North Highlands and Rio Linda by the numbers

The north end of Sacramento County has the lowest home values in this almanac and some of the oldest houses, and most of the reasons trace back to McClellan and to zoning. Below are the newest Census estimates for North Highlands, Rio Linda and three of their neighbors, set next to the county as a whole, with my notes from twenty years of driving a school bus up and down these streets.

Where these numbers come from

Everything here is from the American Community Survey 5-year estimates covering 2020 through 2024, which the Census Bureau put out on January 29, 2026. I downloaded the Bureau's summary files and ran the math with a short script, so the percentages are my arithmetic on their counts.

The five places are census-designated places, or CDPs. North Highlands, Rio Linda, Antelope, Foothill Farms and Elverta all have names and ZIP codes, but none has a city government. I added Foothill Farms because it borders North Highlands and gets lumped in with it, and Elverta because it shares a community plan, a water district and a lot of open ground with Rio Linda.

Small places mean wide margins. Elverta has fewer than 1,600 occupied homes, so treat its numbers as a rough sketch.

Home values: the cheapest corner of the county

North Highlands sits $166,600 below the county median. Foothill Farms is next lowest. Rio Linda and Elverta land within about $5,000 of each other, and since each has a margin of error near $16,000, call it a tie.

Antelope is the high one, and the next table shows why. About 66 percent of its homes went up in the 1980s and 1990s, so it's a newer suburb sitting next to older ones.

The Census can't tell you why North Highlands runs cheap, and I'd be guessing if I gave you one clean reason. What the survey does show is a lot of older houses and a lot of renters, which I'll get to below. Income points the same way. North Highlands' median household income came in at $65,495, against $92,175 for the county. Rio Linda, for what it's worth, came in at $96,364, a little above the county.

McClellan and the 1950s house

When I was a kid, the base was the reason a lot of the families I knew lived where they did. Here's the short version of what happened to it, from public records.

The EPA's own notice on McClellan's redevelopment describes it as a 3,452-acre base closed under the 1995 round, with operations ending in 2001. The water history comes from Sacramento Suburban Water District's own fact sheet, which still lists McClellan Business Park inside its service area.

You can see the base years in the housing. In North Highlands, 25.7 percent of all homes were built in the 1950s, the biggest single decade. Add the 1960s and 1970s and you get 66.9 percent built between 1950 and 1979. Countywide, that figure is 39.9 percent.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024 5-year, tables B25035, B25034 and B25003. Shares of all housing units for year built; owner share is of occupied homes.

For a seller, all those postwar houses mean the buyer walking through yours has likely toured others from the same decade. They know what an original 1950s bathroom looks like, and they'll price it accordingly.

Owners and renters

North Highlands is close to an even split: 51.1 percent of occupied homes are owner-occupied, so nearly half are rented. Foothill Farms looks about the same. Rio Linda is the opposite, with 72.9 percent owners, and Elverta goes higher still at 81.3 percent.

If you're selling in North Highlands, a big share of the houses around you belong to landlords. That changes who shows up to look. If you're selling in Rio Linda, more of your neighbors bought to live there, and the people looking at your place may be after the land as much as the house.

Rio Linda: one-acre and two-acre country

Rio Linda's age profile has a long tail. Of its 5,356 homes, 9.4 percent were built in 1939 or earlier, twice the county share of 4.7 percent, and 14.4 percent went up before 1950. Its median year built, 1969, is the oldest in this group.

The land use is deliberate. The county's Rio Linda and Elverta Community Plan, adopted June 3, 1998, lists among its guiding principles to "retain the rural character of the communities" and to keep agricultural and agricultural-residential uses. It aims for agricultural-residential areas with one- and two-acre lots, and it ties AR-2 zoning to the old McClellan noise contour. Under the county's zoning code, the AR districts are meant for keeping animals and raising crops on small farms alongside low-density homes, with minimum lot sizes of 1 acre for AR-1, 2 acres for AR-2, 5 for AR-5 and 10 for AR-10.

I saw what that looks like from the driver's seat. Stops were far apart, a lot of driveways had a horse trailer or a tractor beside them, and more than once I waited on a loose goat. If your parcel is zoned AR, say so in the listing. Some buyers are hunting for exactly that, and it's in the public record anyway.

The propane test didn't come out the way I expected

I figured the share of homes heated with bottled, tank or LP gas would be a clean marker for rural living, since a propane tank usually means no gas main. The Census table on house heating fuel says otherwise.

Rio Linda ties Antelope, a town of 1990s subdivisions, at 2.8 percent. Elverta is the only place here above the statewide figure, and it leans hard on electric heat too, at 57.2 percent of homes. Most of Rio Linda heats with utility gas (59.3 percent), which tells me the gas lines reach more of it than I'd assumed.

So the propane share is a weak rural marker here. Zoning and lot size tell you more. If your house does run on a tank, have the paperwork ready that shows who owns it and who fills it, because a buyer will ask.

Before you list on the north side

1. Pull the permit history for your house from the county, since there's no city to ask. Older additions and garage conversions are where surprises hide.
2. Check your zoning if you have animals, a barn or a second structure, and keep the AR designation handy.
3. Know your water district. Sacramento Suburban Water District serves parts of North Highlands, and Rio Linda and Elverta have their own community water district. Check yours by address.
4. Look up your own place in the Census tables before you trust anyone's neighborhood talk, including mine.
5. If the house needs more work than you want to do, get a few as-is offers alongside an agent's opinion.

There are a few ways to sell a house in North Highlands that don't involve redoing a 1958 kitchen first. A cash sale is one of them, and 916 Home Offer is one company that buys that way. It has a separate page for cash home buyers in Rio Linda if you're out on the bigger lots. Compare any offer against what a listing might bring, and talk to a real estate attorney or tax preparer if the sale has an estate or a trust attached.

Only 6.6 percent of North Highlands homes were built in 2000 or later. If yours is one of them, lead with the year. If it isn't, you're selling the same house as half the block, and a written list of what's been replaced, with dates, is how yours stands out.