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Roseville Ranked #12 in America
Geoff Goolsby
I’m a trusted real estate advisor serving Roseville and the greater Sacramento area, helping thoughtful homeowners navigate buying and selling with ...
I’m a trusted real estate advisor serving Roseville and the greater Sacramento area, helping thoughtful homeowners navigate buying and selling with ...
Roseville Market Analysis
Roseville Ranked #12 in America. Here's What Actually Earned the Score.
WalletHub published the ranking and the metric list, then stopped. So I opened the methodology, added up the points, and found that the reason Roseville scored well isn't the one most people are going to assume — and one of the real reasons has about five years left on it.
By Geoff Goolsby, The Goolsby Group • Published August 24, 2026 • Primary source: WalletHub, 2026 Best Real Estate Markets
On August 19, 2026, WalletHub released its annual Best Real Estate Markets study. It compared 300 U.S. cities across 17 metrics grouped into two dimensions — real estate market conditions, and affordability and economic environment. Roseville came in at number 12 nationally with a score of 63.46.
That's the headline, and you'll see it on a lot of feeds this month. What you won't see is anyone explaining why. The study tells you where every city landed and which metrics were used, but it doesn't walk you through which of those metrics did the heavy lifting for any particular city. That's the part worth knowing, because it's the part that tells you whether the ranking means anything for the house you own or the one you're about to buy.
Where Roseville Landed
Source: WalletHub, 2026 Best Real Estate Markets, published August 19, 2026. Study data collected as of July 22, 2026.
Frisco, Texas took the top spot, followed by McKinney, Texas and Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Texas and the Carolinas claimed most of the top ten. The only California city that finished ahead of Roseville was Irvine, at number 10.
What Did WalletHub Actually Measure?
Seventeen metrics, but they are nowhere near equal in value.
This is where almost every write-up of this study goes wrong, and it's worth slowing down for. The 17 metrics are split into two dimensions that carry very different weight. The Real Estate Market dimension is worth 80 points. The Affordability and Economic Environment dimension is worth 20.
Inside that 80-point dimension are ten metrics, each carrying a full weight of roughly 8.00 points: home value forecast, median home-price appreciation, median days on the market, share of seriously underwater mortgages, ratio of rent price to sale price, foreclosure rate, mortgage delinquency rate, vacancy rate, share of young homes, and building-permit activity.
Inside the 20-point dimension are seven metrics. One of them — housing affordability, which measures home price as a share of income — is the only double-weighted metric in the entire study, at roughly 5.00 points. The other six carry roughly 2.50 points each.
"Double weight" sounds like the biggest lever in the study. It isn't. Housing affordability is double-weighted within its own 20-point dimension — which still leaves it at 5.00 points, less than any single one of the ten metrics in the 80-point dimension. If you want to know why a city ranked where it did, the affordability metric is not where you start.
So Which Metrics Actually Earned Roseville the Score?
Three things, and they're worth ranking by what they're actually worth.
Once you have the point values, you can sort the reasons by how much they moved the number rather than by how interesting they sound. Here's the order.
1. Financial stability — roughly 34.5 points in play
Four metrics in the 80-point dimension are asking the same question in different ways: foreclosure rate, mortgage delinquency rate, share of seriously underwater mortgages, and vacancy rate. That's 32 points. Add median credit score from the affordability dimension and you're at roughly 34.5 — more than a third of the entire scoring system, all of it measuring whether households in a city are under water or behind on payments.
Nobody makes a graphic out of "low delinquency rate." But this is the single largest block of points in the study, and it's the block Roseville does best on. Equity is deep here, distressed sales are rare, and the homes sitting empty are the exception rather than a category.
Stability metrics are backward-looking. They describe how well existing owners have weathered the last several years — they don't tell you what a house purchased today will be worth in five. A city can score beautifully on distress metrics and still be an expensive place to buy into.
2. New construction — 16 points in play, and a clock on it
Two of the 8.00-point metrics are share of young homes (units built between 2010 and 2024) and building-permit activity. Together that's 16 points, and this is where Roseville separates from nearly every other established California city, because most of them have essentially stopped building. Roseville hasn't — and if you want to see where that activity is actually happening, I keep a running guide to the best new construction communities in Roseville.
