Which Bay Area cities have appreciated the most over the last few years? We cover the top 50 cities by population over the last 1, 3, 5, 10, 20 and 25 years. All data has been taken from Zillow for single family homes. The interactive table allows sorting by any column of your choice. It is easy to notice two broad trends across different time periods.

In the early 2000s, peninsula and northern parts of the Bay showed the strongest appreciation. Places like San Francisco, Oakland, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, etc. were the leaders. This clearly changed in 2010s as the tech employment moved downwards to the South Bay. The places with the strongest appreciation were San Jose, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Campbell, and so on. Oakland and San Francisco have severely underperformed in the last 10 years. Part of it is because of the perception problem amid the media reports of crime and homelessness. Given their relative affordability compared to South Bay, we expect the next 10 years to be much stronger.