Californias last cheap-housing haven has a $250K median home price

California’s housing market has become synonymous with eye-watering prices, but it turns out you can still find a bargain.While buyers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other pricey parts of the state are known for sky-high home prices, remote Trinity County is hanging onto a distinction that has all but vanished elsewhere: a median home price of just $250,000.

The rural Northern California county was the cheapest market tracked by the California Association of Realtors’ July 2026 Home Sales and Price Report, with its median price clocking in at exactly $250,000 in July.That makes the wooded enclave, tucked between Redding and the North Coast, one of the last places in the notoriously expensive Golden State where roughly a quarter of a million dollars can get you a typical home.The prices are moving in favor of the buyer, dropping a whopping 29.1% from the previous month, when it hovered at $352,480, according to the report.

Compared to a year earlier though, the mean was up about 4%, from $240,500 in July 2025.The dramatic monthly swings may be common in smaller counties like Trinity, with the report cautioning that “many of the outsized gains and losses were likely driven by low transaction volumes, rather than broad changes in underlying market conditions.”Those prices look like bargains stacked against the statewide median of $887,680, which actually fell 1.9% from $904,640 in June.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the median home price in July sits above $1.2 million, while in the Los Angeles Metro Area, homes carried a median price of $849,450.In Trinity County, that same amount of cash could get you between three and five homes.

The tradeoff for a bargain home seems to be remoteness.Home to the Gold Rush town of Weaverville, Trinity is a world away from California’s coastal cities, and is characterized by mountains and wilderness.

Unsold inventory spent a median of 118 days on the market on July, which ballooned from 43.5 days in June.For house ...