Newer housing stock also feeds the metrics around it. Newer homes mean lower vacancy, fewer deferred-maintenance problems, and a stronger home-value forecast. One strength shows up in several columns at once.
Here is the part that deserves more attention than it's getting. According to Mike Isom, Roseville's development services director, speaking to CBS Sacramento in May 2025, the city has just over 5,000 single-family homes left to be built. At roughly a thousand building permits a year, that puts full build-out somewhere in the next five to six years.
A real share of this ranking rests on something Roseville is going to run out of. When the lots are gone, the city stops earning points for new construction and permit activity, and it becomes a resale market permanently. That isn't a bad outcome — plenty of desirable places are entirely resale — but if you're weighing a purchase against the next decade, it belongs in your math.
3. Affordability relative to income — 5 points in play
This is the metric most people will point to, and it's real: Roseville's home prices measured against local incomes score better than California norms, which is why the city's affordability and economic sub-rank came in at 18th while its real estate market sub-rank was 25th. Roseville's incomes run high — healthcare and professional employment anchored by Kaiser, Sutter, and Adventist rather than a service economy — and that's the half of the fraction doing the work. Homes here are not cheap. And if your income is self-employed or contractor-based, the way a lender reads that number is a separate problem worth understanding before you shop — I walk through it in my guide for self-employed homebuyers in Roseville.
For scale on how this metric behaves: WalletHub notes that McKinney, Texas has a median home price around 380% of median income, which ranks as the 73rd-cheapest of the 300 cities studied. It takes a fairly low ratio to crack the top quarter on this measure.
Price-to-income is a citywide ratio, not a household one. It compares a median home to a median income, and there is no rule that the family looking at a given house earns the median. If your income doesn't track Roseville's professional and healthcare wage base, the city's strong showing on this metric won't be your experience of it.
How Does Roseville Compare to the City That Won?
Frisco, Texas finished first. The two markets are less alike than the rankings suggest.
| Measure | Roseville, CA (#12) | Frisco, TX (#1) |
|---|---|---|
| Median sale price, last 12 months | $637,500 | $695,000 |
| Days on market | 41 | 58 |
| Months of supply | 2.80 | 5.80 |
| Homes sold, last 12 months | 2,585 | 2,733 |
| Homes currently for sale | 601 | 1,328 |
| Average price per square foot | $333 | $255 |
| Median year built | 1998 | 2005 |
| Typical home value, 1-year change | +0.6% | −2.7% |
Sources: Homes.com city market data (CoStar) for Roseville and Frisco, retrieved August 24, 2026, for price, days on market, months of supply, sales volume, active listings, price per square foot, and median year built. Zillow Home Value Index, June 30, 2026, for one-year change in typical home value. Individual property values vary; citywide medians do not describe any specific home.
The two cities close a nearly identical number of sales a year — 2,585 against 2,733. Frisco needs more than twice the standing inventory to do it, and takes 17 more days per sale. At 5.80 months of supply, Frisco sits close to the six-month line conventionally treated as the boundary of a buyer's market. Roseville is at less than half that.
Note the inversion in the last two rows, though, because it cuts the other way. Frisco's median home costs more in total but far less per square foot. A buyer there gets substantially more house for the money. And Roseville's housing stock is older by seven years at the median — the same build-out story, seen from the other end.
Who Benefits From This Ranking, and Who Should Be Cautious?
Relocating buyers running the numbers from a more expensive metro. The combination of a professional and healthcare wage base with land prices well below coastal California is exactly what the affordability metric picked up, and it's a real advantage if your income travels with you.
Owners who plan to stay put. The stability metrics that carried the most weight in this study describe a market where equity is deep and forced sales are uncommon. That's the profile that holds up when conditions tighten.
Buyers counting on continued new-construction momentum. With roughly five to six years of single-family lots remaining by the city's own estimate, the new-build pipeline that supports two of the heaviest metrics has a visible end date.
Sellers reading the ranking as pricing permission. A national score describes a city. It has no opinion about your street, your floor plan, or your condition — and the current market is treating those three things harshly.
