1 million neighborhoods are in one of these four states, demonstrating the immense value of housing in coastal states in general. Turning inland, Colorado has the fifth-most $1 million neighborhoods (27), most of which are in the Boulder area.

Of the nation’s 838 million-dollar-’hoods, 105 crossed the threshold in the past year alone. Among cities and towns analyzed with at least 10 large neighborhoods, eight of the top 10 with the largest jump in neighborhoods joining the $1 million club are (again…) in coastal California. Boulder, Colo., and Brookline, Mass., just outside of Boston, round out the top-10. In Boulder, 9.4% of neighborhoods — mostly on the west and north side of the city — crossed the $1 million threshold recently. Aspinwall Hill in Brookline was the one neighborhood of ten local areas analyzed that helped the Boston suburb make the list.

California communities are getting a lot of ink, but they aren’t all created equal. In the larger Oakland metro, 6.9% of larger neighborhoods (20 of its 290) crossed into $1 million territory over the past year. But that wasn’t driven by growth in the city of Oakland itself – a majority (11) of those 20 neighborhoods were in the city of Fremont, a few miles south of Oakland. Among metro areas where the number of $1 million neighborhoods is ticking upward, they tend to border neighborhoods that have crossed over recently. The million-dollar creep continues.