What the Ranking Doesn't Know About Your House
Roseville is running two markets at the same time right now.
Here's what I'm seeing in MetroList as of the week of August 10, 2026. There were 385 active listings in Roseville, and 241 of them — 63 percent — had been sitting longer than 30 days. Nearly two out of three.
At the same time, the homes that did sell went in about 31 days at 98 percent of original list price, closings were up 26 percent from the prior August, and listings that expired or cancelled were down 19 percent year over year.
If you've seen a much lower figure quoted for Roseville, that's a different measurement rather than a contradiction. Zillow reports homes here going pending in roughly 15 days, which counts the stretch from listing to accepted offer. Days on market runs the clock until a listing closes, goes pending, or comes off the market entirely. Both are accurate, and the gap between them is roughly the shape of the problem this section is about.
Both of those are true simultaneously, and that's the whole picture. Priced and prepared correctly, you're gone inside a month at essentially full price. Priced on hope, you join the 63 percent, and then you reduce, and reduce again, and typically net less than if the first number had been right. I ran the arithmetic on exactly this in a separate piece — on a home at Roseville's typical value, the discount at the end tends to dwarf everything you spend waiting for it. It is worth reading before you set a number: what overpricing a Roseville home really costs. And if you are already listed and sitting, a reduction is not automatically the answer — sometimes the problem is presentation and exposure rather than price, which is a different fix entirely. I have written separately about when a price reduction makes sense and when it is the wrong move.
My Own Thoughts on the Matter
Personal share: I grew up near Crocker Ranch and went to Roseville High, and I've owned three homes in Highland Reserve. So I've watched this city build west my entire life — from Foothills and Baseline out toward Blue Oaks, one specific plan at a time.
When you've watched it happen from inside, a study like this one doesn't feel like news. It feels like somebody finally showed up with a clipboard and confirmed what everyone here already knew. That's fine. I'd just rather you know which parts of it are durable and which parts have an expiration date.
The build-out number is the one I keep coming back to. I've spent twenty years watching the western edge move, and I'm going to see it stop. That's not a crisis — every growing city eventually finishes growing. But it changes what Roseville is, and I'd rather talk about that now than pretend it isn't coming.
The bigger picture
A ranking like this is a useful piece of evidence and a terrible substitute for judgment. It's genuinely good news that a national study looked at 300 cities and found that Roseville households aren't in trouble, that we're still building, and that our incomes hold up against our prices. Those are real things and they took twenty years to build.
But the score was calculated on data collected in July, across an entire city of more than 43,000 homes. Your house is one of them. The two-tier market I described above is the thing that will actually determine what you net, and no national study is going to tell you which tier you're in.
What to Do With This Information
If you're thinking about selling in the next year
Ignore the ranking entirely when you set your price. Look instead at what's actually moving in your specific price band and neighborhood, and at how long the comparable listings around you have been sitting. If two-thirds of the standing inventory is stale, the market is telling you precisely where the line is between priced right and priced hopeful. Being on the wrong side of that line for three weeks is expensive to unwind. If your sale and your next purchase have to happen together, the sequencing matters as much as the price — I break down the four realistic approaches in my guide to buying and selling at the same time in Roseville. And if the question is still whether to go at all this year rather than how, my 2026 seller timing checklist walks through the three realistic paths: list now, prep for spring, or hold and reassess against specific signals.
If you're relocating from a more expensive market
Run your own price-to-income math rather than relying on the citywide version. The metric that helped Roseville score well compares a median home to a median local income, and neither number is necessarily yours. What matters is what your household earns against the specific homes you'd actually consider. If privacy and a curated neighborhood feel are part of what you're looking for, my guide to Roseville's gated communities is a useful place to narrow the field.
If you're buying with a ten-year horizon
Factor the build-out timeline in deliberately. New construction is currently supporting two of the most heavily weighted metrics in this study, and by the city's own estimate that support has roughly five to six years left. Ask what your neighborhood looks like as an entirely resale market, because that's the version you'll own.
If you're an owner with no plans to move
This ranking is mostly good news and requires nothing from you. The metrics Roseville scored best on — low foreclosure, low delinquency, low vacancy, few underwater mortgages — describe the position you're already in. It's worth knowing that this is what a national study rewarded, and that it's the least fragile kind of strength a housing market can have.
The Bottom Line
Roseville's number 12 finish is earned, and it's earned for reasons that are more boring and more durable than the ones that will get shared. Roughly a third of the entire scoring system measures household financial distress, and Roseville came through that block cleanly. That's not a marketing win. That's twenty years of people buying homes they could afford and staying in them.
The second-largest contributor — new construction and permit activity, worth 16 points — is real today and finite tomorrow. Somewhere in the next five to six years, by the city's own accounting, Roseville stops being a growth market and becomes a resale market. That transition is worth planning around whether you're buying, selling, or staying.
And the affordability metric that most people will credit for this ranking is worth five points out of a hundred. It's a genuine Roseville strength and it is not the reason we placed twelfth.
What I'd watch next is the permit count. It's the clearest early signal of where the city is in that transition, and it's public. When annual permits start falling meaningfully below a thousand, the clock has moved — and that will show up in this study long before it shows up in anyone's listing price.
Common Questions
Where did Roseville rank in WalletHub's 2026 Best Real Estate Markets study?
Roseville ranked 12th out of 300 U.S. cities with an overall score of 63.46. WalletHub also publishes results grouped by city size, and Roseville ranked 9th among midsize cities, defined as those with 150,000 to 300,000 residents. The national figure is 12.
Was Roseville the highest-ranked California city?
No. Irvine finished 10th, two spots ahead of Roseville. Irvine was the only California city ranked above Roseville in the study.
What metric mattered most in the WalletHub ranking?
The Real Estate Market dimension carried 80 of the 100 points, spread across ten metrics worth roughly 8.00 points each. The Affordability and Economic Environment dimension carried the remaining 20 points across seven metrics. Housing affordability was the only double-weighted metric in the study, but at roughly 5.00 points it still carried less weight than any individual metric in the larger dimension.
How long do homes take to sell in Roseville right now?
Homes.com city data retrieved August 24, 2026 puts Roseville's days on market at 41, against a national average of 55. In MetroList the week of August 10, 2026, homes that closed were selling in roughly 31 days at 98 percent of original list price — while 241 of the 385 active listings had been on the market longer than 30 days.
How much inventory is on the market in Roseville?
Roseville had 601 homes for sale and 2.80 months of supply as of August 24, 2026, per Homes.com. Six months of supply is the conventional dividing line between a seller's market and a buyer's market, so Roseville is well inside seller's-market territory by that measure.
When will Roseville be fully built out?
Roseville's development services director, Mike Isom, told CBS Sacramento in May 2025 that the city has just over 5,000 single-family homes left to be built. At roughly a thousand building permits issued per year, that puts full build-out within about five to six years of that statement.
Does a high national ranking mean my Roseville home will sell for more?
No. The study scores a city, not a property. Roseville is currently running a two-tier market: correctly priced and well-prepared homes are selling quickly at close to full asking price, while a majority of standing inventory has been sitting more than 30 days. Which tier a given home lands in depends on price, condition, and presentation, not on the city's national rank.
Which city ranked first, and how does it compare to Roseville?
Frisco, Texas ranked first. Frisco's median sale price over the last 12 months was $695,000 against Roseville's $637,500, but Frisco carries 5.80 months of supply to Roseville's 2.80 and takes 58 days to sell against Roseville's 41. Frisco is also cheaper per square foot — $255 versus $333 — and its typical home value fell 2.7 percent over the year ending June 30, 2026, while Roseville's rose 0.6 percent.
This blog post is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute real estate, legal, or financial advice. Ranking and methodology data from WalletHub, 2026 Best Real Estate Markets, published August 19, 2026, with study data collected as of July 22, 2026. Market data from Homes.com (CoStar) retrieved August 24, 2026, Zillow Home Value Index as of June 30, 2026, and MetroList MLS data for the week of August 10, 2026. Build-out figures attributed to Roseville Development Services Director Mike Isom via CBS Sacramento, May 2025. Individual property values vary. Consult a licensed real estate professional for advice specific to your situation. Geoff Goolsby, DRE #01926125, Real Broker.